Let agents select data from a dropdown and save their selection to a Zendesk field.
This article describes the old way of doing things in FactBranch
You are probably looking for the docs of FactBranch's new data pipeline tool - especially the article on how to design outputs for the Zendesk app.
FactBranch can show customer data from your Microsoft SQL Server database. But what if you want to assign a ticket to one of the customer's recent orders or to a specific location? This is why we've come up with a simple no-code solution to add a dropdown field in our Zendesk app.
The dropdown gets its entries directly from your SQL Server query. So this is an up-to-date list with data from your database. When the agent hits "Apply" the selection is saved to a Zendesk field and FactBranch reloads. It only takes a few simple steps to add a dropdown to the FactBranch app in Zendesk.
Because we want to display multiple entries in a single item (the dropdown) we need to generate a JSON array in our SQL Server query. Fortunately this is easy to achieve by using FOR JSON:
select * from transaction where email=%(email)s
for json autoThe preview will show the raw JSON code. For example something like this:
Once your query returns a JSON array, continue to the FactBranch Designer and change the type of the item that contains the JSON to “HTML”.
The dropdown is implemented as a filter that takes three parameters: The name of the JSON field to display in the dropdown, the field that's used as a value when an item is selected and the Zendesk field where we want to save the selected value to. The filter is called form_select.
Here is the code we would use in our HTML-template for the example above:
{{ value|form_select('name', 'order_id', 'ticket.customField:custom_field_123456789') }}That's all!
You might have noticed that the Zendesk field is longer than the short form you use in the query editor. That's to give you maximal flexibility in the type of field to use. Depending on the location in Zendesk you can use any of the ticket properties, chat or visitor properties or company, deal, lead or person properties. If you're unsure which field to use or how to address a specific field, simply reach out to support@factbranch.com and we can help you.
Most people use custom fields as the target field. Here are the three fields most FactBranch customers use:In the preview panel you can try out the dropdown, but the "Apply" button won't do anything. In the real app inside Zendesk all dropdown entries are sorted alphabetically and the apply button saves the selected value to the Zendesk field you've specified.
Here's how the preview looks:
Because this is just a filter you use in your HTML-templates, it’s easy to combine the dropdown with other HTML. To add a heading above the dropdown, simply define an H3-tag in your HTML like this:
<h3>Assign an order</h3>… do reach out to support@factbranch.com. This is an advanced feature and we’re happy to help you set it up or hear what else you need.