Automations are similar to triggers because both define conditions and actions that modify ticket properties and optionally send email notifications to customers and the support staff. Where they differ is that automations execute when a time event occurs after a ticket property was set or updated, rather than immediately after a ticket is created or updated.
Administrators can create, edit, and manage default and custom automations.
Topics covered in this article:
- Creating automations
- Editing and cloning automations
- Reordering your automations
- Deleting and deactivating automations
For an overview of automations, see About automations and how they work. For a list of default automations, About Zendesk Support default automations.
Creating automations
Administrators can create automations from scratch, as shown here, or create copies of existing automations and then modify and use them for some other purpose (see Editing and cloning automations). You can have up to 500 active automations at a time.
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations. - Select Add Automation.
- Enter a title for your automation.
- Add the conditions and actions for your automation.
An automation is made up of three parts:
- Conditions to be met for the automation to run
- Actions to perform when the conditions are met
- At least one of the following: one action that cancels a condition after the conditions are met or a condition than can only be true once (see Ensuring your automation only runs once)
- Test your automation by previewing the tickets that match the conditions that you have specified by selecting Preview match for the conditions.
The automation will have no effect on any closed ticket listed in your preview.
Each automation can act on a maximum of 1,000 tickets each hour. If there are more than 1,000 tickets where conditions are met for an automation, 1,000 tickets will be processed in that hour, and the remaining tickets will be processed during the next hour, if conditions are still met, or the hour after that, until all tickets are checked. On jobs that are very large it may take many hours to work through all of the tickets that meet the conditions of that automation.
For more information, see Understanding when automations run.
- Save your new automation by clicking Create automation.
Editing and cloning automations
You can edit and clone automations. Cloning an automation creates a copy that you can modify and use for some other purpose.
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Locate the automation you want to edit.
- Hover your mouse over the automation to display the options menu icon (
), then click the icon and select Edit from the options menu. - Modify the title, conditions, and actions as needed.
- Select Update and Submit your changes.
To clone an automation
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Locate the automation you want to clone.
- Hover your mouse over the automation to display the options menu icon (), then click the icon and select Clone from the options menu.
- Enter a new name for your automation and modify the conditions and actions as needed. Note that all active automations can have some overlapping conditions, but they can't be identical.
- Click Create automation.
Reordering your automations
You can reorder your automations, but keep in mind that the order of your automations is important because all automations run (first to last) every hour. Actions in one automation may affect the actions in another.
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Open the options menu icon ( ) at the top of the list of active automations, then click Reorder page.
- Click and drag automations to new locations as needed.
- Click Save.
Deleting and deactivating automations
If you decide that you no longer need an automation you can either delete it or deactivate it. Deleting it of course means that it’s gone and can’t be retrieved. You can instead deactivate automations. Deactivated automations are listed in a separate table on the Automations page and can be reactivated if needed.
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Locate the automation you want to delete.
- Hover your mouse over the automation to display the options menu icon (), then click the icon and select Edit from the options menu.
- Choose Delete from the actions menu at the bottom of the page, then click Submit.
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Locate the automation you want to deactivate.
- Hover your mouse over the automation to display the options menu icon (), then click the icon and select Deactivate from the options menu.
The automation is deactivated and displayed in the list of inactive automations.
- To reactivate the automation, select it from the list of inactive automations and select Activate from the options menu.
31 Comments
Is it possible to have Zendesk call out to a number if a ticket has not been updated in X hour(s) with Zendesk Voice?
Is it possible to have an automation that looks for a specific field being updated?
For example, I have an RMA Status drop down that agent's can edit as the RMA goes through it's different stages. I want to create an automation that emails the team if a specific RMA Status value has been selected for more than say 24 business hours.
I'm trying to set up an automation to affect a bunch of older tickets that aren't classified correctly but I'm receiving an error:
I need to ensure that any ticket in those locations is updated to the appropriate district/region.
What am I missing?
