Automation conditions and actions reference

This article will describe the different conditions and actions available when creating automations. For information on creating new automations, see Creating and managing automations for time-based events.

• Building automation condition statements
• Building automation action statements

Building automation condition statements

As with triggers, the condition statements you create for automations contain conditions, operators, and values. These include conditions you’d expect such as priority, status, assignee and so on. Because automations are based on the hours that have elapsed since a ticket update was made, Zendesk provides the following time-based conditions:

• Hours since created

• Hours since open

• Hours since pending

• Hours since on-hold

• Hours since solved

• Hours since closed

• Hours since assigned

• Hours since update

• Hours since requester update

• Hours since assignee update

• Hours since due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)

• Hours until due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)

• Hours since last SLA breach

• Hours until next SLA breach

Time-based conditions, such as Hours since pending, aren't available from Meet any of these conditions section of the automation creator (see Creating and managing automations for time-based events). Automations require a nullifying condition to ensure that they aren't running continuously. Using time-based conditions in the Meet any of these conditions section can negate this nullification, causing automations to run over and over again, and so that's why they aren't available as conditions there.

Note: If you are on Enterprise and have multiple schedules, automations based on business hours will use your default schedule (that is, the first schedule in your schedules list). In a upcoming release, this will change so that automations will use the schedule that is applied to the ticket.

Only whole numbers can be used as the value for these conditions. For example, Hours since created = (calendar) is = 1, is valid. Decimals aren't supported. If you set the hours since variable to 1.5, it will be interpreted as 1, which means that it was rounded down to the whole number.

The other conditions you can use in your automations are described in the following table.

Table 1. Automation conditions

Condition	Description
Ticket: Status	The ticket status values are: New is the initial status of a newly created ticket (not assigned to an agent). Open means that the ticket has been assigned to an agent.  Pending is used to indicate that the requester has been asked for information and the ticket is therefore on hold until that information has been received. On-hold means that the support request is awaiting a resolution from a third party—someone who is not a member of your support staff and does not have an agent account in your Zendesk. This status is optional and must be added to your Zendesk (see Adding on-hold ticket status to your Zendesk). Solved indicates that the customer’s issue has been resolved. Tickets remain solved until they are closed. Closed means that the ticket has been locked and cannot be reopened or updated. When selecting a status, you can use the field operators Less Than and Greater Than to specify a range of tickets based on their status. New is the lowest value, with values increasing until you get to Closed status. For example, a condition statement that returns only New, Open, and Pending tickets looks like this: Status is less than Solved.
Ticket: Form	Your ticket forms are available as conditions. Select a specific form. See Creating ticket forms to support multiple request types (Enterprise)
Ticket: Type	The ticket type values are: Question Incident is used to indicate that there is more than one occurrence of the same problem. When this occurs, one ticket is set to Problem and the other tickets that are reporting the same problem are set to Incident and linked to the problem ticket. Problem is a support issue that needs to be resolved. Task is used by the support agents to track various tasks.
Ticket: Priority	There are four values for priority: Low, Normal, High, and Urgent. As with status, you can use the field operators to select tickets that span different priority settings. For example, this statement returns all tickets that are not urgent: Priority is less than Urgent
Ticket: Group	The group values are: (—) indicates that no group is assigned to the ticket. Group name is the actual name of the group that is assigned to the ticket. Additional value for views: (current user's group) is all the groups that the agent belongs to.
Ticket: Assignee	The assignee values are:  (—) indicates that the ticket is unassigned. (requester) is the ticket requester. You can select this option to return tickets that were opened by and then assigned to the same agent, for example. Agent name is the actual name of the person assigned to the ticket. Additional value for triggers and views: (current user) is the last person to have updated the ticket, which is not necessarily the same person who is assigned to the ticket. The current user (whoever updated the ticket last) changes whenever the ticket is updated. And an update may have been made by the assignee, the requester, or someone who was CC'd on the ticket.
Ticket: Requester	The requester values are: (assignee) is the person assigned to the ticket. The condition statement ‘Requester is Assignee’ is true if the requester is also the person assigned to the ticket.  This is possible if an agent created a ticket and was then assigned to it. Agent name is the actual name of the agent. Additional value for triggers and views: (current user) is the last person who updated the ticket.
Ticket: Organization	The organization values are: (—) indicates that no organization has been added to the ticket. Organization name is the name of an organization.
Ticket: Tags	You use this condition to determine if tickets contain a specific tag or tags. You can include or exclude tags in the condition statement by using the operators Contains at least one of the following or Contains none of the following. More than one tag can be entered. They must be separated with a space.
Ticket: Description	The description is the first comment in the ticket. It does not include the text from the subject line of the ticket. If you are using the Contains at least one of the following or Contains none of the following operators, the results will consider words containing part of the entered search terms. For example, using "none" for this condition will return (or exclude) ticket descriptions containing "nonetheless".
Ticket: Channel	The ticket channel is where and how the ticket was created. For a list of the available ticket channels, see How are ticket channels defined across Zendesk?
Ticket: Integration account	This condition checks the integration account that the ticket came from, such as a specific Facebook page, Twitter handle, or other channel integration account, like GooglePlay. Select one of your configured integration accounts from the drop-down menu.
Ticket: Received at	This condition checks the email address from which the ticket was received. The ticket can be received from a Zendesk email domain such as [e-mail], or from an external email domain such as [e-mail]. The external email domain must be set up as described in Forwarding your incoming support email to Zendesk or the condition won't work.
Ticket: Satisfaction	This condition returns the following customer satisfaction rating values: Unoffered means that the survey has not previously been sent Offered means that the survey has already been sent Bad means that the ticket has received a negative rating Bad with comment means that the ticket has received a negative rating with a comment Good means that the ticket has received a positive rating Good with comment means that the ticket has received a positive rating with a comment
Ticket: Custom fields	Custom ticket fields are available as conditions.
Requester: Language	The language of the person who submitted the ticket.
Requester: Custom fields	Custom user fields are available as conditions.
Requester: Role	Adds a condition to your triggers to create a different workflow when the requester is an end-user versus an agent.
Organization; Custom fields	Custom organization fields are available as conditions.
Ticket sharing: Sent to	Checks whether a ticket was shared to another Zendesk via a specific ticket sharing agreement.
Ticket sharing: Received from	Checks whether a ticket was shared from another Zendesk via a specific ticket sharing agreement.

