Merging Tickets

What merging does

Sometimes one conversation ends up split across two tickets. A customer replies in a new email instead of the existing thread, or writes in twice about the same problem. Merging folds one ticket into another so you have a single conversation to work from.

When you merge, all of one ticket's messages move into the other. They interleave with the existing messages in chronological order, so the combined thread reads naturally. Tags and watchers from both tickets are kept. Nothing is deleted, and you can undo a merge at any time.

Merging two tickets

Open the ticket you want to merge, open the actions menu in the ticket header (the "..." button), and choose "Merge into...".

A search dialog opens. It starts by listing the other open tickets from the same contact, which covers the most common case. You can also type to search across every ticket you have access to, so you can merge into any ticket, not just ones from the same person. Each result shows the ticket number, its subject, and the contact it belongs to.

Pick the ticket you want to merge into. A confirmation step then shows exactly what will happen: which ticket closes and which one survives, with their subjects so you can be sure you picked the right ones.

Choosing which ticket survives

By default, the ticket you opened the dialog from is the one that closes, and the ticket you pick is the one that survives and keeps everything.

If you want it the other way around, use the swap button (the two arrows) between the two tickets in the confirmation step. It flips which ticket closes and which survives. The summary updates as you swap, so you always see the result before you confirm.

Merging tickets from different people

You can merge tickets that belong to different contacts. When you do, the confirmation step shows a warning, because it changes who the conversation is attributed to.

After the merge, the conversation lives under the surviving ticket's contact, and replies default to that contact. The other contact stays reachable as a participant on the ticket, so you can still reply to them by choosing them as the recipient. This is useful when two people wrote in about the same issue and you want one combined thread.

After a merge

The surviving ticket holds the full combined conversation. Its sidebar shows a "Merged from" entry that lists each ticket merged into it, so it is always clear where the extra messages came from.

The other ticket closes and becomes read-only. Opening it shows a note that it was merged, with a link to the surviving ticket. It no longer appears in your inbox, in search, or in your counts, so it will not clutter your queue.

Undoing a merge

Merges are reversible. To undo one, click "Undo" next to the entry in the surviving ticket's "Merged from" sidebar, or open the merged ticket and click "Undo merge". A confirmation step appears first.

Undoing a merge moves the messages back to the original ticket, restores its status, and removes the tags and watchers that the merge added. The original ticket reopens exactly as it was before.