@Martin. Have the automation see a tag as part of the actions and test for that tag in the conditions. You need to have a method such aa this to prevent the automation looping
.
Is there a method to preview an automation?
How can I create an automation that triggers within minutes (as opposed to hours)?
For instance, if I wanted to sub the "Hours since Open" condition statement with a "Minutes since Open" one
Is there a way to see the automations that were fired off? For example, i have an automation that sends an email if the ticket wasn't assigned for a number of hours. Can i view those emails somewhere from admin and if they indeed were sent?
Hi @George Mogilevsky,
For brainstorming purposes, here's a few things that come to mind:
You can have the automation add a tag to your tickets when it runs. This way you can create a view or do a search based on the tag.
Or, you can copy yourself or an elected Agent on your account whenever the automation runs (yeah, I know, this one could stink but I use it when I first put in an automation to see if it's doing what I want and once we know it's working as designed, I stop copying myself!)
Lastly, if you have Enterprise, you can enable the Email Archiving function to send a blind copy of ALL Zendesk emails to a designated account. This setting is in Admin -> Settings ->Tickets and scroll all the way down. Depending how many emails your account sends out, you may need to clear that email out every few weeks.
I hope one of these options work for you!
Sincerely,
Heather
Thanks @Heather R !
I actually can see that the admin side of zendesk counts the number of times the automation was fired. And I was even told that automations run every hour, so those numbers only change once an hour.
Now, while I can't click through into the actual tickets that the automation was applied to from this admin screen, I can see that the automations did happen.
And yes, I use tags anyway, so yes, I can find those tickets with the tags. Just an extra step. But it works.
I agree with you about emails :)
Best,
G
I second Bora's question. We have some SLA's that require a 1 hour first response. If the initial trigger does not get the attention of the first-tier support group within ~20 minutes, we need to alert a different second-tier group so they can step in and address the issue.
In other words, we have a trigger to alert people when the ticket is submitted, but we need a way to have an automation alert other individuals if not addressed quickly.
@Brad,
Like Heather said above, tag the ticket on each notification. And check for tags with conditions. So, 1st notification has tag AAA, second notification will have tag BBB. When you fire off second automation, the one that is after ~20 min, check with a condition that it doesn't have tag BBB so you don't send more than once (if that's the requirement).
BUT like i was told, automations run every HOUR, so in your case, you need to fire it after ~20 min, it won't help you, because it doesn't fire on update like trigger, it checks automation conditions every hour, and it might take almost an hour to send that notification.
That was my concern. I needed it to check every 10 minutes to meet my requirements. I understand how to do the follow-up automations, but needed it to run more frequently than once an hour.
Hopefully it will be a future option. Until then, we have to make sure that our tier-1 team is always on top of their game.
you might be able to bypass that limitation with Zapier. if you set up a trigger in Zappier when a new ticket is added to view in zendesk which shows tickets that are older than ~20 minutes. you will have to create this view in zendesk first. then you fire a Zap that sends an email when a new ticket appears in this view.
How often do the automations run? Every x minutes or hours? What's the frequency?
Thx!
Hi Jay,
They run approximately every hour. I say approximately because it’s not a perfect on-the-nose time. So I’ve learned to make sure to allow a few minutes extra if another action is dependent on an automation. I hope that helps!
@ Heather
Thx! Is that every hour on the hour?
I wish I could be precise for you! As I recall, mine used to fire off between 3 minutes to and 5 minutes after the top of the hour. But then we switched pods or something and now it's slightly different.
If you have a specific reason for knowing, I suggest having the automation add a tag and/or an email alert to interested parties to let you know it fired. Warning: this could lead to an influx of email so sometimes the tag is better and then just build a view that looks for it. ;)
So I wanted to setup a notification to go to my team to respond every hour if a ticket has not been assigned. There are some things that may not have SLA requirements associated with them but they still need to be addressed.
I created an automation with criteria that since created >1 hour and the assignee is blank then it should email my support team to not forget this ticket sort of thing.
I get a response that an automation cannot run more than once per ticket.