Building automation action statements

Action statements define what occurs if all the condition statements are true and the trigger fires. You can think of action statements as ‘then’ statements. If all of your conditions are true then invoke these actions to update the ticket and optionally send notifications.

Table 2. Automation actions

Action	Description
Ticket: Status	The ticket status can be set to the following: New is the initial status of a newly created ticket (not assigned to an agent). Open means that the ticket has been assigned to an agent.  Pending is used to indicate that the requester has been asked for information and the ticket is therefore is on hold until that information has been received. On-hold means that the support request is awaiting a resolution from a third party—someone who is not a member of your support staff and does not have an agent account in your Zendesk. Solved indicates that the customer’s issue has been resolved. The ticket is solved even if required ticket fields are still blank. See Required fields and automations. Tickets remain solved until they are closed. When tickets are closed is based on business rules you define for this step in the workflow, using automations. Closed means that the ticket has been locked and cannot be reopened or updated.
Ticket: Form	Your ticket forms are available as actions. Select a specific form. See Creating ticket forms to support multiple request types (Enterprise)
Ticket: Priority	The priority can be set to Low, Normal, High or Urgent
Ticket: Type	The type can be set to the following: Question Incident indicates that there is more than one occurrence of the same problem. When this occurs, one ticket is set to Problem and the other tickets that are reporting the same problem are set to Incident and linked to the problem ticket. Problem is a support issue that needs to be resolved. Task is used by the support agents to track various tasks.
Ticket: Group	You can set groups to any of the following: (—) is used to unassign a group (if one has already been assigned) Group name is the actual name of the group that is assigned to the ticket. Additional value for macros: (current user’s groups) is all the groups to which the agent who is updating the ticket belongs.
Ticket: Assignee	You can set the assignee to any of the following: (—) is used to set assignee to no one (unassigned) (requester) is the ticket requester. You can select this option to return tickets that were opened by and then assigned to the same agent, for example. Agent name is the agent to be assigned the ticket. Additional value for triggers and macros: (current user) is the last person to have updated the ticket, which is not necessarily the same person who is assigned to the ticket. The current user (whoever updated the ticket last) changes whenever the ticket is updated.
Ticket: Satisfaction	You can set this action to: offered to requester. This indicates that the survey request has been sent to the ticket requester.
Ticket: Set tags	The tags you want to insert into the ticket. The set tag action replaces the current tags. Tags must be separated with spaces.
Ticket: Add tags	The tags you want to add to the existing list of tags (if any).  Tags must be separated with spaces.
Ticket: Remove tags	The tags that you want removed from the existing list of tags contained in the ticket (if any).  Tags must be separated with spaces.
Ticket: Add cc	Add an agent on the ticket update. This action is available when you enable CCs on tickets..
Ticket: Custom fields	Custom ticket fields are available as actions. You cannot use custom fields to nullify conditions.
Notifications: Email user	You can set the email user to any of the following: (requester) is the ticket requester. (assignee) is the agent assigned to the ticket. Email user name is the actual registered name of the agent who will receive the email. Additional values for triggers: (current user) is the last person who updated the ticket. (all non-restricted agents) includes all agents that have unrestricted access to the ticket. Adding the email user action allows you to enter the email subject and body text. Body text can be formatted using HTML or placeholders. See Using placeholders for more information on formatting with placeholders. If you select a different notification destination when editing a trigger, the body text will reset.
Notifications: Email group	You can set email group to any of the following: (assigned group) is a reference to the assign group. Email group name is the actual name of a group. If you select a different notification destination when editing a trigger, the body text will reset.
Notifications: Notify target	Set the external target to notify. For more information about using targets, see Notifying external targets. If you select a different notification destination when editing a trigger, the body text will reset.
Notifications: Tweet requester	Setting this action allows you to respond to the twitter requester with a tweet.
Requester: Language	Set the requester's language to one of your supported languages.
Requester: Custom fields	Custom user fields are available as actions. You cannot use custom fields to nullify conditions.
Organization: Custom fields	Custom organization fields are available as actions. You cannot use custom fields to nullify conditions.