When you’re composing messages in a ticket, it’s important to make sure everything is correct before you send your reply to a customer. In theZendesk Agent Workspace, you can compose your public replies as drafts first, before you send the update.
This article contains the following topics:
Composing draft messages
Use draft messages to refine your ticket updates before you send them to a customer.
To write a draft
- In a ticket, select a channel from the menu at the top of the composer.
You can select any channel exceptInternal notein the ticket composer to compose a draft message. This includes email, chat and messaging channels, and other public replies.
- Click the draft icon (
) to turn on draft mode.
When draft mode is on, you’ll see aDraft modebutton in the composer.
You can click this button to turn draft mode on or off. Draft mode remains on until you turn it off. Zendesk remembers your last choice for draft mode as you work across tickets.
- When draft mode is on, type your reply in the composer.
- When you're ready to make the reply public, clickSubmit.
A draft warning message appears asking if you want to send the draft to the public channel.
- ClickGo backto return to editing the draft or clickSendto make the reply public.Note:You can also turn off draft mode first, then submit the reply. In that case, the message is no longer a draft and no draft warning message appears. However, the draft mode will be off for the next ticket you open, until you turn it back on.
In chat and messaging tickets, pressing the Enter key willnotsend the message or display the draft warning message. This enables you to compose your message without worrying about pressing enter and sending the message by mistake. To send the message in this situation, clicksendin the composer, then clickSendwhen the draft warning message appears.
Keyboard shortcut for draft mode
You can use the following keyboard shortcut to toggle draft mode on and off.
Mac:Command+Option+torControl+Option+t
Windows:Ctrl+Alt+t
31 Comments
Is there functionality to automatically enable agents to toggle draft mode on for them?
HiPreston,
No, but once they select Draft mode, it persists across tickets. So, it stays on for them, until they choose to turn it off.
Will drafts be viewable to other agents in Zendesk?
I'm sure this is a yes, but the functionality of internal notes will be remaining the same for this release, correct?
HiMaya,
Internal notes haven't changed. Draft mode is only available for writing replies on public channels.
HiLydia,
Other agents can't see your drafts before they become public replies because the ticket isn't updated, yet. But, you can still use Internal notes or a side conversation to solicit comments from other agents before you make the reply public. If you'd like, I recommend posting this feature enhancement on ourCommunity site.
Lydia Forsyth- drafts will not be viewable by other agents in Zendesk.
Maya Way- that is correct: internal note functionality and comments are not affected by this change.
Did I miss a post somewhere, or has this only just been announced for the first time on the first day of the rollout?
HeyMatthew Davis,
This is the first post for this release. It's Zendesk's standard procedure not to pre-announce changes like this, unless they require advanced preparation from the customer's standpoint or significantly impact an agent's workflow. In this case, agents can choose to enable or disable Draft mode.
We typically don't pre-announce because it causes it's own set of problems when there are product delays or last-minute changes. Thanks!
Thanks for the announcement about this, team!
So just to confirm my understanding:
Previously, there were effectively 2 kinds of 'text input' - the internal note, and the public reply. There was a bunch of confusion when moving to Agent Workspace, because with the different text buffers (for want of a better description) for each reply type, it meant that lots of people's preferred workflow of drafting the reply as an internal note, then switching to public reply and sending, then broke. Some people tried to continue with this by cutting/pasting between the two when it was time to send the public reply, but sometimes formatting got mangled, so it was a pain point.
Fast forward to today, and there's now the option for 'Draft' replies. Which seems like it's introducing a third-ish option. Internal note, Public reply (draft) ,and Public reply (not draft).
So, left at default, this would mean that the agent would hop into a ticket, change to public reply, enable draft, then start composing the reply. Then when ready to send, would turn off draft mode and send? If so, isn't thisanotherstep that the agent has to perform (and remember to perform) to use their preferred workflow?
I guess related to that extra step, I'm also curious about the "Zendesk remembers your last choice for draft mode as you work across tickets." part - when you finish up a ticket, I guess the assumption is that you would switch off draft mode and send your public reply, then move onto the next ticket. So would that mean that effectively every time you leave a ticket, your default is going to be 'Draft mode off'? Or am I misunderstanding that 'remembering' part.
Thanks for your help - and sorry if most of the above is my own confusion :)
As a side note... it would bemassivelyhelpful if when Zendesk announces immediate changes like this, to enable the feature immediately in the Sandbox environments. It would be awesome to be able to hop into the Sandbox to immediately see/play with the new feature that could be in production tomorrow... before all our users etc start asking questions when they see it suddenly enabled.
HiTim G, Thank you for the comments! One clarification: Draft mode isn't automatically "turned off" when you send. You can choose to send the draft you have typed to make it a public reply, without turning off draft mode. Once that happens, draft mode is still enabled for future comments you might want to add to the ticket, or to other tickets. You don't have to keep turning draft mode on after sending. Try it out when you get a chance and post your comments on ourCommunity site.
Ah I see... thanks Lisa!
That's a nice feature. thank you.
Is there any way for agents to use draft mode only for the channels they want?
