If you look at the regular ‘mail’, ‘Search’ tab, you’ll notice there is a dedicated ticket mask filter and ticket ID filter. However the “Ticket Quick Search” bar in the top right corner only has a dropdown option of “Ticket ID”, which you might assume only accepts IDs. So what do you do when a customer contacts you about an open ticket and gives you the mask for reference? Most people would take the extra couple of steps and go straight for the traditional mail search — clicking over to the ‘Search’ tab and adding the ‘Mask’ filter.

Thankfully there’s a Hidden Gem! here you can take advantage of; the developers beefed up the “Ticket Quick Search” so it can handle both formats PLUS partial mask matches. (As unfortunate as it, you’ll just have to look past the confusing terminology on this one.)

As you know the two “types” have a very different format,

• Masks can look like JKB-49992-311 while,
• IDs can be as simple as 68.

Thus doing a quick search for ‘68′ or ‘JKB-49992-311′ will successfully pinpoint the correct ticket, and because of the partial match capabilities, ‘JKB’, ‘JKB-499′, and ‘JKB-49992′ will all return that one ticket along with any other potential matches.

I realize this isn’t some miracle tip that will save you a ton of time upfront. But because the “Quick Search” dropdown will remember you chose ‘Ticket ID’ for the remainder of the session, you can save yourself a couple of clicks each time and immediately copy & paste a mask from any ‘mail’ tab. (Rather than going back to the ‘Search’ tab and re-adding the “Mask” filter constantly.)

Even if you don’t find this practical, hopefully you can at least scratch it off your “I had no idea that was possible!” list :D

-joegeck@wgm