Tender can keep your own information about a customer, such as their plan, account number or app version, and show it to your staff beside their discussions. This information is called extras: names and values that your own app sends. Customers never see it.
Extras are also something you can filter on. A common use: send discussions from customers on your paid plans to a "Key accounts" queue, so they're answered first.
This article is for teams that already connect their app to Tender with single sign-on or the API.
Sending extras
There are two ways in.
With single sign-on. When your site logs a customer in to Tender with a Multipass token, any field in the token that Tender doesn't use itself is saved as one of that customer's extras. For example, this token's plan and account_id:
{
"unique_id": "4821",
"email": "lucas@northwind.example.com",
"name": "Lucas Moreau",
"expires": "2026-10-09T12:00:00Z",
"plan": "Business",
"account_id": "4821"
}
Each time the customer logs in, the extras in the token replace the ones Tender had, so send all of them every time: a name you leave out is forgotten. A token with no extra fields leaves them as they were. Some names have their own meaning and aren't saved as extras: beta, important and the company fields among them (see User Class-Important & Beta and What are Companies?). See Share your own site's authentication with Tender for making tokens.
The customer's extras are copied onto each discussion they start on your site, and discussions they start by email are filtered on them too.
With the API. When you start a discussion for a customer with the API, send extras with it, and they belong to that discussion. See Discussions.
What your staff see
Above the first message of a discussion, supporters see the extras in a Private information box (only supporters see it). A value that's a web address becomes a link, so a link to the customer's page in your own admin is handy here.
Filtering on extras
Discussion filters act on new discussions that match what you choose. To make one, open Account & Settings › Settings, click Discussion Filters, then + Create a filter (or Create your first discussion filter).
In Extras Hash, write one condition per line:
plan=Businessmatches discussions whoseplanis exactly "Business" (capitals count).plan=~Business|Enterprisematches when the value fits the pattern after~, a regular expression: here, any plan with "Business" or "Enterprise" in its name.plan=~^premiummatches values starting with "premium".
A discussion has to match every line, and a discussion without one of the names doesn't match. Conditions can't contain commas or semicolons, which also separate them.
Then, under Select actions, tick Add to queue and pick the queue (or choose + Create a New Queue), and click Create filter. Test search criteria first shows which recent discussions the filter would have caught.
You can combine extras with the filter's other conditions (category, who it's from, subject, words in the message, company), and with its other actions (mark as read, make private, close, mark as spam, delete).
For the rest of what filters can do, see How do I use discussion filters?. For what queues are for, see Using queues to organize your support.