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Adding date- and time-stamps to the Event log



Posted Jun 03, 2022

Feature Request Summary: 

[Please add date- and time-stamps to the Event log.]

Description/Use Cases: 

Given that triggers (and other events) occur at various points from ticket initiation to ongoing inputs, and because numerous inputs/events can occur before support staff even begin to reply, it's necessary to know when triggers occurred to correlate what event/trigger happened based on which input. Emails are time-/date-stamped, but exactly when in that sequence the event/triggers fired is a black box. 

Business impact of limitation or missing feature:

Understanding when triggers fire based on what inputs would greatly help us refine our related rules to improve routing efficacies. We can't accurately assess cause and effect when the triggers have no timestamp.

Other necessary information or resources:

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4 comments

Hi Matthew Hesse!

The Events section on each ticket should provide that information already. It will show one of two things:

  • Actions performed on a ticket when it is updated, and all relevant triggers which have fired
  • Logs for any automations which may have also run

These logs, and the actions shown in each log, should align with the order which they executed.

Each overall record in the event history already has a date/time associated to it. There are two things you'll want to be aware of when reviewing these items:

  • Triggers evaluate sequentially and should already be in the order which they operated in, and begin evaluating immediately at the time of update. It may run through this cycle several times, depending on the actions of other triggers
  • Automations evaluate once per hour

Using this, you should be able to determine how the triggers are operating, and what event (ticket creation, update from public user, update from mass update, macro, etc.) caused it to fire. I agree it would be helpful to have a specific timestamp, but it may not be necessary to determine what and when an action happened on your ticket.

Information on trigger sequencing can be found at About triggers and how they work: Understanding when triggers run and fire.

Information on automation sequencing and when they run can be found at About automations and how they work: Understanding when automations run.

Hope this helps!

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Nicole Saunders

Zendesk Community Manager

Thanks for sharing that info, Sam!

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Sam,

 

Thanks for the links but I'd already read how triggers fire before I posted. And you made my point for me when you stated that events/triggers occur/re-evaluate *whenever* any update occurs. So if I'm looking at a ticket that was opened at point A, then followed up at point B, then replied to by a support person at point C (etc.), the fact that there is no timestamp in the event log makes it increasingly difficult to parse what event prompted what event/trigger. It might be relatively easy when there's only the initial ticket, but we often get pulled in later into the ticket and when we're trying to evaluate the effectiveness of our rules sets, it makes modifying those rules much more problematic.

Can I just formalize a request that Zendesk add timestamps to the Events log for the reasons I already stated?

Thanks,

Matthew

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Hi Matthew Hesse!

I definitely agree with you that they could be helpful, and only seek to provide resources to help bridge the gap in the meantime :) I've given your feedback an upvote! And to add to it, it would be very helpful to not use "friendly dates" in the event log of a ticket (i.e. Today, Yesterday, Tuesday, etc.) but rather a full date and time.

Definitely could have been more clear on my part on the evaluations: When saying that a trigger is evaluated whenever an update is made, I meant to indicate that a ticket event log sequentially references what happened on a ticket, in the order the changes were applied. This happens for a few reasons, and can be broken up like so:

  • Each update made directly by a person (such as an email update or reply through the web portal) will have its own event section in the event log, and will display all associated triggers that occurred at the time of that specific event
  • Each update made by an automation or web service will have its own event section in the event log as well
  • Each list of triggers in an event log section will show the sequential order of triggers fired for that event, until there are no longer any matching evaluations (which marks the end of that specific event log record)
  • In an event record, when multiple triggers match and fire, those are recorded sequentially (from top to bottom) in the event record

Each of the event records themselves have their own timestamp in the event log, which can be translated as being time stamp for the triggers, comments, or ticket property changes that happened during that event. In the below screenshot, there are two event records: One from an automation, and one from my agent reply to a customer:

The major events in the ticket event log (anything that would be construed as an "update" by a person, web service, or automation) would be sandwiched between the light gray bars, with the user and timestamp for that record located at the top, and the record of specific updates matching that event record (including the list of triggers matched) in the light gray box at the bottom of that specific record.

In the update list of an event record, we'll see triggers appearing like so:

Using the above information, if I were to go to my list of triggers, they should appear in the same order there (sans triggers in between that did not match on evaluation).

If any appear out-of-sequence, it's because a trigger higher in that list made an update that then caused the out-of-sequence trigger to evaluate on the next evaluation cycle). You should see the changes that caused that trigger to fire listed above it in the specific updates. 

But because each of those specific updates are still tied to the event record that caused them to evaluate in the first place (first screenshot), they all effectively have the same timestamp except for the seconds which they fired. However, the sequential order in which they ran is still represented visually on the screen from oldest event -> newest event at the bottom of the list.

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