Once you’ve enabled Answer Bot, you can create triggers to direct Answer Bot to send results to your end users, and update existing triggers to do the same. Trigger conditions determine when Answer Bot suggestions are sent to an end user, and trigger actions determine what information in included in the email response.
This article discusses the following topics:
Related articles:
- Using Answer Bot in email notifications
- Best practices: Setting up Answer Bot triggers, views, and workflows
- Answer Bot resources
You can also view the following video tutorial:
Creating new triggers for Answer Bot
If you're creating a new trigger, make sure you're familiar with the process. See Creating and managing triggers for information.
To create a trigger that includes Answer Bot
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Triggers.
- Click Add trigger.
- Create the trigger conditions. For example, you may want to have Answer Bot send an email with suggested articles to an end user as soon as they submit a help request, but only from a mobile device. That trigger would include the following conditions:
- Ticket | Is | Created
AND
- Requester: Role | Is | (end user)
AND
- Ticket: Status | Is | New
AND
- Ticket: Channel | Is | Mobile
- Ticket | Is | Created
- Next, configure the trigger to perform the following action:
- Notifications: Answer Bot | (requester)
This establishes that all tickets that meet the above conditions will send your Answer Bot email (see below) to the ticket requester.
- Notifications: Answer Bot | (requester)
- When you select Answer Bot from the Actions drop-down, the Answer Bot email field appears:
- Fill out the subject and body text you want to include in the Answer Bot email. Use the following placeholders to customize the email text. You can also click View available placeholders to view and copy placeholder text:
-
{{answer_bot.article_list}}
Required. You must include this placeholder for the feature to work. This placeholder adds a list of up to three articles that best match the request, links to those articles, and inserts buttons the end user can use to choose which article solved the request.
Note: This placeholder includes two pieces of text that are determined by the user's profile language: The header Do any of these articles answer your question?, and the two buttons located underneath each suggested article Yes, close my request and View article. -
{{answer_bot.first_article_body}}
Optional. This placeholder renders the first matching article (full HTML) into the email body, allowing end users to read the article and solve their problem without needing to leave the email experience.
-
{{answer_bot.article_count}}
Optional. This placeholder allows you to create an optional condition to send different body copy to customers based on how many articles are returned, for example:
{% if answer_bot.article_count > 0 %} Here are some great articles that may help: {{answer_bot.article_list}} {{answer_bot.first_article_body}} {% endif %}
Note: Answer Bot is not compatible with the{{header}}
placeholder, which is an unsupported and deprecated placeholder that some customers may still be using in their HTML Email Template. The HTML Email Template can be found here: Admin > Channels > Email > Email Templates > HTML templateWhile this placeholder currently functions with standard email notifications, it produces a malformed header in Answer Bot Notifications. To resolve the issue, remove this{{header}}
placeholder from the Zendesk HTML Email Template. To replicate the look and feel of this placeholder, you can add the following code (with appropriate styling added as desired) to the Email Body section of your account's Notify Requester triggers.<a href="{{ticket.link}}">Ticket #{{ticket.id}}: {{ticket.title}}</a>
-
{{answer_bot.article_list}}
- In the section Configure article labels and test Answer Bot, click Configure and test to filter the list of offered Help Center articles based on labels:
- Ticket brand: Use the drop-down to select a brand to run the test on. The brand selected here is purely for testing purposes, and will not be added to the trigger you are creating.
- Ticket subject: This field is used to test the articles returned when a ticket is filed with this subject.
- Ticket description: Enter a short description of seven or more words, written from the ticket submitter's perspective.
- Article restrictions by label: Enter labels you want to use to filter the articles. As you type into the tag field, autocomplete displays available labels beginning with the same word or characters. Any articles with any of these labels will be used as potential Answer Bot articles.
- Click Show suggested answers for a list of articles the user may receive if these labels are applied when submitting a similar ticket. If you approve, click Apply labels; if you don't, edit the entries and try again, or click Cancel.
- Click Submit.
The new trigger appears in the list on the triggers page, as well as on the Answer Bot admin page.
