Merging duplicate tickets

Customers often write twice, or reply from a second address. When that happens you end up with two tickets about one problem.

Open the newer ticket, choose Merge from the ticket actions and pick the target ticket. All messages move into the target in chronological order and are marked with the number of the ticket they came from, so the audit trail stays intact. The source ticket is closed.

Merge in the direction that keeps the conversation the customer is actually reading. If they replied in the newer thread, merge the older one into it. After merging, send one reply so the customer knows which thread to continue.

Step by step

1. Open the ticket you want to keep, the one with the best history.
2. Choose merge and pick the duplicate.
3. Confirm. The messages of the duplicate move into the ticket you kept, in chronological order.
4. Reply once, so the customer gets a single clear answer instead of two half answers.

Good to know

• Merging is the fix for a customer who wrote twice, or who replied from a second address so a new ticket was opened.
• Attachments follow their messages, and the contact keeps a complete history.
• Threading already prevents most duplicates: as long as the customer keeps the reference in the subject, their replies come back to the same ticket.
• If two different problems ended up in one ticket, do not merge: answer separately and open a second ticket instead.