Assigning tickets — take vs assign

Ref: A08 · Track: Agent Essentials · Time to complete: ~2 min

Why this matters

Assigning a ticket tells Zendesk — and everyone else — who is responsible. Doing it wrong clogs views, breaks SLA reporting, and makes team leads angry.

The two ways

Take it

You're the assignee. Fastest case — you're grabbing work off the shared queue.

1. Open an unassigned ticket (or one in the shared pool).
2. In the left column, in the Assignee field, click Take it.
3. Your name is now in the field. Submit the ticket.

Assign to someone else

Use when you're triaging and the ticket belongs to a different person or team.

1. In the Assignee field, start typing a name.
2. Zendesk autocompletes agents you're allowed to assign to.
3. Pick the agent. Submit.

Why you sometimes can't see a name

Agents belong to groups. Tickets are assigned to a group first, then to an agent within that group.

• If the ticket is in the "Billing" group, you'll only see Billing agents in the dropdown.
• To assign it to a Tech agent, first change the Group to Tech. Then the Tech agents appear.
• Most routing triggers set the group automatically — if it's wrong, change it.

Assigning doesn't notify by default

When you assign a ticket to someone, they'll see it in their view next time they refresh. If you need them to act now:

• Add an internal note that @mentions them ("@claire urgent, can you take this?").
• Tell them directly on chat/Slack.

Don't assume "I assigned it" = "they know".

Leaving tickets unassigned

Perfectly fine. If no one's picked it up yet, or it needs triage by a team lead, just set the group and leave Assignee empty. The ticket shows in the group's unassigned view for someone to grab.

Quick check — have you got this?

• You want to assign a ticket to Claire in the Tech group, but her name doesn't appear. Why?
• You just reassigned a ticket to Claire. Does she get a notification?
• You're on holiday tomorrow — should you unassign your open tickets before leaving?

Related articles

• A03 — Your views
• A04 — Filtering and bulk-updating tickets
• A14 — Merging duplicate tickets and merging users