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How to Automatically Merge Duplicate Tickets with the Same Subject

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This article explains how to build a workflow that automatically merges a newly created ticket into an existing open ticket when both share the same subject, so duplicate tickets don't pile up in your queue.

Applicable Plans: Available on all plans.

Prerequisites

Steps

  1. Set the trigger to Ticket Created.

  2. Add the Filter Tickets action. This action checks existing tickets against the conditions you set, so you don't need to build separate condition logic elsewhere in the workflow.

  3. Under Match All, click + to add a condition, then set the field to Subject and the operator to contains.

  4. In the condition's value field, click Insert Merge Fields, search for "subject," and select Ticket Subject from the trigger step's fields. Click Add to save the condition.

Note: You can add more conditions to Match All for more precise matching. For example, if duplicate tickets come from a monitoring system and share a custom field — such as a Server Name field populated from an incoming alert — add a condition on that field instead of, or in addition to, Subject.

  1. Set Number of tickets to be filtered to 1.

Note: If Filter Tickets finds no matching ticket, the workflow does not continue to the Merge Ticket action. This is the expected outcome for any ticket that isn't a duplicate, so most runs of this workflow will end here.

  1. Add the Merge Ticket action.

  2. In the Ticket ID field, click + Insert Merge Fields, search for "ticket id," and select Ticket Id from the trigger step's fields. This pulls in the ID of the ticket that triggered the workflow — the new ticket.

  3. In the Merge With field, click + Insert Merge Fields, search for "id," and select the Id field listed under the Filter Tickets step — it may appear as 0 Id in the field list. This is the existing ticket that Filter Tickets found.

Warning: Merge Ticket merges the ticket in Ticket ID into the ticket in Merge With — the new ticket is absorbed into the existing one, which remains open under its original ticket number and continues to receive all future correspondence. This action only works between tickets from the same contact — the same email address, or the same name and phone number. This is the current behavior of the underlying Merge Tickets feature in HappyFox Help Desk, and it applies here too. If the duplicate tickets in your scenario can come from different contacts, this workflow will not merge them.

Note: For duplicates that come from different contacts, use the Relate Tickets action instead of Merge Ticket, and add an Add Private Note action so agents can see that the tickets are related and decide how to proceed.

  1. Optionally, add a note in the Merge Note field describing why the tickets were merged — for example, "Auto-merged: duplicate subject detected."

  2. Click Save and Test, then run a test with a duplicate ticket to confirm the merge behaves as expected.

  3. Toggle Enabled on to activate the workflow.

This workflow now merges any newly created ticket into an existing open ticket that shares the same subject and contact, closing out the duplicate automatically. Next, use Run History to confirm which tickets this workflow has merged and to troubleshoot any run that didn't merge as expected.