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Notify Side conversation recipient through Automations
Posted Sep 09, 2020
Hi,
are there any plans to add this functionality to the system?
Our use case:
When contacting an external logistics partner through a side conversation and waiting for a reply from them, we set the ticket to 'on-hold'.
If they haven't replied after 24 hours, we want to send them an automated notification like "respond to us please".
This is similar to other automated notifications we send to the requester of a ticket after some time has passed like "we still haven't heard from you" or "we'll get back to you soon".
Thanks!
17
10 comments
Official
Toby Sterrett
Hey all. Unfortunately, automations in their current form only work directly on tickets and ticket information, so we can't use them to keep track of side conversations or create replies on them automatically.
However, we can try to at least keep the agent assigned to the main ticket that the side conversation(s) belong to that the ticket has gone quiet and they should probably check up on them.
One approach we’ve explored isn’t foolproof but might be a step in the right direction. Basically, the idea is:
Create a trigger (or macro) that fires on the creation of a side conversation that:
Tags the ticket with
side_conversations
andwaiting_on_third_party
Sets the ticket status to on-hold
Sets the assignee to the current user (creator of the side convo)
Create an automation that marks a ticket as having a stale side convo
Conditions:
Ticket contains the
waiting_on_third_party
tagTicket has not been updated by assignee in ___ hours
Ticket status is less than solved
Actions
Add
stale_side_conversation
tagCreate a trigger that
Conditions:
Side conversation is replied to
Assignee is not requester
Assignee is not current user
Ticket status is less than closed
Actions:
Set status to Open
Remove the
waiting_on_third_party
andstale_side_conversation
tagsCreate a trigger that removes the stale distinction and gets things ready for the cycle to happen again when the assigned agent replies to a convo (maybe this one isn’t necessary?)
Conditions:
Side conversation is replied to
Assignee is the current user
Status is less than on-hold
Actions:
Set status to on-hold
Add the
waiting_on_third_party
tagCreate a view that lists an agent’s stale side convos with the following conditions:
Tags contain
stale_side_conversation
Status is on-hold
Assignee is current user
This basic framework is a potential starting point for at least trying to surface some tickets that have side conversations that need a reply. Some caveats:
This is pretty coarse grained and brute force. It pretty much requires that an agent sends off the side conversation and moves onto something else and doesn’t do much while waiting for the side convo reply.
Multiple side conversations in one ticket add another dimension of complexity
It may be possible to further refine this approach... Perhaps the ticket could be made into a task type and the due date is used (if the stale calculation can be measured in days instead of hours). I'd love to hear if any of you experts have more ideas.
Hopefully this can help keep agents on top of the side conversations that need some nudging.
0
Jamie Noell
We have a similar need to resend a Side Conversation if there has not been a response via an automation just as we do a pending ticket's public reply.
0
Martina Kulik
Same need here. Any ideas for a workaround?
0
Katie Sullivan
Please let me know if anyone has found a workaround for this, or if this is a planned Zendesk feature. We want to be able to automate followups on side conversations
0
Thomas Lang
Looking for this as well, did anyone find a workaround for this?
0
Sam
Would be helpful for us as well!
0
Max
That would be SO useful for us as well !
We didn't find any workaround except creating a child ticket instead of email.. (assigned to yourself then changing the requester). Not ideal.
0
Lydia Forsyth
This would be a great feature!
0
Anna Billings
+1 - we are looking for the same functionality to be able to send reminders in side conversations if the recipient has not responded to us
0
Carson Hess
Bumping this question. This would be immensely helpful, as we operate with many side conversation outside of our company. Automatic replies or bumps would lessen our team's workload immensely. Child tickets are not currently a reasonable alternative as there's no way to send directly to external emails.
0