Search tickets and customers
How to find a ticket by number, customer, title, message text or tag from the command bar or the search results page, and why you only see tickets you have access to.
Search finds tickets and customers across your whole workspace in one box. You only ever see results you are allowed to open, so two people can run the same search and get different results.
What you can search
| Search for | Example | Matches |
|---|---|---|
| Ticket number | 4471 or 44 | Tickets whose number starts with what you typed |
| Customer name | mar | Tickets and customers whose name contains what you typed |
| Customer email | @acme.com | Tickets and customers whose email contains what you typed |
| Ticket title | refund | Words in the ticket title |
| Message content | invoice 4471 | Words in any message on the ticket, including your team's replies |
| Tags | billing | Tickets carrying a tag with exactly that name |
Search from the command bar
- Choose the Search… field at the top of the desk, or press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac) from any page. In the inbox, / opens it too.
- Type your search. Matching views, tickets and customers appear as you type.
- Use the arrow keys to move through the list and press Enter to open the highlighted result.
- To see every match, choose See all results at the end of the list. This opens the search results page.
Choosing a customer in the command bar opens the search results page with that customer's tickets.
The search results page
The results page lists matching tickets and customers, each with a short snippet that shows where your words were found. Use the filter at the top to show Tickets, Customers or All, and use the search box to change your search. Results load in pages; select Load more at the end of the list to see the next page. Select a ticket to open it.
Matching behaviour
- Accents are ignored. Searching
josefindsJosé, and searchingmüllerfindsMuller. - Capitalisation does not matter.
- Names, emails and ticket numbers match partial text. You do not need to type the whole value.
- Titles and messages match words and the start of words.
refundfinds "refund" and "refunded", but not "prerefund". - Tags must match exactly.
billingfinds the tag billing, not billing-eu.
Who sees what
- Only tickets in groups you can access. Search applies the same rules as your ticket lists. If your role lacks View on a group, its tickets never appear in results, and nothing hints that they exist. See Roles and groups.
- Internal notes are searchable only by staff with access. If a phrase appears only in an internal note, you find that ticket only when you can already see the note, and the snippet under the result may show the note's text. Customers cannot search at all.
- Customer results need permission to view people. If your role lacks the View permission for users, search still finds tickets by customer name and email, but customers are not listed as separate results.
- Only your workspace. Search never returns anything from another organisation.
When you cannot find something
- Check spelling of tags, which must match exactly.
- Search for a shorter part of a name or email.
- Ask an admin whether you have access to the group the ticket belongs to.
For working with a ticket once you have found it, see Working tickets.
Build and share custom views
How to build a view with conditions, sort order and columns, share it with your team, and edit it later, including what sharing does and does not reveal.
Macros, merging, splitting and bulk changes
How to answer common questions in one step with macros, merge duplicate tickets, split a message into its own ticket, change many tickets at once, and see who else is working on a ticket.