Change the Requester on a Zendesk Ticket
A Zendesk change of requester is a two-click edit with consequences that reach into notifications, organizations and every report you run.
How to change the requester in Zendesk
Open the ticket, find the Requester field in the properties panel on the left, start typing a name or email address, pick the user, submit. That's it.
Two things to know before you do. You need a permission level that allows editing the requester, so restricted agents may not see the field as editable. And if the user doesn't exist yet, typing a new email address usually offers to create them, which is convenient and also how accounts end up with three records for the same person.
What it actually changes
More than people expect.
What it doesn't change: the original email address in the first comment. The ticket will still show the message arriving from whoever actually sent it, which is honest and occasionally confusing.
The forwarded email problem
This is why most people search for this in the first place.
A colleague receives a customer email, forwards it to support, and Zendesk creates a ticket where the requester is your colleague. Reply to it and the customer never sees the answer. Meanwhile the customer, hearing nothing, writes in directly. Now there are two tickets about one problem and neither is quite right.
Changing the requester to the real customer fixes the first one. Zendesk also has handling for forwarded email that can detect the original sender in some configurations. It depends on how forwarding is set up on your mail server, so check the current Zendesk docs rather than assuming it'll just work.
Better still, tell colleagues to CC support rather than forwarding. One habit change removes the whole category of problem.
Bulk and API changes
Bulk editing from a view covers many ticket properties. Requester availability there has varied between interface versions, so check what your account offers before you plan a large clean-up around it.
The API is the reliable route. Update one ticket:
curl -u you@example.com/token:APITOKEN -X PUT \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"ticket": {"requester_id": 1234567890}}' \
https://yourcompany.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets/98765.jsonFor a batch, the update many tickets endpoint takes a list of IDs and one set of changes. Test on five tickets first. Notifications fire on update, so a careless bulk change emails a lot of people at once, and there's no undo for that.
When you want merge users instead
Changing the requester fixes one ticket. If the same person has two Zendesk profiles, a work address and a personal one, say, you'll be fixing tickets forever.
Merging the users moves all their tickets under one profile in a single action and is the right tool when the problem is the person rather than the ticket. Changing the requester is for the one-off. Merging users is for the pattern.
Frequently asked questions
What do you do about a Zendesk wrong requester?
Change it rather than close and recreate. A Zendesk update requester edit moves the ticket onto the right person's history, which matters more than it sounds when somebody later asks how often that customer wrote in.
Does changing the requester notify the new person?
Usually yes, depending on your triggers. Standard notification triggers fire on ticket update, and the new requester now matches the audience, so expect an email to go out.
Can Zendesk change the requester on a closed ticket?
No. Closed tickets are immutable in the agent interface. If you need the correct requester on the record, you're looking at a follow-up ticket instead.
Does the old requester still see the ticket?
Not in the help centre, and they stop receiving updates. Add them as a CC if they genuinely need to stay in the loop.
Will changing the requester rewrite my reports?
Yes, for anything sliced by requester or organization. Explore reads the current value, so historical figures move when you edit old tickets.
Can I change the requester in bulk?
Through the API, reliably. Through bulk edit in the interface, it depends on your account and version, so verify against the current Zendesk docs before you plan a big clean-up.
Two profiles, two tickets, one customer
Mismatched requesters are how one problem becomes two tickets. Ticket Merger spots the pair and merges them.
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