For example, I want to use draft mode for chat tickets and not draft mode for email tickets.
But the current way seems to apply to all channels. I need an option to disable draft mode for each channel I don't want to use.
I can't seem to find the draft mode button available in the email-public reply field. Is there something I'm missing? We are within the Agent Workspace.
HiMinji,
This feature is still being rolled out to accounts, so you may not see it yet. Refer tothis announcementfor rollout details. If you don't see a draft mode icon in email replies by EOD May 19, contactZendesk Customer Support.Also, make sure you have the Zendesk Agent Workspaceactivatedfor your account.
Hello,
I guess I am seeing how this could be helpful in live chat because going from internal to public can be wonky with formatting. But I am not sure I see the difference for email between this update and switching back and forth between internal and public. Can you let me know what is the benefit, in an email, to use this new function instead of internal comments for drafting?
HiLee,
Are you using the Zendesk Agent Workspace? In Agent Workspace, Internal notes and Public replies are stored separately. You have to copy and paste a comment to move it from an Internal note to a Public reply. It's not just a menu switch. Draft mode in the Agent Workspace keeps you from having to copy/paste. SeeWhy is Zendesk making this change?
Hi, is there an API or Trigger/Macros to submit ticket comment in a draft mode? One of the use-cases we have:
1. Agent uses Macros to pre-fill reply which sets comment as a private comment
2. Agent edit/modify reply and send it as public.
So you see with initial problem and Agent Workspace there is no buffer between comment/public reply so I still cannot use that workflow. Posting comment by Macros in a "draft mode" can be an option.
Or should I just change macros to add comment as a public and if agent has "draft mode" enabled it will be kept as draft?
HelloAnton Maslov- You're correct! If you change macros to add comment as public and if agent has "draft mode = on", the macro should be applied to the public composer with draft mode on. I'd encourage you to try it and provide us feedback if that solves your use case. Thanks! :)
谢谢!现在我们需要一键priva之间切换te/public instead of the drop-down. Draft mode is a good addition and adds the right friction compared to what the drop-down was designed for. Now the drop-down is just annoying. Is there a feedback forum topic on that yet? Thanks!!
Yeah,Michael Penlandwe had exactly the same ask - i.e. if there's only 2 choices in a ticket (public reply and internal note), then just show the one-click switch rather then drop down We're currently getting around this by using keyboard shortcuts so that we can avoid clicking at all... not sure if that would help for you / your teams in the meantime?
That’s Smart Tim!
Hi,
when leaving a comment in draft mode, and I close the ticket completely, will the draft message still be there when I open the ticket again? And will this only be the case for tickets that are assigned to me or whenever I add a draft message, I will be able to see this message even if its assigned to another agent?
Thanks for clarifying!
Hi @Sarina. Yes, even if you close the ticket, when you open it again, what you typed will still be there and this is true for all tickets not just the ones assigned to you. Hope this helps.
This release makes it clear that zendesk doesn't understand what the core functionality of using "internal notes" as drafts was for many agents.
Putting drafts in "internal notes" was useful because it allowed其他代理submiss前校对你的工作ion.有时当我们起草一个票,我们做legwork for a supervisor since we believe we know how to resolve an issue, but we want to make sure that everything we reply with is accurate, professional, and does not contain information we don't want to release to end-users.Internal Notesallowed zendesk users tocollaborateon a ticket by saying "Hey, is this language ok?" before posting it to a user.
The new draft mode doesn't provide any of this functionality; you've basically just encoded a warning message of "are you sure you want to send this?" and that's it. In order for draft mode to restore the functionality lost by not being able to transfer the response between a public and an internal reply, you will need to create adraft submission modeso that other agents can see the response. Then, a button would allow users to publicize the finalize draft, or perhaps even wholesale copy the draft into a live ticket to compose any final edits, saving a copy and paste.
Thank you,Katherine. I'm sorry you don't like the new feature. We encourage you to post your feedback here:Draft mode in composer - We want your feedback :)
Also note that Draft mode does not prevent you from adding internal notes to a ticket before you reply to a customer.
Hello,
When draft text is added and ticket is being closed, this pop up comes up:
But obviously the draft is saved when ticket is reopened.
It seems confusing to ignore this message when saving a draft.
Wondering if any of the APIs supports posting a comment or a response to a ticket using Draft mode?
For example, one would expect Comments API has a Draft mode configuration, or this is added to anther API?
https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/ticketing/tickets/ticket_comments/
Thank you,
Hi Upbr,
Draft mode is currently a UI only feature and is not available via API.
Hope this helps.
Too bad you guys broke markdown... the new internal note editor is horrible. We use complex macros to auto-populate internal notes with tons of markdown and now all that is broken. Jira does this too and they suck at it. One rule of thumb over all my years of using markdown, DO NOT RENDER IT ON THE FLY. It makes it extremely buggy and hard to edit while working on crafting a message. Bring back the preview function, PLEASE!!!
Can a zendesk rep comment on the intended use cases of this feature? I'm not getting how this can be really useful.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.