Converting an existing trigger for Answer Bot
If you're editing triggers, make sure you're familiar with the process. See Creating and managing triggers for information.
To convert an existing trigger for Answer Bot
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Answer Bot.
- Find the trigger you'd like to convert from the Recommended triggers list. . If your trigger is not listed there, it likely doesn’t meet the essential conditions needed for Answer Bot triggers.
- When you've found the trigger you want to convert, click the Edit button. The trigger's edit page opens.
- In the triggers Actions section, click the Convert to Answer Bot button.
This updates the trigger, including adding the Answer Bot placeholders into the email body.
- Edit the email as needed, and click Save. The trigger now includes Answer Bot functionality.
72 Comments
What are the chances of getting an article listing without the solve buttons included? This is the customization that we would require in order to make use of this feature.
Hi Matt, the current UI design with the buttons is integral to how the feature works. We are exploring how to best implement an undo option if you're concerned with the mis-clicks? Maybe if you could outline your concerns or problems you're experiencing (or expect to experience) by having those buttons?
This is truly exciting stuff!
I don't see it addressed here, but rumor has it that the Answer Bot only works with the English language, is that true?
If yes, when can we expect to see more languages supported?
We have a multilingual setup and would love to add Answer Bot to it.
Hi Mike, thanks for the follow up!
I understand it to be integral to the "self solve" elements although we've already implemented something similar that is currently working for us.
We've leveraged the Zendesk API to implement our own self solve button and in doing so, have systematically removed the elements that create confusion for our customers (and prevent misclicks or missolves using our current system).
However, at this stage, we're manually creating triggers to populate our emails with articles and would love to leverage that element of what you have in place and partner it with our own.
Are their any plans to provide simply the article suggestions without the self solve elements, not just for me but for those that want the suggestions but don't want the self solve?
Sometimes our Client Success Managers (Account Managers) open tickets on our client's behalf, describing the situation and the work needed. In these cases, we don't need AnswerBot. The requestor is set to the account holder e.g. Requestor = Account Holder (via Client Success Manager).
What kind of settings would you recommend to disable AnswerBot in this scenario?
@Jeremy
I *think* you should be able to set the trigger to skip tickets where the Requester:Role is not Agent/Admin. That way it would only fire if the ticket was created by the end user and not your team.
Thanks for jumping in, Erin!
+1 Erin nailed it! :)
I was able to set a wonky trigger to tickets that self-close through Answer Bot, by setting the Assignee to "-" (which is blank)
the trigger works, but there's a weird event, "Unable to apply action from rule XXXXXX (assignee_id -> current_user): Assignee: is invalid"
Anyone have better suggestions?
@Alex


You made a trigger that sets the assignee to null "-", which is fighting with the way that Zendesk sets the assignee to the current user.
However, Answer Bot doesn't need an assignee to solve tickets.
I set my Answer Bot up like the below, and it works perfectly.
The comment text, if you want to copy it is:
Hi {{ticket.requester.first_name}},
We received your support request and will do our best to answer it.
{% if answer_bot.article_count > 0 %}
In the meantime, let us know if any of the suggested articles below immediately answer your question.
{{answer_bot.article_list}}
{{answer_bot.first_article_body}}
{% endif %}
@Mark
Thanks, you're a genius!
Pardon, my question is around how to set up a trigger on tickets that close, after a user self-closes the ticket?
Second question, it seems adding a label only shows articles with labels. Somewhat defeats the machine learning- as this is human selected?
@Alex


Change the old trigger's "add tags" to "answerbot_attempted".
Create a new trigger that adds a "solved_by_answerbot" tag when Answer Bot attempts and solves a question. This is based around the logic that if a ticket is solved, but the agent replies are 0, then Answer Bot solved the ticket. I took inspiration from Mike's answer here.
Now run your trigger based off the presence of the "solved_by_answerbot" tag.
Hello! We recently started using Answer Bot and realized it isn't working for our offline chat messages. Is this because of the internal comment associated to every chat ticket? Is there a way around this?
