Our Calendar app provides a graphical calendar view of all events across multiple calendars, accessible directly from the top bar app, making it easy to see all events at a glance. However, you can create views to display these events in your preferred format or within a specific time zone, then an agent doesn't even need to open the ticket to see the event information!
Steps covered in this article:
- 1. Create Zendesk custom fields for your view
- 2. Create global ticket updates
- 3. Create Zendesk views
- Additional view options
1. Create Zendesk custom fields for your view
So that we can display calendar information in views, we need to first store calendar event data into custom ticket fields. In your Zendesk admin center, navigate to Objects & Rules - Tickets - Field and create Add field.
Some example fields you could create, but not limited to, are:
Date - Calendar start date
Date - Calendar end date
Text box - Calendar start time
Text box - Calendar end time
Text box - Calendar time zone
Text box - Calendar event location
Number - Calendar event duration
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As you might not want these fields to be shown directly on a ticket, do not add them to any ticket forms. If you do not have forms or want to only hide these fields for particular agents, our Field Rules app will allow you to control these fields as you need. |
2. Create global ticket updates
With the fields created, we can now set up the Calendar app to push in the calendar event information whenever an event is created or updated.
In the Calendar app and click Settings from the left side menu.
It's recommended to set up these ticket updates in the global settings of the app as it will affect every calendar, including personal calendars. If you plan to have multiple calendars per ticket or only need to push certain calendars information for views, you will need to do this under workflows instead.
Under ticket updates, select Calendar event updated from the + Add event... drop down. Note that the updated event will also fire on calendar create but you are free to separate these events if you prefer.
Now add the fields you have created in step 1 and add the relevant placeholders from the + drop down menu on the right side of the field.
Please ensure any date is in the Zendesk accepted %Y-%m-%d format.
Click Save.
3. Create Zendesk Views
Great, now that we have all our event information stored into ticket fields, we can build our Zendesk views. In your Zendesk admin center, navigate to Workspaces - Agent Tools - Views and Add view.
Your view can be set up how you need it, here we will create a view for upcoming events in the next 30 days. In the new view:
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Name your view
- Add view conditions. For example:
- 'Status category' Less than 'Solved'
- 'Calendar event start date' Is within the next '30' days (this is a custom field we created and populated above)
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Add columns to your view so your agents will be able to see all the information they need without opening the ticket. For example:
- Calendar event start date
- Calendar event start time
- Calendar event duration
- Calendar event time zone
- Calendar even location
- Pick which fields you would like to Group and Order by. Here you could group by calendar date, location or any other event detail. And order by start time so your tickets are in readable format.
Now your view is ready to go!!
Additional view options
As you have full control over what information from the events are stored into ticket fields, anything could be possible!
Showing events in specific time zones
The Calendar app displays events in the agent’s time zone, but you can also present this information within views for better visibility and customization.
In step 2 above when setting your ticket updates and adding a time or date for the event, you can change the liquid markup to update the value into a time zone of your choice. Each different time zone value can be added to different custom fields which you can build views on.
For example, when setting an event start time/date placeholder, change the 'calendar_event.time_zone' part in the placeholder to a IANA timezone value.
Such as:
{{calendar_event.start_at | in_time_zone: "Australia/Melbourne" | date: "%H:%M"}}
or
{{calendar_event.start_at | in_time_zone: "America/Los_Angeles" | date: "%Y-%m-%d"}}
Now the date and time will be in the time zone you prefer and these can be added to views so you can show all meetings in Melbourne time even if they were created in another!
Views by calendar name
As the amount of calendars grows in the app, there might be requirements to have each calendar in their own Zendesk view.
Since Zendesk cannot categorize views by a text field, these views can be created through our calendar app by using a unique workflow per calendar.
Within your workflow, simply define a unique tag under the ticket event of Calendar event created. When creating your views, simply add the tags for the calendars you want included in the conditions of the view.