You can analyze your business rules with Rules analysis, available on Enterprise. For example, suppose that you'd like to understand how a particular group or agent is being assigned tickets or you want to optimize how tags are used across your Zendesk so you'd like to see how they're currently being used. Rather than manually inspecting each business rule to assess their downstream effects on the workflow, Zendesk provides you with a tool for inspecting what can be a complex web of interactions.
- To locate the business rules that assign tickets to a specific agent. This can be helpful when an agent leaves for example.
- To find out why a specific agent or group is being assigned an unusual amount of tickets.
- To evaluate what business rules will be affected if you make changes to your custom fields.
- To update your business rules to reflect organizational changes you've made. Perhaps you've restructured and added or removed groups and responsibility for specific areas of support have changed.
- To track and make changes to how tags are being used throughout your Zendesk.
Business rules analysis begins by summarizing how the following ticket properties are used in business rules:
- Group assignment
- Agent assignment
- Organization
- Channel
- Request received at email
- Macro reference
- Email user
- Email group
- Notify target
- Tag
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Rule analysis.
The Rule analysis page appears. Only those ticket properties that are actively being used in business rules are displayed. Tags that appear in bold are in use by custom fields.
- Click the arrows beside any ticket property to view the detail for that property value and analyze how it is being used in triggers, automations, macros, and views.
In this example, triggers that reference (as a condition) or set (as an action) the Level 1 support group are displayed. You can select to show active (which is the default) or inactive business rules.
- Click Edit to modify any business rule or hover your mouse over the business rule if you want to click Clone or Deactivate.
Thanks for this Anton,
This is closest answer I've found to my question and it still does not give me what I'm looking for. A valiant attempt though.
There are two questions in my mind (1 flowing from the other):
1.) QUESTION: Does Zendesk have a visualization tool that maps out all business rules visually?
ANSWER: (As far as I've heard) No.
2.) QUESTION: Since Zendesk does NOT have visualization tool -- do they at least have a way to export business rule conditions in a columnar or CVS fashion (so that I can create the visualization on my own)?
ANSWER: (again, as far as I've heard) No.
Granted, I'm new to the API/Dev -- I imagine the API may open doors that are otherwise closed to the layman.
I would graciously accept all the direction, tips or advice you can give me!! I'm willing and able to learn quickly and hungry for the knowledge. Thanks ZD community!
Hopeful,
John
John, I would be interested in what you come up with in terms of visualization as I have tried many times to achieve something and always ended up with nothing.
You can use the api to export your rules (in fact i do this in order to create a an import routine for my sandbox) but I have yet failed to find a way to use this data in any useful way.
I guess what I struggle with the most is what i actually want this to look like.
Hey Colin,
Check out gliffy.com --> great site with wysiwyg diagram/flowchart builder.
I've build a "state diagram" to map our hub & spoke workflow as follows:
Swimlane Rows: customer, spoke, hub, agent & admin
Swimlane Columns: creating, assigning, responding, solving & closing
Map out system & user actions flowchart style across the coordinates
Will do my best to create an article once mine is fully built its fine tuned. I've also been able to accomplish a bunch of cool stuff in our hub & spoke setup if you ever wanna brainstorm. Do you work for Zendesk? Your profile says moderator.
John
John, no I do not work for Zendesk, I am customer just like everyone else here although I also tend to hang out in these forums a lot.
The swimlane concept is interesting and your insight in how to break things up is quite good also. Given the multiple brand/department construct I have also I may be able to add a third dimension using colour to finish the task off.
BTW, gliffy is a great tool, I use it a lot.
Do all of your brands behave the same?
If so, you should be able to get away with using only one state diagram to map your workflow.
If not, perhaps a second spoke swim could accomplish visualizing the 2nd workflow in context. Obviously, as you add uniquely behaving spokes this gets messier (but still manageable) but I would imagine your SLA's don't fluctuate too much so maybe a uniform spoke setup would simplify your hub/overall infrastructure.
Thoughts?
I'm also interested in visually mapping two items 1) business rules in Zendesk and 2) external apps such as Zapier and Formstack that share with Zendesk.
Personally, I use Omnigraffle to build visual diagrams, but gliffy looks great.
John, I'm interested in brainstorming with you :)
Inboxed :)