Our Calendar app allows you to setup ticket mapping so any new event created in an external calendar will automatically create a new Zendesk ticket, defined with all the calendar and attendee or guest information.
Then all customer meetings or appointments can be controlled directly within a Zendesk ticket, whether the event is manually created, or through schedulers like Calendly or Google Calendar.
If you are using Calendly, please see our recipe on building a Calendly workflow here.
Steps covered in this article:
- 1. Create a calendar and sync to your external account
- 2. Create ticket templates
- 3. Enable Ticket mapping to automatically create tickets
- 4. Test it out
1. Create a calendar and sync to your external account
If you do not have a calendar created and synced to an external account as yet, please follow our guide on Connecting Google & Microsoft accounts to Calendar. Once this is complete, return here to follow the next steps.
2. Create ticket templates
Now that your calendar is synced to your external account, we can setup the ticket mapping and our app will automatically create new Zendesk tickets every time a new event is added to the external calendar. First, we will need to create a ticket template so that your ticket will be created with all the information you need for the event.
In the Calendar app, click Ticket templates and then Add ticket template on the top right.
Within the ticket template, define the following:
- Name of the ticket template.
- Access permissions - who can use this template when using ticket mapping (see below).
- Ticket definition - specify what information the ticket will be created with, we recommend using our app placeholders to fill in details from the external event.
Please note:
- All of our forms accept liquid markup and you can find all placeholders available from the app by clicking + on the right of the field.
- Our liquid for 'Calendar event attendee emails' will list all attendees of the event (including yours). As events can list these attendees in different order, you may need to test with different liquid to get the right email from the list.
For example, use this liquid for the first email of the list:
{% assign first_email = calendar_event.attendee_emails | split: ',' | first %} {{ first_email }}
And this liquid for the second email of the list:
{% assign emails = calendar_event.attendee_emails | split: ',' %}{% assign second_email = emails[1] %}{{ second_email }}
- Additionally, if you would like multiple attendees to also be on the ticket, you can add these as Email CCs.
Click Create ticket template.
3. Enable ticket mapping
In the Calendar app, click Calendars and then navigate to Global or Personal depending on the calendar you have just added.
Click on the calendar and then the Ticket mapping in the top menu.
Toggle on the option to Automatically create ticket when an event is created in external calendar
Then from the Ticket template drop down, select the template we have created above.
Click Update calendar.
4. Test it out
All done! Now when an external event is created in the connected calendar a new Zendesk ticket will be created from your template and attendees automatically added.
To ensure everything is working as expected, follow these steps:
- Create a new event in your external calendar (e.g., Google Calendar, Calendly).
- Check Zendesk to verify that a ticket has been automatically generated based on your template.
- Confirm that all details (e.g., attendees, event time) have been correctly populated in the ticket.
- Make any necessary adjustments to your ticket template or mapping settings if the results are not as expected.
If you run into any issues or the tickets don't get created from this workflow, you can always check your audit log in the app for any error messages. The audit log can be found under the Admin menu and Audit Log tab.
Please contact us at support@sweethawk.com or click Submit a request at the top of this page if you need any assistance with these errors. Please ensure to send any screenshots of your audit log and errors you receive.