Ability to Snooze tickets

Hey @joel14

You can easily achieve this in Zendesk by creating an automation that will automatically reopen the ticket for you after X after of time. 

What I would do to make this workflow easier and more dynamic which requires fewer changes over time would be to do the following: 

1. Create a custom on-hold status which is "On-hold - waiting for dev fix"

• See here on how to create custom status' in Zendesk: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412575861018-Creating-custom-ticket-statuses

2. Create an automation that looks for tickets that have been in this status for X amount of days and then re-open. 

This workflow would easily allow you to do it via the Submit button like you're looking for. :)

Hope this helps. 

Best,

Amie

Hi Amie!

I guess you missed this part of my post:

Sure, it would be possible to do something similar using tags macros, and automations, but I'd much rather just have a way to do this via the Submit dropdown or a keyboard shortcut.

I actually proceeded on trying to implement something along those lines after posting this as an interim solution (having it built into Zendesk as a first-class feature would be much better). However, I ran into a variety of difficulties.

As you showed, there are "hours since ticket status on-hold" automation options. That works great for the first couple variations (1 hour, 3 hours). However, the "tomorrow" option doesn't work so well. I don't want it to wait 24 hours and pop back up or even 8 business hours. I want it to pop back up at the beginning of the next business day (e.g., 9am) regardless of when it was "snoozed" (e.g., you might snooze it at 2pm – it should still "wake up" at 9am the next day). This issue is present with the "next week" variation (we want it to wake up at 9am the following Monday) and the "next month" variation.

One thing I had considered was using Tasks for this since you can set due dates and automations have an "hours until due" option. The problem here is that there's no way to set the due date for tasks in macros. So, if I have a "Snooze > Tomorrow" macro, I can change the ticket to a Task, set a tag on it (e.g., "snooze-tomorrow") and move its status to "on-hold". However, there's no way to set the due date for the task to 9am the following day.

Going to keep noodling on this to see if there are other work arounds, but ultimately, all these workarounds to get some functionality like this is a royal pain. It should be built into Zendesk.

-Joel

By the way, this is a feature request, not a "please tell me how" because what I'd like to do isn't possible currently without creating a custom ZD app as far as I can tell. Not sure why this was marked as "Answered".

+1 to this request! We use automations to accomplish this and they are quite helpful. However, it's become quite cumbersome to manage as we expand our support hours and add new teams or schedules to Zendesk. Would love to see this as a built-in functionality in the future. Thanks for posting this feedback!

Chandra, out of interest, would you be willing to share how you achieve this currently?

@bevis11 Absolutely! We have a custom dropdown ticket field called 'Sleep' which has a few different options (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, etc). 

We then have a few different automations that look something like this for each of the possible options:

You could also keep it simple and just always reopen all Pending tickets after X amount of time or On-Hold tickets after Y amount of time instead of creating a custom ticket field, but we wanted the ability to customize it since some tickets we'd like to take action on more quickly than others.

+1

The timing can be variable ticket by ticket, and having to adjust the custom field / trigger / automation each time is too much friction to be useful.

Ideally this could be implemented in the way that gmail has a snooze function for emails with a calendar selector. It would be an incredible jump in UX if Zendesk were to implement. 

Thanks for considering!

Please implement this.

Hi everyone!

Thanks for this feedback. It's apparent that the methods available today for managing ticket statuses via automations, triggers, ticket statuses, tags, and views doesn't fit the need for every agent. Specifically, we're seeing asks for snoozing / reminders that:

1. Don't incur admin overhead
2. Are easy to use and self-explanatory (don't require admin overhead to configure, or agent training on using the correct tags/macros)
3. Have wide flexibility (based on asks to "snooze" not only for preselected amounts of time, but also to set a "snooze" or reminder period based on a calendar selector).

Couple of questions:

1. What present "snooze" windows would make sense to you? (i.e. 1 hour? 3 days?)
2. Would you, as an admin, want to configure which preset snooze windows appear for agents to make it easier to snooze tickets?

We don't have concrete plans to build this just yet, but are interested in understanding the use cases as we continue to build out agent efficiency capabilities. Thanks for the detailed feedback and I'm looking forward to hearing more from each of you!

@zac13 I think Slack has a pretty good implementation of this with their Reminders (pictured below). I don't think I'd ever use the "20 minutes" in a support ticket context – or even the 1 hour option really (although I could see someone needing that). For me, 3 hours (essentially "later today" for something I want to follow-up in the afternoon for that came in during morning hours), tomorrow morning (where "morning" could be defined by a ZD schedule or something – Slack lets each user set this up themselves), next week (i.e., Monday of next week at beginning of the day), and I'd probably add a "next month" option too for situations where something is being worked on by engineering or something and I need to follow-up on it after a considerable amount of time. Beyond that, having a "Custom" option similar to Slacks would be awesome.

-Joel

Thanks @joel14 - yes, 20 minutes is very fast in the world of CX, and not likely to be used often! The needs for follow up timing vary widely between organizations and businesses - we support a wide variety of workflows, which is something we're keenly aware of.

