Tasks app does something interesting with the information entered into the app. It breaks the task information down and stores it in a number of Zendesk ticket fields.
By sharing task information with Zendesk fields like this, it gives you the added bonus of using this information throughout the rest of Zendesk such as in macros, views, triggers, automations and reporting.
To access a list of your task ticket fields and their id's click on the tasks icon in the left navbar, then click on the admin tab from within the app. Then at the bottom, you'll see a list of them like this:
This will show you a list of the fields the tasks app uses and their placeholders. The ticket fields are as follows:
tasks_completed_count (Number of completed tasks): Number of tasks that have been checked off the list.
tasks_count (Number of tasks): Total number of tasks (completed or not completed).
tasks_remaining (Remaining tasks): Lists out the remaining tasks yet to be completed on the ticket separated by commas.
Note that the following ticket fields are required by the app simply to function correctly, and are not particularly useful in macros/views etc.
tasks_linked_id (Linked task ID): If you've converted one of your tasks into a sub-ticket, this is where this information is stored that links the ticket to its children tickets.
tasks_list_id (Task list ID): Identifies the task list for our servers.
tasks_parent_ticket_id (Parent Ticket ID): If the ticket is a child ticket, then this field contains the id of its parent ticket.
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Note: The precise names of the fields may be different depending on when you installed the app. For example rather than seeing "tasks_completed_count and task_count", you may instead see "Number of completed tasks & Number of tasks". This will not affect the function of the fields and you can proceed to copy the placeholders as per the following instructions. |
Those placeholders can then be copied and pasted to be used in your macros, triggers and automations. To try it out, simply follow these steps:
- Copy the placeholder next to "tasks_remaining" like this.
- Create a test ticket.
- Type out a list of tasks. (note you will need to create the ticket before you can type out your list)
- Paste the placeholder into the comments.
- Submit the ticket.
You should now see all of the remaining tasks laid out in the comment.
You can take this a step further by displaying the tasks in bullet point format using liquid markup although this would be better suited in a macro so that you don't have copy/paste it every time.
Tasks Remaining:{% assign tasksremaining = ticket.ticket_field_360026333112 | split: "," %}
{% for task in tasksremaining %} • {{task}}
{% endfor %}
Using the same principle, you can inject these placeholders into macros, triggers and automations to always keep your requesters in the loop, like this for example...
You can also use these fields to build ticket views so you can easily see all uncompleted tasks. Here's an article that shows you how to build a view for your tasks.
Finally, these fields also allow you to build actionable reports for tasks across the whole desk. We've written an article here that shows you how to build them.