Lanewell for Zendesk: Documentation
Lanewell shows your Zendesk tickets as a Kanban board and on a calendar. Dragging a card updates the ticket. It runs inside Zendesk Support (left navigation bar) and keeps everything in your Zendesk account.
Getting started
- An admin installs Lanewell from the Zendesk Marketplace (Standard plan, $5 per agent per month after a 14-day trial).
- Open Lanewell from the left navigation bar. Every agent starts with My open tickets: their own unsolved tickets in columns by status.
- Click New board to build one for your team or yourself.
Building a board
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Board name | Shown in the board picker (up to 60 characters) |
| Who sees it | Just me saves it on your own profile. Shared with the team (admins) saves it for everyone, or only for the groups you tick |
| Tickets from | A view (any shared or personal view you can open) or a saved search in Zendesk search syntax, for example group:"Tier 2" status<solved or tags:vip priority>normal |
| Columns | Status, custom ticket status (when your account uses them), group, assignee, priority, type, or any drop-down or checkbox field |
| Swimlanes | None, or any of the same (not the one used for columns) |
| Calendar tab places tickets by | Task due date, or any date field |
| Column order, Show, WIP limit | Move columns left or right, hide the ones you do not need, and set a work-in-progress limit per column |
| When a column is at its limit | Allow the move and flag the column, or refuse the move |
| Always show these columns | For group and assignee columns: groups or agents whose column stays on the board even with no tickets, so you can drag tickets to them |
| On each card | Up to 8 lines besides the ticket number and subject: requester, assignee, group, priority, status, type, due date, updated, created, tags, or any custom field |
Use without saving opens a board for the current session only.
A board reads up to 500 tickets (an admin can set 50 to 1,000 in the app settings), 100 at a time. If the view or search has more, the header says so; narrow the view or search to see the rest. Zendesk search returns at most 1,000 results.
Moving tickets
- Drag a card to another column, lane, or both. Lanewell sends one update to the ticket with only what changed, for example the Stage field and the assignee.
- Move to (on each card, shown on hover or keyboard focus) lists the columns, for keyboard and touchpad users.
- Columns you cannot drop into are striped: New and Closed (Zendesk does not allow moving a ticket back to New or changing a closed ticket).
- Click a card's subject to open the ticket.
When someone else changed the ticket
Every move is a Zendesk safe update: if the ticket changed after your board loaded it, Zendesk refuses the change rather than overwriting it.
- If they changed something else (a reply, a tag), Lanewell sends your move again with the fresh ticket. You do not see anything.
- If they moved it too, the card jumps to where the ticket really is and a message says so. Choose Move anyway to apply your move, or Keep their change.
- If the ticket was closed or deleted, the move is cancelled.
When Zendesk rejects a move
The card goes back and the message shows Zendesk's reason. Common ones: a field that is required before solving, an assignee who is not in the ticket's group, or a drop-down option that was removed.
Work-in-progress limits
A column's count shows count / limit. At the limit it turns amber; over the limit it turns red
and its cells get a red outline. In refuse mode a move into a full column is refused before
anything is sent. Lanes do not count separately: the limit is for the whole column.
The calendar tab
- Shows the board's tickets on a month calendar in your own Zendesk time zone, by task due date or by the date field the board uses.
- Due dates exist only on task tickets in Zendesk, so a board placed by due date shows task tickets and says how many other tickets it left out.
- Drag a ticket to another day to reschedule it. A due date keeps its time of day; a new due date is set to 12:00 in your time zone. Date fields get the plain date.
- No date yet lists the tickets without a date; drag one onto a day to set it.
- Overdue tickets (a past date and not solved) are red. Use Previous, Today and Next to move between months. An admin can start weeks on Monday in the app settings.
Shared and personal boards
- Shared boards live in the app's settings in your Zendesk. Only admins can save or delete them. Agents see the shared boards for everyone plus those for their groups.
- Personal boards live in the "Lanewell: saved boards" field on the agent's own profile. If your role cannot save to your profile, Lanewell says so; ask an admin to share the board instead.
- Boards hold only their layout, never ticket data. Two people saving at the same time do not overwrite each other's boards: Lanewell reads the saved boards again just before saving.
- Up to 25 boards each for shared and personal.
Settings (Admin Center, Apps and integrations, Lanewell)
| Setting | Default | |
|---|---|---|
| Most tickets on one board | 500 | 50 to 1,000 |
| Weeks start on Monday | Off | Calendar tab |
Use Role restrictions to limit who sees the app.
Permissions
Lanewell acts as the signed-in agent. An agent can only see the views and tickets they can see in Zendesk, and can only make the changes their role allows (light agents cannot edit tickets, for example). Saving shared boards needs an admin.
API use
Lanewell reads 100 tickets per request and keeps names (fields, groups, statuses, people) for the session, so a board costs a handful of requests. If your account is close to its API rate limit, Lanewell pauses and says "Waiting" rather than using the budget your team needs. Click Refresh to read the board again; it does not refresh on its own.
Uninstalling
Uninstalling removes the "Lanewell: saved boards" user field and the app's settings (shared boards). Ticket changes made by dragging stay, like any other ticket update, and appear in each ticket's events.
Data and privacy
Lanewell reads tickets live from your Zendesk and keeps them only in browser memory while the board is open. It stores only board layouts, sends nothing to Great Work or anyone else, offers no bulk download, and uses no AI. See the privacy policy for the full list.
Support
Email hello@greatwork.company with the board name, what you dragged and what happened (a screenshot helps). Please do not send customer data or passwords. We reply within one business day.