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Sticky Notes User Guide

1. Overview

  • Create highly visible and updatable notes in tickets
  • Pin important ticket comments to the top
  • Rich Text Editor for formatting text, including web links
  • Notes are stored in custom ticket fields for portability
  • Multiple fields can be used for different purposes and agent groups
  • Edits are continuously auto-saved

The Sticky Notes app is used by agents to highlight important comments within a ticket, which are referred to as "Pinned Comments". Agents also use the app to keep important information about a ticket in what are referred to as "Notes". The Notes are highly visible and can be referenced later by the agent that wrote them or by other agents. The Notes can also be updated throughout the life of the ticket.

Agents no longer need to try using “internal notes” for this purpose. Once an internal note is submitted, it can no longer be edited and quickly becomes buried in long ticket threads.

The Sticky Notes app provides the visibility and flexibility needed to properly highlight important information in a ticket for internal purposes.

The Pinned Comments feature allows agents to pin important ticket comments so they are not lost in long ticket threads. Any comment can be pinned, whether it be from a customer or agent.

The Notes feature allows agents to write important notes in the sidebar of the ticket so they are always clearly visible to all agents accessing the ticket. The notes can also be updated at any time by the agent.

Editing notes is done with a Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG) and can be edited in-place in the right hand sidebar of the ticket or in a much larger pop-up editor, which is handy for longer documents. The editor allows formatted text to be pasted into the note with the formatting maintained, including hyperlinks (web links).

As editing is taking place, the app continuously saves a draft, so that edits are not lost.

The notes are stored in a custom ticket field so that the data stays connected with the ticket. This means it can be used by other apps and exported with the ticket data into other systems.

Multiple fields can be used to store Notes. This allows Notes with difference purposes to be separated. For example, you might have one field for general Notes and another field for Notes regarding a specific component of your help desk process (eg. sales or refunds). Using multiple fields, the Zendesk administrators have great control over which fields appear in which ticket forms and which agent groups have access to them.

2. Configuring Sticky Notes & Quick Start

Once the app is installed, it won’t do anything until you configure it, by adding at least one "object" to a "location".

All configuration is done via the "App settings" page within the app. To access the "App settings" page, select the Sticky Notes icon from the left side nav bar, then click the "App settings" button.

sn_app_settings.jpeg

 

Quick start: show custom note on each ticket

To make custom note (field) available on each ticket, open Sticky Notes's app settings:

  • click on Existing Ticket Sidebar location
    sn_locations.png
  • click on +Add button
    sn_object_list_add.jpeg
  • choose Zendesk Field as object typesn_zdf.png
  • select Ticket field and Automatically create new Notes field 

Then Save the above settings to create that object in Existing Ticket Sidebar location.

Reload Zendesk webpage (by pressing F5 or Ctrl + R) then open any ticket, the Notes field will now appear in Sticky Notes allowing us to add custom notes for the ticket.

 

sn_sample_note_field.png

Note: repeat the above steps with location New Ticket Sidebar if want to make it available during ticket creation. However beware that in the final step, instead of Automatically create new Notes Field, use Choose an existing field... to choose the Notes field that was previously created for Existing Ticket Sidebar.

 

3. App settings

3.1 Locations

With Sticky Notes, there are a few supported locations on Zendesk where the app shows:

sn_locations.png

  • on ticket (new & existing ticket sidebar)
  • on user profile (user sidebar)
  • on organization profile (organization sidebar)

Select the corresponding location to start configuring what display in such location.

3.2 Objects

For each location, we can add as many objects as we need for Sticky Notes app to show in the corresponding location.

To start, click on +Add button to add an item to display in Sticky Notes app:

sn_object_list_add.jpeg

Then select the type of the object:

sn_object_type.png

 

3.2.1 Pinned Comments 

To provide the Pinned Comments feature to your agents,

1. Create a new custom ticket field of type “Multi-line”, for the app to store the pinned comments in.

2. You'll need to wait for Zendesk to register the existence of the field so that the apps can access it. Wait 2-5 mins and then reload the browser page containing Zendesk.

2. The Pinned Comments object can only be added to the "Existing Ticket Sidebar", because that's the only location that contains comments.  So in "App Settings", select "Exisiting Ticket Sidebar" then click the "+Add" button and select "Pinned Comment". Unlike other objects, the Pinned Comments object can only be added once to the location.

3. In the "Pinned Comments Field" setting, select the custom field you created for pinned comments.

4. "Save" the object and then reload the browser page so you can then use the pinned comments in an existing ticket.

3.2.2 Notes Fields (Zendesk Fields)

To provide note fields for your agents, you use Zendesk field to store the data your agents input. You can use existing fields and/or create new custom ticket fields for the purpose.

You can use all of the different types of fields that Zendesk supports:

  • Checkbox
  • Drop-down
  • Text
  • Multi-line
  • Multi-select
  • Numeric
  • Decimal
  • Date
  • Credit card
  • Regex

Important: if using multiple ticket forms feature of Zendesk, remember to add field to all ticket forms. Otherwise, Sticky Notes will not show the field on forms that don't have such field.

3.2.3 Notices

"Notices" is a read-only type object that can be used to alert and inform your agents regarding anything of particular note about a ticket.

"Notices" acts as a "container" that allows you to put all your "Notice" objects in the one place.  Or you can have multiple Notices where you can group together individual Notice objects that might be related.

If a ticket has a certain tag or field value set that you don't want your agent to miss, then you can create a Notice that displays an alert. You can style the notice to make the text large with loud colours if you really want to grab your agent's attention.

You can use placeholders and Liquid markup within a Notice allowing you to include conditions and calculations.

Link Modifiers

The following link modifiers are available to be used in the links you add within a Notice:

#insert

When the link is clicked, the text that's wrapped in the link is automatically inserted into the comment editor, below any text that already exists there (ie. appends the text that's wrapped in the link).


#comment

Does the same as #insert, except that it completely replaces any text that already exists in the comment editor (ie. clobbers the text in the editor).

#macro:123456

Runs macro that has ID 123456. You get the macro ID number from the address bar when editing the macro:

 

 

The following instructions explain how to configure a Notice with many of the available features employed:

In the "Existing Ticket Sidebar" location, click the "+ Add" object button and choose "Notices":

​​

(You can also add the object to the "New Ticket Sidebar" if needed there as well.)

"Notices" act as a container that you add single "Notice" objects to. So click the `+ Add` button to add a single "Notice":




In the "Notice" settings page, select "Show notice when conditions are met", and add tag(s) to the "Contains ALL..." and or "Contains ANY..." fields:

​​​​

^ Then add the suggestion text to the "Notice Text" field. Select the text that you want to make clickable and make it a link by clicking the link icon. The link being shown above, when clicked will run the macro with ID 123456.

 

You can create a new Notice for each of the different conditions that you require. In the example above there are 3 lines of suggestion text in the one Notice, but you might just have one suggestion per Notice.

You can also use Liquid Markup within the Notice Text field, which means you can also place conditions into the Notice Text field:



You can use Placeholders like you do in macros. So for example you can insert the requestors name into the suggested text.

 

3.2.4 Buttons

"Buttons" is a read-only type object that can be used to display buttons. Each button can be assigned with a Macro on your Zendesk so that if the agent clicks on the button, the macro will be executed.

"Buttons" acts as a "container" that allows you to put all button objects in the one place.  (Or you can have multiple Buttons where you can group together individual Button objects that might be related.)

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