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Entity detection helps you identify important information in tickets and conversations, automatically populating custom fields for use in workflows and reports. Create entities to represent key data, associate values, and configure ticket field behavior. Highlight detected entities for easy agent access. Customize how fields update and manage synonyms to enhance ticket processing and automation.

The entity detection feature, which is part of intelligent triage, allows you to define and detect unique information in tickets and messaging conversations. You can then use that information to populate associated custom ticket fields and power automated workflows and reports.

Entity detection is similar to other intelligent triage predictions in that it allows you to automate workflows based on information automatically detected within customer requests.

This article contains the following topics:

  • About entity detection
  • Creating and configuring an entity
  • Next steps

Related articles:

  • Editing and managing entities
  • Working with detected entities in tickets

About entity detection

Customer requests often contain specific pieces of information that your agents need to identify and act on in order to solve the request. Entity detection makes this process faster and easier by automatically identifying this critical information and making it available in automated workflows and reporting.

An entity is a piece of information that is meaningful for your business, such as a product name. To detect an entity, you:

  • Create an entity to represent the piece of information you care about. For example, you might create an entity called Product Line. When you create an entity, a custom field is automatically created to represent the entity.
  • Associate values with the entity to represent its details. For example, you might associate the Product Line entity with the values Camera Model A, Camera Model B, and so on.

The custom field and its associated values can then be used in routing, automations, and reports to optimize your workflows.

Additionally, entity values are highlighted in blue in tickets, making it easier for agents to scan the ticket for important information. Note that light agents can't see highlighted entity values.

Technical information about entity detection

When you create an entity, a custom field is automatically created to represent it and the system adds that custom field to any tickets where a matching value has been detected. You must add the custom field that represents the entity to your ticket forms if you want agents to be able to view the field.

When tickets are created or updated, the custom field may be populated based on the entity value detected in the ticket, depending on how you've configured the ticket field behavior.

When the field is populated, a tag is also automatically added to the ticket to help you build triggers, automations, and reporting. These tags reflect the entity values you configure and are structured as entity_<entity custom field name>_<entity value>.

Also, note that an entity’s value can change over the course of a ticket’s lifecycle. For example, a ticket that starts out about one topic might evolve into another. Because of this, you can configure whether and how the custom field is automatically updated throughout the ticket’s lifecycle.

When configured, entity detection can detect entity values even when there are misspellings, including switched or missing letters. Detection of misspelled values:

  • Works only when the first letter is the same as the entity value.
  • Doesn’t work on patterns shorter than 6 letters.
  • Allows for up to two errors in a word, including added, missing, misplaced, or replaced letters.
  • Might not work in languages where a single character change results in a completely different meaning.

Entity detection identifies individual words in tickets when they're separated by spaces. For example, the entity value "Apple" will be recognized in "Apple iPhone3", but not in "AppleiPhone3", where words are combined without spaces. As a result, entity detection is optimized for languages that use spaces to separate words.

For an entity to be detected in a ticket, the language of the ticket must match the language in which the entity was created. For example, if you create an entity in English and the ticket language is in Spanish, then entities won't be detected.

Entity detection works on all channels supported by intelligent triage. It’s not possible to turn entity detection on or off for only a subset of channels. Additionally, entity detection works on ticket subjects and public comments, but only public comments are highlighted. While entity detection doesn't work on internal notes, values are highlighted.

Creating and configuring an entity

Admins can create an entity in Admin Center. When you create an entity, a custom field is automatically created to represent it and you must configure its corresponding values. For example, if you create an entity called Product line, the values might be Camera Model A, Camera Model B, and so on.

The steps will differ depending on which type of field you select to represent the entity:
  • Creating an entity using a drop-down or multi-select custom field
  • Creating an entity using a regex custom field

Creating an entity using a drop-down or multi-select custom field

To create and configure an entity using a drop-down or multi-select custom field

  1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select Intelligent triage > Entity.
  2. Click Add entity.
  3. In the Name field, enter a descriptive name and click Next.
  4. Under Select field type, select either Drop-down or Multi-select.
    Tip: To create a Regex field, see the steps below instead.

  5. Click Create.
  6. On the Values settings tab for the entity custom field, click Add new to manually add individual taxonomy values.

    You can also click Upload CSV to upload a CSV file of all values.

    • To add values manually:
      1. Click Add new.
      2. Enter the value that should be detected in tickets.
      3. Click the checkmark.
    • To upload a CSV file:
      1. Click Upload CSV.
      2. Click Choose a file or drag and drop here to select a CSV file, or drag and drop the CSV file into the field.
      3. Click Upload.
  7. Optionally, add synonyms to the values you added.
  8. Click Save.

Creating an entity using a regex custom field

To create and configure an entity using a regex custom field
  1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select Intelligent triage > Entity.
  2. Click Add prediction.
  3. In the Name field, enter a descriptive name and click Next.
  4. Select Regex.
    Tip: To create a Drop-down or Multi-select field, see the steps above instead.

  5. Click Create.
  6. On the Entity matching rule page, enter the Regular expression (regex).

    These are the regular expressions that your entity uses to identify the relevant content in tickets. For example, "([1-9]|0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])\D([1-9]|0[1-9]|1[012])\D(19[0-9][0-9]|20[0-9][0-9])", which is a common regular expression for detecting dates.

    Note: Expressions should not start with ^ or end with $ delimiters. The presence of these delimiters is probably a sign that this regex was created for validating inputs, not for matching sub strings in longer text. Instead, consider using /b as a delimiter in case you need it.

    You can enter text in the Test detection field in the right panel to check if the entity will be detected.

  7. Under Update ticket field with detected values, configure the behavior of the ticket field associated with the entity custom field by selecting one of the following options:
    • Don’t update ticket fields: The ticket field is not automatically populated with any value. An agent must manually populate it by clicking Update.
    • Values in first message only: The ticket field is populated with the value detected in the ticket’s subject, first comment, or a conversation’s first message. Subsequent comments or messages do not automatically update the ticket field value.
    • Values in subsequent messages only: The ticket field is initially populated and subsequently updated with the value detected in any ticket comment or message except for the first one.
    • Values in all messages: The ticket field is initially populated and subsequently updated with the value detected in any ticket comment or message.
  8. (Optional) Under Agent tools, select Highlight entity values in all messages if you want entities to be highlighted in blue in tickets and messaging conversations.

    When this option is selected, agents will also be able to take action on highlighted entities. Note that light agents can't view highlighted entity values.

  9. Click Save.

Next steps

After you’ve created and configured entities, you can take the following actions:
  • Configure how the custom ticket field associated with the entity is updated based on ticket comments or messages.
  • Manage how entities are highlighted in the Agent Workspace.
  • Define synonyms for entities.
  • Turn off or delete a custom field associated with an entity.

See Editing and managing entities for more information.

Depending on how you’ve configured entity highlighting, agents can work with detected entities in tickets.

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