I appreciate the clarifications and detailed use cases. Our team is hyper-focused on agent efficiency and if/when this comes into play your feedback will be an important part of how we build it. Please keep the thread going as other use cases come to mind!

@zac13 

Currently, we have the following options available for the workaround I mentioned earlier upthread, which include:

• 1 hour
• 4 hours 
• 12 hours (1/2 calendar day)
• 18 hours (3/4 calendar day)
• 1 day
• 3 days
• 5 days
• 1 week
• 2 weeks 
• 1 month

We've been using this workaround for years so, as of a few years ago, we had only around 5 or 6 options. It's grown overtime, especially as we switched from a company that provides support during US hours only to a company that provides global support across multiple timezones & countries. I definitely echo what @joel14 mentioned of showing some common ranges (e.g. 4 hours, 1 day & 5 days) but then allowing agents to select a custom date / time would be awesome. 

If a custom date / time range wasn't supported, the ability for Admins to control whether tickets will reopen based on calendar hours or business hours would be helpful. Before global support, we really liked reopening tickets based on business hours so that nothing reopened on weekends or holidays, but it got a bit complicated when we launched Global Support (our US business hours are 8am-8pm versus other countries we operate in our simply 9am-5pm) plus varying holidays, so had to switch to calendar hours to help uncomplicate things a bit.

@zac.garcia

It would be best for the Agent to state how long they want to snooze as it may depend. For example, if you clicked snooze, you can say snooze by 2 hrs, etc. 

I think if we could have some common presets but the option to fill in a custom amount by the agent as an option

Coming from doing support in Intercom, where this feature is available, I find Zendesk pretty cumbersome in this regard. In my current role, I'm technically T1 support but stretch into T2 and even sometimes into T3 land depending on team availability. So my time can get pretty curnched. This is not the first support role where this has been the case, so I'm guessing that this is applicable to other support agents as well.

That said, It's pretty important for any ticket that is pending ME updating (ie it's waiting from me, not the customer, so I can't put it in pending) get evaluated for importance and then either I snooze it; or I deal with it now.

Not having this causes tickets to pile up in the Open queue, and I have to continue scanning last responder and / or the latest comment message to figure out what is relevant and what isn't in my current pass of the Open queue. Wasted CPU cycles.

What it comes down to is that visible (open) tickets occupy short term memory, which is viciously finite in the world of support (I've found), so they need to be kept to a minimum. Obviously this is one perspective, and I'm sure there are other underlying issues that could be resolved to help ths, but as it stands, those issues are probably fundamental faults in my org. While I will continue to push for better workflows / policies / documentation / etc, I still have a job to do in the mean time, and those changes may never see the light of day.

I'm currently exploring using a browser extension to snooze browser tabs with open tickets in them, which isn't ideal since I'm now reliant on browser state saving correctly.

Just my 2c

Hello ZenDesk community. Company Support Lead here, we just migrated from Intercom to ZenDesk less than 2 months ago. Agree with Joel and Elijah 100%, this capability is needed. Sharing with you an image on how customizable Intercom has it. You can even select e.g 7, and it will bring 7 minutes, 7 hours, 7 days, etc. 

Would love this feature asap. Thank you for the consideration.

Hi Zendesk, can you please provide an ETA on this feature? We have moved from Gorgias, and they also have this feature available and it is very useful for our agents. 

Hi Zendesk  Team,

Thank you for acknowledging the feedback on the need for a native Snooze feature. While automations, triggers, and custom statuses can provide some workarounds, they often require excessive admin configuration, training, and manual oversight, which adds unnecessary complexity for both agents and admins. Given that Zendesk competitors have this functionality, it would be a strong enhancement to agent workflow and overall productivity.

Why Snooze is Needed
A built-in snooze function would:

1. Reduce admin overhead – Avoiding reliance on complex workarounds like macros, triggers, and tags.
2. Improve agent efficiency – Agents could seamlessly snooze a ticket without disrupting workflow or needing special training.
3. Enhance customer experience – Ensuring follow-ups occur at the right time instead of relying on manual reminders, trackers, keeping a ticket on hold. 
4. Align with industry standards – Many other platforms (e.g., Front, Help Scout, Intercom) already offer this feature.
    

Answers to Your Questions:
What present "snooze" windows would make sense?

Common options: 1 hour, 4 hours, End of Day, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, Custom date/time
Custom date/time selector is critical for flexibility.
 

Would admins want to configure preset snooze windows?

Yes! Predefining snooze options ensures consistency across teams.
However, agents should have a "Custom" option to select a specific time if needed.
 

Use Cases:

• Pending customer response follow-ups – When an agent is waiting for a reply and doesn’t want the ticket cluttering the active queue.
• Time-based tasks – When a ticket needs re-evaluation at a later date (e.g., a scheduled callback).
• SLAs & escalations – Keeping tickets out of view until they need attention, ensuring deadlines are met efficiently.
   

I appreciate your consideration and would love to hear if this is being prioritized for a future roadmap!