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Enhanced functionality with Triggers
Posted Nov 23, 2022
Hey all. I'm sure most or all of these points have been brought up but I thought I'd share my ideas here. I hope somebody from Zendesk sees this and passes it on to the product team.
Triggers are the backbone of your workflows, but there are some clear limitations with them, especially if you are used to other ticketing systems.
1 - Ability to re-arrange conditions and actions. I know this seems minor, but some of my triggers have a ton of conditions, and being able to rearrange / sort them would be very helpful. For now, I have to write them down, clear them out, then add them back in order.
2 - Search text functions in ticket fields. If I set a condition based on a user profile field, I have options to specify the words or strings it does or doesn't include. With Ticket fields, I only have options for Present or Not Present. Expanding the search functionality to ticket fields would be amazing.
3 - Enhanced Logic. I was able to build lot of what I wanted without having to get too creative, but sometimes I needed to use multiple triggers and tags to get the result I wanted. MEET ALL and MEET ANY or fine in most cases, but having AND / OR would allow me to greatly simplify my workflows. Example: IF (A or B) AND (X or Y) THEN Action.
4 - Post comments as a Trigger Action. Right now there's no option to post Internal notes or Public comments as an Action. The best we can do is create a webhook and use JSON to do this. However, your options are limited. It seems like a clear limitation to not be able to set up Action - Add Internal Note and then have a rich text field. I can do that with Macros! Please extend this to Triggers.
5 - Email User: Open text field for Email address. Right now if I want to send a Email to an address that's not a Zendesk user, such as an external vendor or Email DL, I have to through Email targets. Seems like a silly workaround.
Anyways, I love Zendesk and having a blast tailoring it to my company's needs. But of course there's always a way to improve the product and I'm hoping Zendesk listens to feedback.
Thanks!
- CJ
4
4 comments
Official
Bailey Whitaker-Lea
Hi Chris Curlett ,
PM for Triggers & Automations here. Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback! Please find a few follow-up questions and feedback on the asks below:
1. Rearrange conditions/actions - this is new feedback, so thank for sharing! I am assuming you are talking about when you are building a trigger and moving the conditions on the form page. I'm curious what your use case is here. Do you like to see particular conditions/actions grouped? Are you trying to see these in the order of your workflow? Maybe something else...
2. Search text in ticket fields - I hear you, we have some discrepancies in the available operators and would like to create consistency across the field types. These are weighed against our other priorities going into the new year. Is there a particular field that you were referring to? Custom text fields?
3. Enhanced logic - you hit the nail on the head here! We are currently working towards more flexible logic to build out triggers. More to come on that in the new year!
4. Posting comments with triggers - again, another highly requested feature that we are prioritizing for 2023. More to come on exact timing! I'd also love to hear your use cases here for internal and public comments if you'd be up for sharing.
5. This would actually fall to the email team. I reached out and they have noted the feedback but it is not currently on their roadmap.
Thanks,
Bailey
0
Bailey Whitaker-Lea
Chris Curlett & Shmuel Holzman
Thanks so much for sharing additional details. It is really helpful as we dig in on discovery to make sure we are solving for actual use cases. I'll be sure to include the rich text request as the team moves forward.
When you are thinking about rearranging conditions, is drag & drop a sufficient solve? You also mention sorting. Would you be looking to sort by the field in the condition?
0
Chris Curlett
Hi Bailey, thank you for the response! I’m happy to hear that some of these are already being discussed. I’d love to answer some of your questions.
1 - One example I could give is my Employee On/Off-boarding workflow. Using Myndbend Process Manager, we have up to dozen child-tickets just for Onboarding (depending on conditions), and even more for Offboarding, that route to other teams as part of the overall request. For each child-ticket, I have 4 triggers based on a custom field for Status (On Track, On Hold, Back On Track, and Cancelled). This resulted 48 triggers just for updating the child-tickets subject lines and posting comments in the tickets. During testing and designing, I’ve added and removed conditions and actions over time. Now, although each trigger is almost entirely identical aside for a few things that make them unique, the conditions and actions are all arranged differently. Whenever I make a change, I need to review each one to verify the change was implemented properly, it becomes quite hectic when they’re all arranged differently. If I could just sort the conditions and triggers, it could save me a lot of time and confusion. Like I said, it’s minor, but sometimes the small things could be the most valuable to a customer.
4 - One thing that’s great about Macros is they support rich text and you can post comments with tables. Using Email triggers, these tables can carry through to Emails alerts. This helps data in Email alerts be easier to read and helps give the impression of a more professional system to my end-users. Right now, Agents have to use a macro to insert a table, but if I could build this into my automated workflows I could reduce the number of clicks performed by the Agents. 2023 is going to be the year of automation for me, and being able to automatically send Public Replies when things happen, and if I could do it without using JSON, and if they supported rich text including tables, I could greatly reduce the number of mundane clicks the agent have to perform.
A specific example is when an Onboard request is submitted, HR has to make sure they use a macro I built for them before submitting the ticket. If the person who normally submits them is on vacation, the individuals filling in for her sometimes forgets. This results in the Email alert not having the standardized table that the company has been accustomed to seeing (and grown to appreciate). I plan on automating the Onboarding ticket creation process when an employee is entered into the HR system this year, but we will be sacrificing the professional looking Email alert unless I could either A - trigger a Macro as an Action, or B - have the ability to post comments with rich text from the trigger.
Thats just one example, but I heavily use Email alerts and Internal Notes in my workflows. I am the only person in the company that knows Zendesk from a technical standpoint. As I climb the ladder, I’m hoping to assemble a small team of people who can be admins of this system, and I think using JSON just to post comments would be a frustrating learning curve for them.
Thanks again for the response! I look forward to seeing what Zendesk announces in the new year!
- CJ
0
Permanently deleted user
Hi Bailey Whitaker-Lea,
Hope it's ok to jump in here and join this conversation but I'd like to second Chris's feature request as 4/5 of these would be super helpful for us as well!
1. Rearranging conditions/actions would be immensely helpful! Any time there are 10+ conditions it becomes difficult to keep track of when the Trigger does/doesn't fire and being able to sort them would make it more readable. Being able to group them would be a dream!
Really excited to hear that 3 & 4 are being worked on, would be a game-changer!
1
Official
Bailey Whitaker-Lea
Hi Chris Curlett ,
PM for Triggers & Automations here. Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback! Please find a few follow-up questions and feedback on the asks below:
1. Rearrange conditions/actions - this is new feedback, so thank for sharing! I am assuming you are talking about when you are building a trigger and moving the conditions on the form page. I'm curious what your use case is here. Do you like to see particular conditions/actions grouped? Are you trying to see these in the order of your workflow? Maybe something else...
2. Search text in ticket fields - I hear you, we have some discrepancies in the available operators and would like to create consistency across the field types. These are weighed against our other priorities going into the new year. Is there a particular field that you were referring to? Custom text fields?
3. Enhanced logic - you hit the nail on the head here! We are currently working towards more flexible logic to build out triggers. More to come on that in the new year!
4. Posting comments with triggers - again, another highly requested feature that we are prioritizing for 2023. More to come on exact timing! I'd also love to hear your use cases here for internal and public comments if you'd be up for sharing.
5. This would actually fall to the email team. I reached out and they have noted the feedback but it is not currently on their roadmap.
Thanks,
Bailey
0
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