Setting up triggers for side conversations

Triggers run, or check conditions, immediately after tickets are created or updated. Any time someone creates, replies to, closes, or reopens a side conversation, they are making a change to the ticket. This means the ticket was updated and so, as a result, triggers run.

Note: The Collaboration add-on is required for Side Conversations. For more information about add-ons and light agents see About add-ons (Professional and Enterprise).

This article covers these topics:

• Trigger conditions for side conversation
• Example 1: When side conversations are created
• Example 2: Updating ticket status when side conversations are replied to
• Example 3: Notifying ticket assignees when side conversations are replied to

Related articles:

• Managing ticket information with side conversations
• Enabling and disabling side conversations (for administrators)
• About triggers and how they work
• Trigger conditions and actions reference

Trigger conditions for side conversation

The default behavior for side conversations is that the assignee on the ticket doesn’t receive emails, but they do see Growl notifications. If you want the assignee to get emails about side conversations, you need to use triggers.

Any time someone creates, replies to, closes, or reopens a side conversation a Growl notification appears in the Zendesk Support interface for 60 seconds.

You can create trigger conditions for side conversations so that assignees know when a side conversation is created, closed, replied to, and reopened. Without them, the agent assigned to the ticket (who, ideally, is also the creator of the side conversation) may have a hard time knowing what’s going on with a particular issue.

You can use these trigger condition statements with side conversations:

• Side conversation + Is + Created

  Created is the initial state of a newly created side conversation.

• Side conversation + Is + Closed

  Closed is the state of a side conversation after the agent clicks the Mark done button to close the side conversation.

• Side conversation + Is + Replied to

  Replied to is the state of a side conversation after someone adds a reply.

• Side conversation + Is + Reopened

  Reopened is the state of a side conversation after the agent clicks the Reopen button to reopen a side conversation.

For a complete list of the different conditions and actions that you can use to create triggers, see Trigger conditions and actions reference.

These ticket events are accessible as ticket conditions for triggers, which means you can do things like:

• Set ticket status to pending or on-hold upon creation of a side conversation
• Automatically assign the author of a side conversation to the ticket
• Send an email notification to the ticket assignee when a conversation side conversation is replied to by others
• Set a ticket’s status to open if a side conversation is replied to by anyone but the assignee

Example 1: When side conversations are created

Here’s an example of a trigger condition about how to handle side conversations when they are created.

Example 2: Updating ticket status when side conversations are replied to

Here’s an example about updating ticket status when side conversation replies are replied to.

Example 3: Notifying ticket assignees when side conversations are replied to

Here’s an example about notifying ticket assignee when side conversations are replied to:

Note: When someone replies to an email notification about side conversation activity, the reply becomes a public reply on the ticket, not a reply to the side conversation. This means that they are replying to everyone on the ticket, including any customers on the ticket, instead of a limited subset of people in a side conversation. For more information, see Viewing and replying to side conversations.