Compact Autotask Ticket Descriptions
Autotask enforces a maximum character length on a ticket’s Description field. When an email-heavy ticket accumulates a long back-and-forth thread — quoted replies, forwarded messages, signatures — the description can grow past that limit and fail to save. Compact Autotask Ticket Descriptions keeps that from happening: Mizo automatically trims older quoted content and, if needed, truncates the rest, so the ticket always saves cleanly.
Why It Matters for MSPs
- Tickets keep saving. Without this, a long email thread can silently push a ticket’s description past Autotask’s limit, and the field simply fails to update.
- No manual cleanup. Technicians don’t have to go back and manually shorten ticket descriptions to unblock a save.
- Nothing important is hidden. When Mizo shortens a description, it leaves a clear marker showing that older content was trimmed or the text was truncated, so nobody mistakes a shortened description for the full story.
How It Works
This feature runs only on Autotask, and only the first time a ticket is processed — it doesn’t run again if the ticket is reprocessed later. Mizo first checks whether the description is already within Autotask’s limit; if so, nothing happens.
When the description is too long, Mizo works through it in order:
- Strips HTML formatting and email signatures, and cleans up extra blank lines.
- Looks for quoted-reply markers (“Original Message,” “Forwarded message,” “On [date] wrote:,” etc.) and, past the third one it finds, cuts everything after them and inserts a short marker noting that earlier messages were omitted.
- If the text is still too long, it truncates the remainder and adds a short marker noting that the text was truncated.
Both markers are written directly into the saved description — for example, [... previous messages omitted by Mizo ...] or ... [truncated by Mizo] (in French: [... messages précédents omis par Mizo ...] / ... [tronqué par Mizo]) — so anyone reading the ticket in Autotask can see at a glance that Mizo shortened it. If the description is already short enough, or if the compaction process would produce no actual change to the text, Mizo makes no edit at all — the ticket is left exactly as it was. Notes and time entries are never touched; only the description field is affected, and it’s overwritten in place, so treat a compacted description as the version of record going forward.
Turning It On
Compact Autotask Ticket Descriptions is configured from the Workflow page in the Mizo console, under the setting labeled Compact Autotask Ticket Descriptions, described there as: “When enabled, ticket descriptions are compacted to fit Autotask’s character limit.”
| Setting | What happens |
|---|---|
| Off | Mizo never rewrites the description, even if it’s over Autotask’s limit. No inference or PSA call happens for this feature when it’s off. |
| On (Automation) | Mizo checks the description on first processing and rewrites it automatically if it’s over the limit. There’s no separate “Recommendation” level for this feature — it’s either off, or fully automatic. |
Turn it on for any Autotask tenant that regularly sees long email-thread tickets. If a technician notices a ticket description that looks shortened, check whether this setting is on before assuming something went wrong — the omitted/truncated markers are the expected signal, not an error.
Roles and Permissions
Changing the setting requires full (not read-only) access to the Workflow page. Since this feature has no human-approval step, no other role is involved in triggering the rewrite — it happens automatically during ticket processing whenever the setting is on and a ticket’s description is over the limit.
Troubleshooting
Mizo shows no on-screen error to the technician or the customer for this feature. If the update to Autotask fails for any reason, the failure is logged internally only — nothing appears on the ticket and no notification is sent. The only user-visible signals from this feature are the “previous messages omitted” and “truncated” markers inserted into the description text itself when compaction succeeds. If a description still looks too long, or doesn’t show a marker where you’d expect one, work through:
- Is the setting turned on for this Autotask tenant (and location, if the tenant has more than one)?
- Was this the ticket’s first processing pass? Compaction never runs again on a reprocess.
- Was the description already within Autotask’s character limit? If so, there’s nothing for Mizo to shorten.
Concrete Usage Examples
- A customer emails in with a long, multi-reply thread (several rounds of “On [date], [name] wrote:”). On first processing, Autotask’s description limit is exceeded, so Mizo trims the older quoted replies, inserts the “previous messages omitted” marker, and saves the shortened description.
- A short, single-message ticket comes in. It’s well under Autotask’s limit, so Mizo leaves the description untouched — no marker appears anywhere.
- A ticket’s thread is long, but trimming the quoted replies alone brings it under the limit. Only the “previous messages omitted” marker appears — the text is never truncated, because it didn’t need to be.
- A ticket is reprocessed after new information comes in. Compaction does not run a second time, even if the description has grown since the first pass — this feature only ever touches a ticket’s first processing pass.
Per-PSA Differences
This is an Autotask-only feature. ConnectWise and HaloPSA don’t share the same character-limit constraint on their description fields, so the setting doesn’t exist for tenants on those platforms — there’s no equivalent to turn on or off.
Common Questions
Why didn’t Mizo shorten this ticket’s description? Either the setting is off for that tenant, the description was already within Autotask’s limit, or the ticket was reprocessed rather than processed for the first time — this feature only runs on a ticket’s first pass.
Does this feature exist for ConnectWise or HaloPSA? No. This is an Autotask-only feature, since ConnectWise and HaloPSA don’t share the same character-limit constraint on their description fields.
Do we lose any of the original ticket text? The Autotask description field is overwritten in place with the shortened version, and Mizo keeps no archive of the original. In practice, what gets cut is mainly redundant, already-seen quoted history rather than new information, since Mizo targets older reply chains first and only truncates further if that alone isn’t enough. Whether Autotask’s own field-change history retains the previous value is a question about Autotask, not something Mizo controls — treat the original as gone for any practical purpose.