The Zendesk feature request to change requester with a macro: Why it’s needed and how to solve it

If you've spent any time managing a Zendesk instance, you’ve probably hit this wall. You want to automate a simple, repetitive task: creating a ticket and setting a specific person as the requester. You reach for a macro, the go-to tool for getting things done quickly, only to find you can change the priority, add tags, and insert a comment, but you can’t touch the requester field.

If this makes you want to pull your hair out, you're not alone. This has been a hot topic in the Zendesk community for years. Teams that regularly create tickets for partners, vendors, or new employees are stuck doing it the slow, manual way.

This post will get into why this feature is so in-demand, look at the common workarounds (and their serious downsides), and introduce a smarter, more modern way to automate workflows that solves this problem once and for all.

Why changing the requester with a macro is a big deal

Zendesk macros are a huge help for support teams. They’re basically pre-set recipes of actions that agents can apply to a ticket with one click, saving a ton of time. But while they can update plenty of ticket fields, the "requester" field is stubbornly off-limits.

This one limitation gums up the works in a lot of everyday situations. Here are a few common scenarios where it becomes a real pain:

• Proactive Support: Let's say your team sends out credential requests to the same vendors every month. You want the ticket to be assigned to the vendor contact, not your agent. But without this feature, you have to search for and set them by hand every single time.

• Onboarding and Offboarding: Your IT team gets an automated ticket from a system like MS Power Automate to set up a new computer. The system is the requester by default, but the ticket is really for the new employee. An agent has to manually change the requester to make sure the new hire gets all the right updates.

• Redirecting Requests: A customer emails the wrong department. An agent needs to forward the request to the correct person, making them the new requester and moving the original sender to the CC line. What should be a simple handoff turns into several manual steps.

The impact on the business is pretty clear. This missing feature means more clicks, a higher chance of someone picking the wrong person, and slower response times. It’s a small gap in the tool that adds up to a big drain on your team's efficiency.

Native Zendesk workarounds: Triggers and webhooks

Since a simple macro is off the table, the official Zendesk forums often point people toward a more technical solution: mixing triggers and webhooks.

The process looks something like this: an agent applies a macro that adds a special tag to a ticket. A trigger, which is always watching for ticket updates, spots that tag and springs into action. The trigger then calls a webhook, which is a way for Zendesk to talk to other applications. In this case, the webhook sends a command to the Zendesk API to find that same ticket and update its requester.

Problems with using webhooks

While this technically works, it's a far cry from the simple, one-click solution everyone wants. This Rube Goldberg-like setup has some significant drawbacks that make it a bad fit for most teams.

• It’s a technical headache: Setting up webhooks and writing API calls isn't exactly a walk in the park. It requires a level of technical skill that most Zendesk admins don't have, meaning you often have to pull in a developer just to automate one little field update.

• It’s fragile: This whole chain of events can break easily. If the Zendesk API changes, your webhook authentication fails, or someone accidentally tweaks the trigger, the whole thing falls apart. Figuring out what went wrong can turn into a time-sucking investigation.

• It doesn’t scale well: This approach just isn't built for growth. If you work with dozens of vendors, are you really going to create and maintain a unique webhook and trigger for each one? It quickly becomes an administrative nightmare.

• There’s a delay: As

  

  users in the community have pointed out, the requester change isn't instant

  Reddit
  . The update happens after the ticket is saved. This can cause issues where other triggers fire based on the old, incorrect requester information, leading to confusion and breaking other automations.

Third-party apps: A partial fix

The Zendesk Marketplace is full of apps designed to fill in the gaps in the native tool. You can find several apps, like Extended Macros or those from SweetHawk, that specifically add the ability to change the requester with a macro.

And for that one specific task, they do the job. You install the app, set up a new type of macro, and your agents can finally change the requester with a click. Problem solved... right? Well, not exactly.

The hidden costs of app sprawl

While you've plugged one hole, relying on a collection of single-purpose apps creates a new set of problems down the line. It's often called "app sprawl," and it comes with some hidden costs.

• Fragmented workflows: Your automation logic gets scattered everywhere. Some rules are in native triggers, others are in macros, and more are tucked away in a handful of third-party apps. It becomes nearly impossible to get a clear picture of how a ticket moves through your system, making troubleshooting and updates a real challenge.

• Increased overhead: Every app is another thing to manage. It needs to be updated, its subscription has to be paid, and your team needs to learn how to use it. This adds to your total costs and the mental load on your admins.

• Limited scope: These apps are built to fix one specific problem. They can change the requester when an agent clicks a button, but they can't help with the bigger need for smart, end-to-end automation. For example, they can't automatically read an email, figure out the right person to be the requester, and make the change without anyone lifting a finger.

Beyond macros: Solving the problem with AI

Maybe we need to shift the conversation. Instead of asking, "How can I change a requester with a macro?" we should be asking, "How can I intelligently manage and sort tickets the second they show up?"

This is where modern AI platforms come in with a fundamentally better answer. They aren't just patching a missing feature; they're offering a new way to handle workflows on their own, without you having to lean on brittle workarounds or a patchwork of apps. An AI-powered platform like eesel AI plugs directly into Zendesk to solve this problem and many others.

How eesel AI automates ticket management

Instead of an agent needing to find the right ticket and apply the right macro, an AI agent can handle these steps before the ticket even hits a human's queue.

Here’s how eesel AI tackles the core problem and goes way beyond it:

• Intelligent Triage: The eesel AI Triage product doesn't just follow a command; it understands context. For that onboarding request we talked about, it can analyze the incoming email, find the new hire's name and email in the message, and automatically set them as the requester while assigning the ticket to the IT team. No manual work needed.

• Custom Actions: Why stop at just setting the requester? You can set up the eesel AI Agent to perform a whole series of actions. It can tag the ticket with "onboarding" and "hardware_request", set the priority to High, and even use a custom API action to look up the employee's start date in your HR system.

A screenshot of the customization and action workflow screen in eesel AI, which solves the Zendesk feature request change requester with a macro problem.

• Effortless Setup: Forget spending days wrestling with webhooks. eesel AI offers a one-click Zendesk integration that gets you going in minutes. You can build powerful workflows from a simple dashboard without needing a developer.

• Risk-Free Simulation: Before you flip the switch on a new workflow, you can run it in simulation mode on thousands of your past tickets. eesel AI will show you exactly how it would have changed the requester, tagged the ticket, and routed it. This gives you complete confidence that your automation works the way you want it to, something that's impossible to do with traditional macros or webhooks.

A screenshot showing the eesel AI simulation feature, a risk-free way to test solutions for the Zendesk feature request change requester with a macro.

Stop patching workflows, start automating them

The "Zendesk feature request change requester with a macro" isn't just about a missing button. It points to a deeper limitation in manual support processes and the endless game of whack-a-mole trying to patch them.

We've seen that the native workarounds are too technical and fragile for most teams, while single-purpose apps solve one problem only to create a messy and expensive tech stack.

The real solution is to move beyond patches and toward intelligent automation. Platforms like eesel AI don't just fix one little issue; they give you a unified, powerful engine to manage your entire ticket lifecycle from the moment a customer reaches out. Instead of waiting for a feature request that might never come, you can put a more robust and future-proof solution in place today. It’s time to start automating intelligently and free up your agents to focus on what they do best: helping people.