Searching

Basic search

To perform a basic search, click the magnifying glass icon in the top-right of any page within Zendesk. This will reveal a textbox you can type your search into. After typing your search query, hit the enter/return key on your keyboard.

This will bring up the search results page. The results from your search are separated into tabbed sections:

• Tickets
• Articles
• Users
• Organizations

If you wish to share these search results, the white Copy link button can be used to create a link that will replicate the search for you to share.

Advanced searching

This covers searching for more specific information using the Zendesk search language. All results are still shown much like those within a basic search.

Searching by tag

To search for objects with a specific tag, you would simply use the syntax:

tags:tag_name

As an example, to locate objects using the tag skip_2fa_automation, you’d use:

tags:skip_2fa_automation

You can search for the negation of this by putting a minus in front of it:

-tags:tag_name

If you wanted to search for objects with multiple tags, you’d encapsulate them in double quotes:

tags:"tag_name tag_name"

As an example, if you wanted to find all objects that contains the tags gold and sev1, you’d do:

tags:"gold sev1"

Searching by status

To search by ticket status, you would use the syntax:

status{operator}status_name

The status names (and order) are:

1. new
2. open
3. pending
4. hold
5. solved
6. closed

The comment operators are:

Operator	Meaning
:	Equal to
<	Less than
<=	Less than or equal to
>	Greater than
>=	Greater than or equal to

You can search for the negation of this by putting a minus in front of it:

-status:open

Searching by custom organization field

To search by a custom organization field, you use the format:

`field_api_name:query``

The common organization field API names are:

Field	What it is for	Zendesk Instance
account_owner	The AM for the org	Both
aar	The ARR of the org	Global
arr	The ARR of the org	US Government
assigned_se	The user ID of the ASE for the org	Global
technical_account_manager	The CSM for the org	Both
support_level	The highest support level of the org	Both
health_score	The Gainsight health score for the org	Both
seats_decimal	The highest number of licenses seats for the org	Global
number_of_seats	The highest number of licenses seats for the org	US Government
salesforce_id	The 18 character SFDC ID for the org	Both
sfdc_short_id	The 15 character SFDC ID for the org	Both
solutions_architect	The SA for the org	US Government

An example:

Searching for organizations with ARR less than 1000:

aar<1000

You can search for the negation of this by putting a minus in front of any that are text-based.

Searching by custom user field

To search by a custom user field, you use the format:

field_api_name:query

The common user field API names are:

• gitlab_username - An agent’s GitLab.com username
• gitlab_user_id - An agent’s GitLab.com user ID

As an example, to find one where the GitLab.com username is jcolyer, you would do:

gitlab_username:jcolyer

You can search for the negation of this by putting a minus in front of any that are text-based.

Searching by custom ticket field

To search by a custom user field, you use the format:

custom_field_{id}:value

where {id} is the ticket field ID. This one can be less intuitive as it requires knowing the ticket field ID. The best resource for this would be to talk to the Support Operations team for assistance in locating the ticket field’s ID value.

You can search for the negation of this by putting a minus in front of any that are text-based.

Searching by satisfaction rating

To locate tickets based on satisfaction rating, you would use the format:

satisfaction:value

The possible values are:

• bad - A bad rating without a comment
• badwithcomment - A bad rating with a comment
• good - A good rating without a comment
• goodwithcomment - A good rating with a comment
• offered - The survey has been sent but not responded to

You can search for the negation of this by putting a minus in front of any that are text-based.

Examples

Example 1

Task:

• the preferred region of support is AMER
• the support level of the organization is ultimate
• the satisfaction rating was bad (and had a comment)

custom_field_360018253094:americas__usa tags:ultimate satisfaction:badwithcomment

Example 2

Task:

• all ticket status except new, solved, and closed
• the assignee is Jason
• the SaaS Account problem type is Namesquatting

-status:new -status:solved -status:closed assignee:Jason custom_field_360011793260:namesquatting_requests

Example 3

Task:

• locate an organization in Zendesk based off the Salesforce ID

Salesforce accounts actually have two forms of their IDs, the standard 18 character value and the shortened 15 character value. Zendesk organizations have both values within them, so you can use either to locate the account:

• Based off the 18 character ID value: salesforce_id:ABCDEFGH0123456789
• Based off the 15 character ID value: sfdc_short_id:ABCDEFGH0123456

You can also make use of the wildcard search by using an asterisk. So if you have the 15 character value, you could do this as well:

salesforce_id:ABCDEFGH0123456*

Example 4

Task:

• locate an L&R IR ticket based off the Salesforce ID of the account

As detailed in Example 3, there are two values one could have for a given Salesforce account. With L&R IRs, there is a custom field you can use to locate the Salesforce account it was filed for, but knowing if which of the two was used can be difficult. As such, it is best to use the 15 character value with a wildcard search. If you only have the 18 character value, drop the last 3 characters from the ID (so if it was ABCDEFGH0123456789, drop the last 3 to make it ABCDEFGH0123456). With that, you would do one of the following searches (depending on which Zendesk instance you are looking in):

• Zendesk Global: custom_field_6978327875612:ABCDEFGH0123456*
• Zendesk US Government: custom_field_11717220820372:ABCDEFGH0123456*

Useful links

• Zendesk search reference