Labels and custom fields

Labels are short coloured names you put on tickets, contacts and companies, like Bug, VIP or Churn risk. Custom fields record the details your team needs every time, like the product area, the app version or a company’s renewal date.

Admins set both up in Settings, Labels and Settings, Custom fields, in the Inbox group. Agents apply labels and fill in fields. Viewers see them.

1. New group and New label.
2. One at a time: a record can carry only one label of this group.
3. A label: its colour, name and description. Click it to edit, or use its ⋯ menu.
4. Applies to and Uses: whether the label is offered on tickets, contacts and companies, and how many records carry it.

Create a label

1. Click New label

   Open Settings, Labels, and click New label.

2. Fill in the label

   

   1. Name: 1 to 50 characters. Pick a colour next to it.
   2. Description: when to use the label. It is shown in pickers so everyone uses the label the same way, and it helps Ollie’s triage pick the right one.
   3. Group: file it under a group, or leave No group.
   4. Applies to: offer it on tickets, contacts, companies, or any mix.

3. Apply it on a ticket

   On a ticket, click Add next to Labels in the details panel, and tick the labels you want. A group of one label at a time says so in its heading, like Type, pick one: picking another label of it swaps the label instead of adding a second.

   

Start with the defaults

New workspaces start with Question, Problem, Bug, Feature request and Billing in a Type group of one label at a time, plus VIP and Feedback. Rename, recolour or delete any of them. Renaming a label keeps the automations and views that use it working.

Keep the list tidy

Each label’s ⋯ menu can edit it, change its colour, move it to a group, merge it, archive it or delete it.

• Merge into another label moves everything that carried this label to the one you keep. Automations and views switch over, and this label is deleted.
• Archive stops offering a label in pickers. It stays on the records that have it.
• Delete takes the label off everything that has it.

By default, anyone who applies a label can type a new name to create one. To keep the list curated, set Who can create labels to Admins only, at the foot of the Labels page. Agents then pick from the existing labels, and an admin adds new ones.

Groups

Groups keep a long list of labels in order, for example Type, Product area or Account health. Drag groups, and the labels inside them, to set the order they appear in everywhere.

Turn on One label at a time for a group when a record should have only one of its labels. The default Type group works this way: a ticket is a question or a bug, not both. The same rule holds for bulk edits, automations and AI triage.

Custom fields

1. Tickets, Contacts and Companies: each has its own fields.
2. New field: add a field to the tab you are on.
3. Required to solve: the team must fill this field in before solving a ticket.
4. Archived: hidden from forms, with its values kept.

1. Choose the tab, then click New field

   Pick Tickets, Contacts or Companies, then click New field.

2. Name it and pick a type

   The Key is filled in from the name. It is what the API, filters and automations use, and like the type it cannot change later. Add a description to show agents next to the field.

   

   Type	Holds
   Text, Long text	Free text.
   Number	A number, like affected users or ARR.
   Select, Multi-select	Options you define, each with a colour.
   Date	A calendar date, like a renewal or follow-up date.
   Checkbox	Yes or no.
   Link, Email	A link or an address.
   Person	Someone in the workspace, like an escalation owner.

3. Fill it in on a ticket

   Fields appear in the Fields section of the ticket’s details panel, and on contact and company pages, in the order you set. Click a value to change it. A dot next to a name marks a field required to solve.

   

Required to solve

With Required to solve on a ticket field, like Resolution, a ticket cannot be solved or closed while the field is empty: opendesk asks for it first. Automations, merges and auto-close are not held back by required fields.

Filters, views and automations

Filter the inbox by any field, like Product area is Sync or Export or Affected users at least 10, and save the filter as a view. Sort a list by a field to bring the biggest or the soonest to the top. Search also matches the text in fields.

Automations can check a ticket’s fields or its contact’s fields, and the Set field action fills one in, for example setting Product area to Billing for mail to the billing address.

Archive and delete

Archive a field to hide it from forms and pickers while keeping its values. Deleting a field removes its values. An automation that uses an archived or deleted field skips it.

Limits: up to 100 fields per tab, 200 options per select, 1000 labels and 50 groups.

Related

• Automations
• Saved replies and views
• Labels and custom fields API