Ticket timestamps in the conversations view are different from the events view

Question

Why do the timestamps in the conversations view differ from the events view for the same ticket event?

Answer

There are some cases when ticket timestamps in the conversations view might be different from the events view. The key reason for this lies in the purpose of each ticket view mode.

• The conversations view timestamp shows the historic date and time of the comment submission. This allows an agent to see how long ago a comment was sent. 
• The events view timestamp shows date and time of the ticket event. This points out when exactly a comment was posted to the ticket. 

In most cases, the timestamp is identical in both ticket view modes, but there are a few common scenarios when this is not the case.

Recovered tickets

The first comment on the tickets recovered from the suspended view has an older timestamp in the conversations view compared to the timestamp in the events view.

• The conversation timestamp reveals the time when email was received by the Support account.
• The event timestamp reveals the time when a ticket was recovered and created in the Support account.

One of the possible causes of suspension that affects the ticket event timestamp is the setting Ask users to register. This requires users to sign up in your help center to submit their requests. If the user doesn't register and verify the account, the ticket will be suspended and this will affect the timestamp. For more information on this setting, see the article: Enabling anyone to submit tickets

Inbound shared tickets

When the ticket sharing feature is used to bring a ticket from one Zendesk Support account to another, the receiving account may show different timestamps from the sending account.

• The conversation view timestamps will reflect the time when comments were historically posted by users from both accounts.
• The event timestamps for comments posted on the ticket after the ticket sharing occurred will be identical to the conversation view. However, event timestamps for comments posted on the ticket before the sharing occurred will be different in each account. In the receiving account these event timestamps will reflect the time when the ticket was shared. All of the pre-existing comments in the sending account's ticket are added to the receiving account's ticket at the same time during ticket creation.