Hi Paya! Welcome to the Community!
I checked with some colleagues and was able to determine that AnswerBot should respond to offline chat messages, as long as the trigger is set up correctly.
Since you mention the internal comment, the first thing I'd recommend checking is whether you have a Ticket: Comment is > Public condition on the AnswerBot trigger. If you do, that would explain why it's not firing. You'd want to change it to Ticket: Comment is > Present (public or private). This would make sure that it gets sent out regardless.
Just remember that, if you do that, it will fire on ALL tickets that meet this condition, unless you create a Trigger specifically for chat tickets. I would recommend a separate trigger for those tickets.
Let me know if you need any more help!
Thank you Jessie! I just tried that but it still didn't fire correctly. It looks like perhaps it looks in the first comment, (which is internal and includes the user info, like IP address etc) and doesn't find a response..is there a way we can have it fire off based off the second comment which includes the customer's inquiry and is public?
Hey Paya! Sorry for the delayed response!
Can you post a screenshot of how you built the trigger? That'll help me figure out what's going wrong.
Hi Paya, as mentioned in your support ticket Answer Bot is currently unsupported for the Chat channel. We will be building a specific integration of Answer Bot for Chat in the future, but currently what you are trying to do is not supported.
Hi Mike,Thanks! Earlier Jessie had a potential workaround for chat but I guess that didn't work :( Looking forward to the chat implementation.
Hello! We are currently looking to include Answer Bot as part of our "notify requester of received request". Currently we have the following setup:
- 1 email triggered to notify the request has been received
- 1 email triggered for Answer Bot for suggested articles
What I would like to do is include Answer Bot in the first initial email for "notify the request has been received" instead of 2 separate emails.
I was able to get this to work when there are articles to suggest, however if there are no articles to suggest, then no email is triggered.
I included the example from above within the email body however the email will still not be triggered if there are no articles to suggest:
Scott, sounds like something is not quite right. The trigger will always fire and the email will always send (even if Answer Bot doesn't have articles to suggest). Can you send me some example ticket IDs?
In terms of general config we definitely suggest converting the "Notify requester of received request" trigger to make that your primary Answer Bot trigger.
Hi Zendesk Team,
Trying to check our answer bot but it seems that its not working, previously it is working fine.
Email received
Trigger Configuration
Hey Herbert -
Are you still having issues with your AnswerBot, or is it back to working now?
@Herbert
You're missing your if statement in your email body.
{% if answer_bot.article_count > 0 %}
Here are some great articles that may help:
{{answer_bot.article_list}}
{{answer_bot.first_article_body}}
{% endif %}
We are trying to set up an Answer Bot trigger in a way that allows us to exclude tickets that can't be resolved by the user. What I'd like to do is include additional IF statements in the email body (see below). Would something like this be possible?
{% if ticket.description contains "estimate" OR "quote" OR "invoice" AND answer_bot.article_count > 0 %}
In the meantime, here are some great articles that may help:
{{answer_bot.article_list}}
{{answer_bot.first_article_body}}
{% endif %}
I'm trying to enable Answer Bot but it's still taking me to a page saying that early access is closed. Is this still not fully available to all customers? Is there a timeline for when we will be able to use answer bot or is is it possible I'm running into some kind of issue?
How can we turn off Answer Bot? We love the thing, but it work for us. Thanks!
In which version of Zendesk will the Answer Bot be available?
Interested in testing it out, but would like to know if we'll need to upgrade our pack to use it :)
Thanks,
Clément
Hi everyone! Missed a few comments so knocking them all off in one response:
Clément Answer Bot is an add-on to Guide Professional (and Guide Legacy) and works with any Support plan.
Leif, sorry to hear it's not working for you - I'd love to hear more? Could you elaborate on what's not working for you - perhaps we can solve it?
Dave, I'm assuming you've managed to access and activate now? (Apologies for the delayed response).
K.Yoder, could you not set those conditions as actual conditions on the trigger (instead of trying to embed them into the description?)
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