How to bulk delete suspended spam tickets in Zendesk safely

To bulk delete suspended spam in Zendesk without losing real customers, install Winnowell and write Delete rules for the spam, with Keep for review rules above them for senders you trust. Click Run rules (dry run first) in Suspended queue. The dry run lists every email that will be deleted. Type the confirmation it shows, such as DELETE 214, and Winnowell deletes in batches of 100, writing each email to an internal log ticket.

Why care before deleting

Zendesk says in Viewing, recovering, and deleting suspended tickets that deleted suspended tickets are removed permanently and can't be recovered, and that unrecovered ones are deleted automatically after 14 days. A broad selection can take a real customer with the spam, so you want to see the list first.

Steps

1. Write the protections first. In Rules, add Keep for review rules for customers and partners, such as sender domain is one of a list of your clients' domains. A domain in a list also matches its subdomains.
2. Write the delete rules below them. Examples: sender domain is one of a list of spam domains; subject matches a pattern; cause of suspension plus a sender name.
3. Order them. Rules are checked from the top and the first match decides. Move rules up or down so Keep rules sit above broad Delete rules.
4. Click Run rules (dry run first) in Suspended queue.
5. Read the plan. Counts for recovered, deleted, kept and left alone; matches per rule; where rules overlap; and the full list of what will be deleted.
6. Type the confirmation shown, then start.
7. Keep the tab open. Stop after this batch ends the run cleanly if you need to.

Conditions you can use

Operators include contains, is, starts with, ends with, is one of (a list, one per line) and matches the pattern (a regular expression up to 300 characters). Conditions combine with all or any.

Delete a selection by hand

Select emails in Suspended queue and choose Delete selected. It still asks for the typed confirmation and still logs every email.

The record of what was deleted

Each run creates an internal log ticket tagged winnowell_log, requested by and assigned to the person who ran it. It records the plan, then every email with its sender, subject, cause, rule and outcome. Ticket comments can't be edited, so the record stays as written. History lists every run with its counts and a link to its log ticket.

Limits

• Up to 20,000 suspended emails read and 10,000 handled per run.
• Winnowell waits when Zendesk asks it to slow down and holds off when your account's API budget runs low.
• Automatic runs never delete. Deletion always needs a person.

What it costs

Winnowell is billed monthly by Zendesk per account: Team $99 (up to 100 rules), Professional $199 (up to 250) or Enterprise $349 (up to 5,000), with a 14-day trial. See the Winnowell documentation for every operator.