Canned responses

Enterprise feature (new in 1.19.2, helpdesk). See the Helpdesk overview.

Agents write the same sentences every day: how to re-pair the VPN after a phone change, where the printer drivers are, the usual sign-off. A canned response is that text, saved once and inserted at the cursor with a keystroke.

Canned responses and macros

	Canned response	Macro
What it is	Text only	A reply, with optional changes to the ticket
Where it goes	At the cursor, in the middle of what you’re writing	The whole reply box
Changes the ticket	Never	Can set status, priority, team and tags
In the composer	Type ;, or the Canned response button	Type / in an empty box, or the Macro button
In replies and internal notes	Both	Both

Inserting one

In the reply box (a reply or an internal note), type ; at the start of a word, then at least two letters of the response’s name or folder: ;vpn. The picker opens under the toolbar as soon as a response matches, and keeps filtering as you type.

• ↑ and ↓ choose, Enter or Tab inserts the response in place of what you typed (;vpn).
• Escape closes the picker and leaves your text as it is.

So that ; never gets in the way of ordinary writing:

• it starts the picker only at the start of a word: never mid-word (“a;b”) or inside a link;
• “; “ and “;)” never open it;
• until the picker is showing, Enter and Tab do what they always do: a space, a ; and Enter is a line break, and “;D” stays “;D”;
• the picker matches names and folders only. To search the text of your responses, use the button.

The Canned response button (between Macro and Article in the toolbar) opens the same picker with its own Search canned responses… box, which searches names, folders and text.

The picker groups the responses you can use: the ticket’s team first, then your other teams, then Workspace, then Mine. Within each group, names that match come first, then the most used. Each shows its name and the start of its text.

The / macro trigger and [[ for articles work as before.

Placeholders

A canned response can hold placeholders, filled in for the ticket and for you when you insert it:

Placeholder	Becomes	On the editor’s chip
{{requester.first_name}}	The requester’s first name	requester first name
{{requester.name}}	The requester’s full name	requester name
{{ticket.number}}	The ticket number	ticket number
{{team.name}}	The ticket’s team	team
{{agent.first_name}}	Your first name	my first name
{{agent.name}}	Your full name	my name

A requester with no name reads “there”, as in macros (“Hi there”). Names are inserted as plain text: *Bob* stays those characters.

A reply never carries raw braces:

• saving a response with any other placeholder, or with a stray {{ or }} (a typo such as {{ticket.number), is refused;
• when inserting, anything the desk doesn’t recognise is left out.

If the response was deleted or is no longer shared with you, nothing is inserted: you see why, and the list reloads. Only if the server can’t be reached is the text filled in from what the reply box knows.

The library

Desk settings → Canned responses keeps them:

• Show: All, Workspace, each team that has responses, and Mine (a menu instead of tabs when there are more than five).
• Search, and New.
• The table: Name, Shared with, Folder and Used (30 days), every agent’s inserts in the last 30 days. Folder and uses are hidden on a phone.

The editor, under the table, has:

• Name, such as “VPN: re-pair after a phone change”;
• Shared with: Only me, a team you may write for, or Workspace;
• Folder (optional), to group them in the library and the picker;
• Text, where placeholders show as chips, with Insert: buttons for each placeholder underneath.

Responses you can’t edit open read-only, with View in place of the pencil.

Who can do what

Canned responses use the macro capabilities, which the Roles page now lists under Macros and canned responses:

Shared with	Who can use it	Who creates and edits it
Only me	Its owner	Its owner, with Personal macros and canned responses (Agent and up)
A team	The team’s agents, and anyone who sees every team’s queue	Team macros and canned responses in that team (team leads)
Workspace	Every agent	Everyone’s macros and canned responses (Managers and Admins)

Using one needs nothing beyond working the ticket, not even Use macros. Someone else’s personal responses are never listed or usable, even by a Manager.

Deleting a team deletes its canned responses, so a team’s text is never suddenly shown to every agent. The confirm dialog says how many go with it (“Its 12 canned responses are deleted with it.”).

Deactivated people. Managers see a Deactivated people’s personal responses card in the library: each deactivated person’s name and how many personal responses they left, never the text. Delete them removes them unread. A removed account’s responses are deleted with the account.

Use counts

Each insert counts as a use, at most once per person, response and ticket in an hour, so trying one twice doesn’t inflate it. Uses are kept for 90 days. Inserts aren’t in the audit log: the reply that reaches the requester is.

In the Claude connector

hd_canned_responses lists the canned responses you can use, read only. Given a ticket number you work, it returns each one filled in for that ticket, ready to use in a reply draft. Reading them through the connector never counts as a use.

Limits

What	Limit
Personal responses	200 per person
Team and workspace responses	2,000 in all
Name	120 characters
Text	10,000 characters
Folder	60 characters
Creating	30 a minute per person

In the audit log

Action	Shown as
helpdesk.canned.created	Created canned response
helpdesk.canned.updated	Edited canned response (with the fields that changed, and the old sharing when it moved)
helpdesk.canned.deleted	Deleted canned response
helpdesk.canned.purged	Deleted a deactivated person’s canned responses (with the count)

Deleting a team records how many canned responses went with it (canned_responses_deleted) on its helpdesk.team.deleted entry.