Zendesk
Zendesk is a support ticket system used across GOV.UK. Tickets are raised by:
- Members of the public (e.g. via the GOV.UK contact form)
- Government departments (e.g. via one of the forms on the GOV.UK Support app)
- Members of GDS (e.g. directly through https://govuk.zendesk.com)
Service Level Agreements
GOV.UK have committed to a minimum service level agreement for tickets:
- 80% of tickets get a first reply to the ticket within 2 working days
- 80% of general enquiries (public tickets) resolved within 5 working days
- 70% of department tickets are closed within 5 working days
Get started
Create an account then assign a new ticket to 2nd/3rd Line--Zendesk Administration asking to give you “GDS Resolver Agent” access to your product team’s Zendesk group.
See the Zendesk best practice slidedeck for an overview and tour of the service.
In addition, you may want to bookmark these links for searching Zendesk:
- Tickets you have commented on
- Read the Zendesk documentation for advanced search options
Where to triage tickets
Triage to the most applicable area of GOV.UK using the associated macro below. This is also represented visually on the Zendesk flow diagram.
| Zendesk view | Macro for triaging to this view | Responsible for |
|---|---|---|
| GOV.UK Publishing Service Support | Triage to GOV.UK Publishing Service Support | Publishing apps, unpublishing content, etc |
| GOV.UK Web Support | Triage to GOV.UK Web Support | User-facing GOV.UK, emails, GOV.UK search, GOV.UK chat, postcode lookup etc |
| GOV.UK Platform Support | Triage to GOV.UK Platform Support | Developer tools, Terraform, DNS / domains, Content Data, Slack bots, etc |
| data.gov.uk support | Triage to data.gov.uk support | data.gov.uk (DGU), CKAN |
| GOV.UK Data Support | Triage to GOV.UK Data Support | Related links, Google Analytics, GovSearch, etc |
| GOV.UK Campaigns Tech Support | Triage to GOV.UK Campaign Support | Anything to do with the campaign platform |
| Technical 2nd Line | Triage to GOV.UK Technical 2nd Line | DEPRECATED |
Most technical tickets are triaged automatically to the correct place via the “trigger rules” in Zendesk - see Zendesk triggers for technical GOV.UK groups. If no specific trigger rule has been configured, tickets go straight to GDS’s User Support team, who then triage tickets on to other teams where appropriate.
Other useful groups:
- Content support for queries from publishers etc -
2nd Line--GOV.UK Content Triage, Gov't(“Triage to GOV.UK 2nd line content - govt support” macro) - Content support for queries from general public -
2nd Line--GOV.UK Content Triage, Public - Content support for publishers with Signon/permissions issues -
3rd line--GOV.UK Content Training and Accounts - GOV.UK Policy & Strategy -
3rd Line--GOV.UK Policy and Strategy - GDPR and Privacy enquiries -
3rd Line--GDS Privacy - Licensing -
1st Line--Licensing Support - Security issues -
3rd Line--Cyber Security - User Support -
2nd Line--User Support Escalation
Zendesk triggers for technical GOV.UK groups
Every product area should have its own view of Zendesk tickets and an optional set of ‘triggers’ that automatically assign certain tickets to said view. Some triggers also notify Slack.
Some triggers power Slack notifications via the Zendesk/Slack integration. For example, the Tell GOV.UK Platform Support about new ticket trigger checks whether a slack_has_been_notified tag is present on the ticket, as well as whether or not this is the kind of ticket we’re interested in (must be in 2nd Line--GOV.UK Alerts and Issues and must have at least one tag relevant to Platform, e.g. fault_with_content_data). Only if the tag is absent do the corresponding trigger ‘actions’ fire, which are “Zendesk integration” (the thing that fires the Slack message) and also “Add tags”. Here, we add the slack_has_been_notified tag, meaning only one notification is sent per ticket, which reduces noise. We also add the govuk_platform_support tag, which is the only tag that drives the GOV.UK Platform Support view, meaning that the only place we need to define our set of platform-related tags is in the “Tell GOV.UK Platform Support about new ticket” trigger.