Setting up triggers for side conversations

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64 Comments

  • Roger Whitacre

    Is it possible to automatically include the Ticket Number in a Side Conversation? 

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  • Brett Bowser
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Hey Roger,

    You could use a macro that will include the Ticket ID in a side conversation. More information in this article: Using macros to start side conversations (Collaboration add-on).

    I wasn't able to find a solution that would allow you to populate this information automatically via a trigger or automation unfortunately.

    Let me know if you have any other questions!

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  • Roger Whitacre

    Hi Brett,

    Thank you for the quick reply! Actually, after discussing this with others on my team, we realized the same thing! We already use a lot of macros and in many of them we have both the ticket number and subject line auto-populated into the message.

    Thanks!

    Roger

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  • Brett Bowser
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Happy to help Roger :)

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  • Jason Cerrato

    Hello,

    Can anyone explain the need for this condition in Example 2: Updating ticket status when side conversations are replied to?

    Kind regards,

    Jason

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  • Brandon Tidd
    User Group Leader Community Moderator
    Zendesk Luminary
    The Humblident Award - 2021

    Hi @... -

    This condition prevents the ticket from reopening when the assignee is also the requester, so that the support agent may reply to the side conversation without altering the ticket status.

    Hope this helps!

    Brandon Tidd
    729 Solutions

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  • Geran Smith

    Is it possible to NOT notify for Slack side conversations?

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  • Michael Conaghan

    Yes. In a round about way. 

    I have a private slack channel with Zendesk integrated. "Private Internal Notes".

    So any side convo's there don't notify anyone.

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  • Geran Smith

    @... I think I wasn't clear, sorry!

    I have a side conversation notification using the instructions in the KB. This works great for email side conversations.

    If we use Slack side conversations, we also hit that same trigger. I'd like to not hit the trigger on Slack side conversations.

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  • Naomi Watnick

    Hi - Similar to Geran's question above.

    I'd like to have a trigger for Email-based side conversations to update the main ticket (done), but I don't want the same to happen to Ticket-based side conversations.  Is it possible to add a "Side Conversation Type" to the list of conditions?  Or is there a workaround?

    Thanks!

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  • Jim
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Naomi!

    I'm afraid to say that we don't have a possible way to add a "Side Conversation Type" since there's no such condition for side conversations.

    The only thing we have to play within this realm is that the child ticket itself has a channel of "side conversations" as do comment updates that come from the parent's side conversation, but those are only on the child ticket. The side conversation conditions themselves on the parent ticket don't have any channel information that we can select.

    This is really an interesting use case. If you can share with me the details on how you want to set your triggers up if we had this, that would be very helpful for our developers; as part of the feedback.

    Best,

    Customer Advocacy Team

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  • Naomi Watnick

    Thanks, Jim.  Use case: The email-based side conversation response needs to notify the assignee that there's been a response.  Done.  

    However, the ticket-based side conversation response does not need to notify the assignee of the main ticket since they, the assignee, was automatically set as the requester of the side conversation ticket.

    Does that make sense?

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  • Jim
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Naomi!

    The only thing that we can think of is possibly inverting it and not notifying from the child ticket since adding a "channel" is not a side conversation condition, and using the other side conversation one from the email the same way. Other than that, there's no other workaround that we can offer; I'm afraid to say.

    Best,

    Customer Advocacy Team

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  • Jen Ma

    Hello! Is there a way to set up a trigger to send a follow-up message if the side conversation has been replied to within 24 - 72 hours?

    Thank you. 

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  • Toby Sterrett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Jen Ma there is currently no way to use automations to send a reply to an individual side conversation. Automations are scoped to the ticket, so there's no direct way to interact with or update individual side conversations. I've done some experiments with combining triggers with side conversation conditions and tags and views to keep track of tickets that have "stale" side convos, but it's a relatively limited approach. If you're interested in that let me know and I could maybe start a different post to talk it over.

    3
  • Nemo

    Hi Toby Sterrett

    We have enabled both Email and Slack capability for Side Conversation and also we got the below trigger to notify the ticket assignee whenever there is an update(reopen) to the side conversation.

    It's working alright for Email, but when it comes to Slack the notifications generated from this trigger become REALLY annoying as each message in that slack thread would result in an email. Which you could imagine what will the assignee's Inbox be like if there is a lengthy slack thread.

     

    I wonder is it in your backlog to separate the type of side conversation between?

    • Email 
    • Slack or other instant messaging apps?

     

    4
  • Delaney F.

    Hi -- this may be impossible but would there be any way to have automatic replies not trigger the reopening of a ticket/email notification of a reply? Often, when we have to email 3rd party recipients, we get automatic replies notifying us that they have received our request and will reply with a resolution. We do not want the auto-reply to trigger these updates, just the resolution. Is there a time delay or something we could add as a condition? 