Why? Why am I forced to perform some action to the ticket that nullifies the automation and then be forced to make another automation to look for that something different just to perform the same action as before?
@Gerald
Welcome to the limitations of automations.... The bad news is, you're right, it does not like >1 and to be expected to run ~ every hour after that. Just not how it was designed :/
The good news is, you can achieve what you're looking for... it just takes a little more effort.
I would update the Automation you've created to (Business) Hours since created = 1, Tags DO NOT CONTAIN "agent_assigned" and as part of the actions, add a tag like "1hr_teamnotified"
Clone that Automation and make it =2 (Business )hours since created, still looking for not assigned and have the automation remove the "1hr teamnotified" tag and add a tag like "2hr_teamnotified"
Clone that automation and make it = 3 (business) hours.....
Etc
Then create trigger that looks for the ticket to be assigned which adds the tag "agent_notifed" which if you look at your automations, it means they will not run on that ticket if it has this tag.
Yes, you may end up with 12 automations for this, depending how many times you want this to extend out.
The tags will help you run reports on this, i.e. how many tickets needed 1 escalation, how many needed 2, etc.
I am happy to elaborate or clarify as needed.
Thank you Heather.
Understood completely what I can do as a work around.
Problem is that every time you create another trigger, or another automation you are creating more work for your server to manage. And it creates another potential point of failure and/or server drag where automated jobs are pushed later and later due to congestion of resources.
I hear what you're saying @Gerald. I hope the fact that this is on Zendesk's servers helps :)
@Heather R - I have a requirement to send a notification when a ticket has a tag added to it and more than 5 minutes have elapsed since it was updated.
I understand automation was not designed to handle time based conditions <1 hr, but maybe there is a way of achieving this with triggers?
Are there any options for handling this type of requirement?
Hi - I am currently building an application to handle this sort of functionality. Please email me at lucas@customertechsolutions.com if you would be interested in piloting the app!
@Erik,
You may be able to achieve sending notifications like you've specified using something like Zapier. I haven't tried it myself, but looking at the triggers and actions available, it looks like it is doable.
Hi all, there seems to be a few people here that need down-to-the-minute actions on tickets rather than once an hour. We've build an app that provides a solution for this requirement. It's called Timers and is available on the Zendesk app marketplace.
I am trying to create an automation that unassign tickets from an agent after 2 hours , if they have not responded.Help would be great !
Hi Melanie Scarth, that automation is looking good, but I'd suggest changing "Is" to "Greater than" [2 hours]. You might consider adding some extra condition for "Hours since assignee update".
What if the ticket is Open because the agent forgot to change the status but was the one leaving the latest public comment?
Unfortunately, there's still no way to determine who wrote a ticket's latest public comment, though. So a possible workaround could be creating a couple of triggers to monitor that. Examples:
Don't include any condition of "Ticket Is [Created/Updated]" so that it runs in both scenarios.
This way you can add a condition to your automation so that it only runs when the last reply is from the requester (i.e. tags contain last_reply_requester in the example above).
Just wondering - We use a modified version of the standard automation to ask for satisfaction. Now some client log several tickets in a short amount of time. We don't want to ask for satisfaction for every one of them. Sometimes it concerns the same issue (and the tickets weren't merged), but even for different tickets, the repeated messages about tickets being solved and asking for satisfaction get annoying for some clients.
Therefore, what we did is this:
Everything seems to work perfectly but there is one strange problem. The 'Usage' column in the Automations overview always shows 0. The 'Preview match for the conditions above' almost always shows a couple of tickets. When we check an hour later, the 'Recently asked satisfaction' for these users has changed from checked to unchecked. So all seems to work well - apart from the Usage counter always showing zero.
Now I am wondering why? Is it because the automation doesn't update any ticket fields, but only requesters?
Jerry E. per the documentation you are right. I would also expect it to count against the number of times the automation has been used. I've asked the Zendesk team to take a look at it.
Please sign in to leave a comment.