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Triage new Zendesk tickets with AI

Overnight tickets pile up in the view for new tickets, and every morning someone opens each one to read it, pick a priority and a group, and add a tag before anybody can start answering.

Cotlet does it in your own Zendesk account with search_tickets, get_ticket, list_groups, update_ticket and add_internal_note, called by your AI agent, an n8n workflow or a script.

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Hosted · nothing to install or maintain

Can Zendesk do this on its own?

Zendesk triggers set priority, group and tags from conditions you define, and bulk edit applies one set of values to the tickets you select (checked 16 Oct 2026). Both apply values you decided in advance. Neither reads a single ticket and chooses the values by what the customer wrote, which is the gap this job fills.

How you do it in Zendesk today

  1. An admin builds a view for new tickets under Admin Center > Workspaces > Agent tools > Views, with a condition on status, so the queue of tickets that need triage is one list.
  2. An agent opens each ticket from the view and reads the description, which is the first comment, whether the customer sent it by email or a form.
  3. In the ticket properties panel the agent sets Priority (Low, Normal, High or Urgent), the Assignee field (a group, or an agent and a group) and tags.
  4. For a run of similar tickets, the agent selects them in the view and uses Edit, which applies one set of values to up to 100 tickets at a time.
  5. The reading is the slow part and it repeats every morning, so triage is the first thing to slip when the queue is long.

How to triage new Zendesk tickets with AI

Prompt

Go through new Zendesk tickets. Set priority from what the customer wrote, assign billing questions to the Billing group and bugs to Tier 2, add a tag, and leave a one-line internal note with the reason. Leave unclear ones for me.
  1. 01

    Collect what is new

    search_tickets runs with status:new and your window, and pages through the cursor until the list ends, so a Monday backlog is triaged as one batch and not only its first page.

  2. 02

    Read each ticket

    get_ticket brings the description and any comments, so the priority comes from what the customer wrote and not from the subject line alone.

  3. 03

    Map to real groups

    list_groups runs once. Your rule ("billing questions go to Billing") is matched to a group that exists, and a rule that names a missing group is reported, not guessed.

  4. 04

    Set the fields

    update_ticket sets priority, group and tags on the clear cases. A priority the field does not allow is reported instead of forced. Every call asks for your OK until you switch confirmation off for update_ticket.

  5. 05

    Leave the reason

    add_internal_note records one line per ticket on why it got that priority and group, so the agent who opens it sees the logic and can overrule it.

  6. 06

    Skip what moved

    Right before writing, the agent checks the ticket was not updated since it read it. A ticket that a colleague already took is logged as handled and left alone.

What you get back

Example data

New tickets read: 14
Triaged 11:
- 4 to Billing, priority normal (refund and invoice questions)
- 3 to Tier 2, priority high (login errors with a screenshot)
- 4 to Support, priority low (how-to questions)
Left for you 3:
- #48244 asks for a refund and threatens a chargeback
- #48251 is one line, "it does not work"

Other ways to ask

  • Every hour, find tickets from customers who wrote "urgent" or "down" and set them to Urgent, then list them for me.
  • Tag every new ticket with the product it mentions, using the tags I use now, and change nothing else.
  • Show me how you would triage today's new tickets as a table and write nothing to Zendesk.
  • Triage only tickets without an assignee that are older than 2 hours.

What Zendesk allows, and what to know first

  • Zendesk bulk edit updates at most 100 tickets at once and cannot update closed tickets.
  • Priority has four values, Low, Normal, High and Urgent, and an admin can restrict the field to Normal and High. If the Priority field is deactivated, SLA targets do not apply.
  • Once a ticket leaves the New status it can never be set back to New, so views and automations built on New stop matching it.
  • Tickets cannot be assigned to light agents or collaborators, only to agents and groups.
  • Zendesk bulk edit skips a ticket that changed after the bulk action began and reports an error for it, which is the same rule this job follows.

update_ticket and add_internal_note ask for your OK by default. To run it daily without you, switch confirmation off for those tools in your dashboard.

Sources: Zendesk Help: Creating views to build customized lists of tickets · Zendesk Help: Managing tickets in bulk · Zendesk Help: About ticket fields · Zendesk Help: Manually assigning a ticket · Zendesk Help: About open vs. pending and on-hold tickets

Call update_ticket from a script

curl

curl -X PATCH https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/zendesk/tickets/48230 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"priority":"high","group_id":3341,"add_tags":["billing","refund"]}'

Example response

{
  "ticket_id": 48230,
  "status": "new",
  "priority": "high",
  "assignee_id": null,
  "group_id": 3341,
  "group": "Billing",
  "tags": [
    "billing",
    "refund"
  ],
  "updated_at": "2026-10-16T09:02:00Z"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the call is zendesk_write → update_ticket. Example data.

Schedule it in n8n, Make, Zapier or cron

Zendesk tools this automation uses

Cotlet Zendesk tools used to triage new Zendesk tickets with AI
Tool Parameters
search_tickets query, sort_by, sort_order, limit, cursor
get_ticket ticket_id
list_groups none
update_ticket ticket_id, status, priority, assignee_id, group_id, add_tags, remove_tags, subject
add_internal_note ticket_id, body
All 12 Zendesk tools with descriptions

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to connect Zendesk to Cotlet?

Yes. You sign in to Zendesk yourself, in your own Cloud Browser in the EU, and we never save your password. Your agents only get Zendesk once you enable it, every background request is listed, and the browser profile is stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM, the cipher 1Password uses for its vaults. The AI model never sees a login, posts and messages wait for your OK, and Disable for agents cuts access in one click. Independent scanners grade cotlet.dev A+ on Qualys SSL Labs, securityheaders.com and Mozilla Observatory; live results are on https://cotlet.dev/security.

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