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  • Brandon Tidd
    User Group Leader Community Moderator
    Zendesk Luminary
    The Humblident Award - 2021

    Hey Delaney F. -

    A bit of smoke and mirrors here, but I think it will work.  First, you'll want to submit the ticket as open when the side conversation is created and have a tag added, let's call it side_conversation. That way, the ticket won't be 'reopened' when the initial reply comes back.  

    From there, you would use a companion automation where if hours since open is > 1 and tags contains side_conversation but tags does not contain put_on_hold.  Then, the action here would be to set the status to On Hold and add the tag put_on_hold. 

    Any future updates should reopen & notify per normal.  The only catch here is that if the actual reply comes back before the automation moves the ticket to on-hold, the agent could miss it.

    Hope this helps!

    Brandon

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  • Matt
    Zendesk Customer Care
    Hi Delaney! Brandon's suggestion should work as intended as a workaround.

    An alternative option would be to add a "Comment Text does not contain the following string" condition in your trigger. That string should be some consistent phrasing from the autoresponder email so that the trigger will not reopen on those autorespond emails, and instead reopens when the actual reply occurs later. 
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  • Carmelo Rigatuso

    We would like to differentiate between the types of Side Conversations. We use all three channels differently - emails for external vendors, child tickets for internal teams, and Slack for quick support questions. I'd love to be able to tag each ticket with the type of side conversation to track for reporting and adherence to process.

    Is there any way to do this now?

    1
  • Brandon Tidd
    User Group Leader Community Moderator
    Zendesk Luminary
    The Humblident Award - 2021

    Hi Carmelo Rigatuso

    You could leverage the option of using macros to start side conversations and add the tag to the ticket using a secondary action on the same macro.

    Hope this helps!

    Brandon

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  • Carmelo Rigatuso

    Thanks Brandon Tidd,

     

    I actually do for child and email side conversations, but not Slack. But I'll see if adding tags to the child/email tickets can help me filter out the slack ones with a negative condition on those tags.

    Thanks for the tip!

    Carmelo 

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  • RJ Hines

    Hello,

    I've set up a test trigger exactly as shown in the example for #2 (change parent ticket status to Open after reply on side conversation) above, but after extensive testing over the last week, I've been unable to have it activate in our environment.

    My staff and I have tried with public/private comments, agent updates and end-user updates, side conversations and child tickets, and not once has it worked for us. We sat down and read this article as well as several other ones regarding Side Conversations and Triggers.

    We have zero triggers/tags that would prevent a trigger from completing a status change on a ticket in our environment. By all available indicators, this should be working. Are we missing something really simple?

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  • Brandon Tidd
    User Group Leader Community Moderator
    Zendesk Luminary
    The Humblident Award - 2021

    Hi RJ Hines,

    Sorry to hear you're having trouble.  I would suggest checking the event log on the ticket to see exactly what's going on with each update.  Beyond that, you might consider opening up a support conversation with the advocacy team from within your instance.  Hope this helps!

    Brandon

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  • RJ Hines

    Hello Brandon,

    We'd reviewed the event logs of every update on all our testing tickets as we went, which is how we know that this process is not firing on any of them. All our other business rules are activating as expected. I'll contact support.

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  • Toby Sterrett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi RJ Hines – I just tried the #2 example in our test account and it did work as expected. One thing I would suggest during testing is that the email address the side conversation is sent to has to be an email address that is not associated with the current ticket assignee, as 2 of the conditions prevent the ticket status from changing to open when the assignee makes a comment. For my test I sent an email to a personal email address that isn't associated with any agent profiles in the test account and replied from that personal email account, which worked.

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  • Benny Samuel

    Toby Sterrett   it doesn't seem to be working for me, and I did use my personal email address. When I as the agent slack the channel with a question, an email IS generated that someone has replied to your side conversation (so its backwards). When someone in the Slack channel responds to my inquiry, my ticket gets the update but I do not get an email saying "Someone has responded..

     

    Also, I know the examples say Assignee (me as an agent right?) IS NOT current user, but I don't get that. I am the assignee! I tried it anyways with and without it anyways and it still doesn't work. I only get emails when I generate a slack in the ticket, not when I receive a response. 

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  • Charles Gresula
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Benny Samuel,

    The sample provide here would send an email to the assignee of the ticket when someone else replies to the side conversation. That is the reason why ASSIGNEE IS NOT CURRENT USER is being used. Current user is the person who last updated the ticket. 

    Translating the sample trigger here would mean, "If the side conversation was replied to not by the assignee but by someone else(could be another agent or an end user), the trigger will send an email to the assignee saying that somebody replied to the side conversation"

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  • Benny Samuel

    Thank you Charles Gresula ! That's exactly what I was confused about, and now things work. I guess while I was setting up the trigger, I considered myself to be the "current" user AND of course the assignee. But I failed to think about it from the ticket's perspective of who might be the current user doing the action. Thanks so much!

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  • Toby Sterrett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    That is exactly right Charles Gresula, thank you for that!

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