Each month, we host an AMA-style conversation in the Zendesk Community on hot support topics, where we invite a panel of guest experts to answer user questions and share their specialized knowledge.

Zendesk Tier 3 Customer Advocate Dwight Bussman was one of the experts for our February 5, 2020 conversation on Support Triggers and email workflows. 

Dwight: I’m a Tier 3 Advocate - (Technical Support Architect) specializing in our APIs, Salesforce integration, and our logging tools. I also train advocates (as well as other departments) on the use of those tools

For some of our newer users, what would you recommend to those just starting out with Zendesk?

Dwight: Play around and ask questions in the community! There are a lot of knowledgeable and helpful folks who can point you in the right direction. While there are often multiple ways to accomplish a goal, your peers can often provide reasons in support of specific paths.

With Business rules and Email workflows, what is the most common mistake you see first-time users make?

Dwight: Not considering edge-cases. I recommend testing with a specific condition (Only run this trigger if the ticket has a specific tag, for example) and then test the heck out of various edge-cases: what happens when tickets are follow-up tickets, what about API-created tickets? Various channels/situations can yield different results that should be handled correctly

When you are not crushing it as a star Advocate here at Zendesk what do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Dwight: Cooking, making music (drums, electric bass, guitar, singing), brewing beer, traveling, cryptography, crossword puzzles, playing with my dogs. 

Are you a dog or cat person and got any cute pet pics we could see?

Dwight: I love animals generally, but own two dogs as my wife is allergic to cats.

Juno is my westie - he’s 14 years young and still going strong.

Ellie is my wife’s toy poodle - she’s 11 and a feisty gal.

Both are expert snugglers! 

Such cute puppers! Anything else you’d like to share with our users?

Dwight: Thanks for joining!

Thanks, Dwight, for taking the time to chat with us.