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.
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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:
28 Comments
In this page I found the following note:
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.
What does it mean exactly ? If I'm the assignee and I create a side conversation with a user outside Zendesk, he will reply from an e-mail for sure. This reply will become a public comment ?
thanks
sonia
Hi Sonia,
I believe Side Conversations is only for Agents only, so the implication is that they will reply to each other within the Agent Interface and hopefully not email.
If you agents tend to reply via email, maybe test out the #private command in the responses and if that works, it should post as a private reply on the ticket not public. However, that sort of defeats the purpose of Side Conversation!
Hi Heather
only for your info.
I create a side conversation with an external user (for example can be a salesman). When this person reply to the side converstion fron the e.mail received the requester doesn't see the reply.
This is what we are looking for and it's great
I understood that the same thing cannot be applied if an agent reply from the e-mail notification
bye
sonia
Hi,
Example 3: The "Viewing and replying to side conversations" link is dead.
Cheers,
Ed
Thanks for the heads-up, Eckhard! I'll pass this along to our Documentation team so they can get it straightened out.
Hi Eckhard. Thanks for pointing this out! I've fixed the link.
I get notified when I add a response to my side conversation. Can't seem to find a condition that prevents notifying me (the Agent) when I reply to the recipient of the side conversation.
Any Ideas?
Hi,
I would like to set up the trigger in Examlpe 2, but I'm a bit confused of what the conditions with the assignees are good for? My first thought was to just have the side conversation condition and then the status action, but now I get unsure wether I need the assignee condition as well.
Are wee talking about the assignee of the side conversation or the ticket? (ticket I assume)
Br. Mie
Awesome feature, looking forward to future tweaks, so here's a bit of feedback regarding future requirements:
1) Insights needed: how to measure all things side conversations!
2) Agent experience. Just food for thought about activating/launching new features that have an immediate impact on the agent's experience.
If we have have many agents, managing this kind of change can be very tricky if all I'm given as an admin is a checkbox that will immediately show the side conversations button to my agents.
Although I can let everyone know about it, understand what it is, how to use it, etc., I can not set my triggers beforehand without activating the feature.
3) If/when SC is inactive. Other tweaks if at any point we suddenly need to deactivate SC.
3.1) The SC button/menu disappears in the ticket interface, and although we can still check past SCs in ticket events, a nice-to-have would be replacing the button with something like "Ticket has side conversations" or something, to ensure the agent reviews 100% of the case.
3.2) If SC is deactivated but someone I emailed via SC replies, the ticket Events seem to update... but there's no way I can see the message the person wrote.
Also, trigger conditions disappear completely. We should be able to keep these, regardless of SC being active or not (if not, then it simply wouldn't execute the trigger).
Those are my 2 cents... great work, nonetheless, so thank you for a much-needed feature.
I have the same question as Jim from July 16th. Is there a way to prevent the trigger from going off when an agent replies to their own side conversation? Also, is there a way to send the message from the side conversation to the assignee's email?
Hi all,
I have not seen a way to prevent a trigger from firing when an agent sends a reply to a Side Conversation that the same agent started. However, you can prevent a trigger from firing when the person responding to the Side Conversation is the assignee of its ticket. Use the condition:
"Assignee IS NOT current user"
Also, you can send a notification to the assignee of the ticket when a side conversation is updated. Just use the action:
"email user" -> "assignee"
I want to setup Example 2:
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.
Way around that?
@Conza with the example in your comment, the trigger will fire if a light agent replies to a side conversation. The trigger in that example will change the state of the ticket when anyone except the ticket assignee replies to a side conversation. Since light agents can't be assigned to tickets their replies would always fire the trigger.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but here's a use case: agents solve the ticket without opening the unread side conversation.
Therefore, I'd like to add an internal note whenever there's a reply from the third-party in the SC.
So I've added the condition "current user is not agent" to the new SC reply trigger, and nothing. If I remove it, however, it adds the internal note for all replies, regardless of the user... am I missing something?
Thanks!
@Pedro Is the main thing you'd be looking for here a way to almost "force" your agents to view a side conversation before being able to solve a ticket? Perhaps something like disabling the solve status on ticket until all side conversations are marked done or something along those lines?
Hi Toby, I'd like to make sure they have a clear message on their interface whenever a SC is replied to by the 3rd-party.
"something like disabling the solve status on ticket until all side conversations are marked done"
This would work, but I'd go for the internal note, too.
Im just getting this addon soon, is there no way to add a side conversation when a ticket is created?
We have certain slack rooms deal with certain issues, and we will always open the SC so the advisors can discuss.
Do we have to do it manually or by macro all the time???
Hi Jeremy,
This isn't possible currently. However, this is something the Product Managers are looking into in the future.
Cheers!
Is there a way of setting up automatic reminders for side-conversation recipients, should they not respond?
Hi Stian,
Side-conversation conditions are not available within automations. That being said, you could use triggers that apply a specific tag to side-conversation tickets and then have an automation run on any ticket that contains that tag. You can use an automation/trigger to then send out an email reminder. This is also dependant on who you're trying to send an email reminder to. Since there's no action for notifying a side conversation recipient, you'd be limited to notifying agents, the requester, or CC'd user.
This may not be the exact solution you're looking for but hope this helps in some way.
Cheers!
Brett/ZD Team - Perhaps I missed this, but is there no way to show the contents of a side conversation reply in an email reply trigger? I'd like to avoid having to manually enter a ticket to view what someone said in a side conversation, and the only thing the trigger does is let me know a reply came in. It seems there is no placeholder/macro for a side conversation note.
Jimmy Rufo that's correct, there is currently no placeholder available to insert side conversation message content into a an email notification trigger. It's something we may attempt in the future. Is this mostly just to let agents know a side conversation has been updated?
Thanks for the prompt reply @Toby. It seems that adding a side convo note preview placeholder, or last Side convo note placeholder within the trigger options would make the most sense. Without that, the workflow is a bit inefficient with extra clicks from the agent's perspective to know what is going on unless they are active in the ticket. Hope Zendesk considers working on this soon.
To answer your question, the current trigger we have in place does let the agent know a side convo has been updated. We just want to see that notification as an extension of what a normal notification trigger would look like, for the reasons I mentioned before.
We're gladly using Side Conversations, but we're missing a condition firing on the content of the side conversations.
As many of our third parties (B2B) use automated systems, we often receive an automated reply that triggers our tickets to be reopened. An agent has to look at it and instantly reverts to the previous status, just because of "Thanks, we have received your e-mail".
Will it be possible to filter on side conversation content and / or on the time passed since the last outgoing mail, so we could e. g. exclude all replies arriving within 30 or 60 seconds...
Regards
Oliver
Hello Oliver,
Currently, as the base program stands, there is nothing we can announce on our roadmap regarding this functionality being added. I would suggest posting your thoughts on our Product Feedback forums so our developers can consider yours as for future updates.
Best regards.
Hi!
I don't understand. If an out-of-office partner responds to a side conversation via email, will the response in the ticket be visible to the initiator or not? It is important to me that the initiator(client) does not see a side conversation with the partner.
Irina, it's only the side conversation that reopens (and we have a trigger that opens the whole ticket then), but the reply from the out-of-office partner is NOT shown to the ticker Requester.
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