Creating business rules for CCs and followers

Fastpath: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings

Note: This article describes an updated CCs and followers experience. If your account was created before May 2019 you might need to migrate to this updated experience.

Business rules such as triggers, automations, and macros affect email notifications to CCs and followers in several ways. For example, your default triggers send email notifications to requesters and CCs (see Customizing default email notifications to CCs and followers). You can also create business rules to do these things:

• Add followers to tickets automatically using triggers, automations, and macros.
• Use triggers and automations to send email notifications to both CCs and followers.
• Use triggers and automations to customize the text in email notifications to CCs.

You cannot configure views for CCs and followers. However, you can view all of the tickets that you are copied on or following from your user profile (see Viewing your user profile in Zendesk Support).

This article includes these sections:

• Adding followers to tickets automatically using business rules
• Sending email notifications to requesters and CCs automatically using business rules

For more information about email notifications for CCs and followers, see Customizing the text in email notifications to followers and Understanding when email replies become public or private comments.

For a complete list of documentation about CCs and followers, see CC and followers resources.

Adding followers to tickets automatically using business rules

You can add followers to tickets automatically using business rules (triggers, automations, and macros). This is done by adding action statements to the business rules.

These are actions you can use that are related to followers:

• In triggers, use the Add follower action.
• In automations, use the Ticket: Add follower action.
• In macros, use the Add follower action.

When an agent is added as a follower to a ticket by means of these actions, the follower does not receive an email notification saying they were added. Followers only receive email notifications when comments are added to tickets they are following.

Note: It’s important to know that these actions add followers to tickets, but they don’t allow you to customize the text in the email notification to followers. If you want to customize the text, you need to do that using the follower email template as described in Customizing default email notifications for CCs and followers.

To add followers to tickets automatically using business rules

1. Create or update triggers to include the Add follower action.

   

2. Create or update automations to include the Ticket: Add follower action.

   

3. Create or update macros to include the Add follower action.

   

Sending email notifications to requesters and CCs automatically using business rules

You can send email notifications to requesters and CCs automatically using business rules (triggers, automations, and macros). This is done by adding action statements to the business rules.

These are actions you can use:

• In triggers, use the Email user + (requester and CCs) and Answer Bot + (requester and CCs) actions.
• In automations, use the Notifications: Email user + (requester and CCs) action.

Remember that two default triggers use these actions, but you can create others (see Customizing default email notifications to CCs and followers).

It's also important to note that the trigger action Email user + (requester and CCs) is suppressed if a ticket update does not include a public comment. The trigger still fires and performs any other actions that may be included in the trigger, but the email message is not sent. You must include a public comment if you want to use this action to send an email message.

Placeholders are allowed in these actions (and in the Comment/description action in macros). This includes the ticket.cc_names placeholder, which returns the names of all the CCs on the ticket. For more information about placeholders, see Using placeholders and Zendesk Support placeholder reference.

The Comment/description action in macros can be used by agents to add comments to tickets, and those comments can include placeholders about CCs and followers, but macros themselves don’t cause email notifications to be sent to users. However, keep in mind that you may have other business rules that cause email notifications to be sent to users when a comment is added to the ticket.

To send email notifications to requesters and CCs automatically using business rules

1. Create or update triggers to include the Email user + (requester and CCs) action.

   Enter an email subject and body text in the fields provided. Placeholders are allowed.

   

2. Create or update triggers to include the Answer Bot + (requester and CCs) action.

   Enter an email subject and body text in the fields provided. Placeholders are allowed.

   

3. Create or update automations to include the Notifications: Email user + (requester and CCs) action.

   Enter an email subject and body text in the fields provided. Placeholders are allowed.