Tip: How to send first mail to requester when deadline is set
Hi all,
We are currently testing Zendesk to decide whether we should move from ServiceNow into Zendesk.
One of our wishes, that came up during a mini-workshop yesterday, was, that we would like the requester to get the first mail from us regarding their ticket, when we have set a deadline for when we expect the ticket to be solved.
We are also testing the app "Deadline" from Sweethawk, and this trigger utilizes this app and its fields.
First of, I started by deactivating the default trigger "Notify requester and CCs of received request", as we don't have a use for it when the new trigger is up and running.
Then I added the below trigger.
Note: The tag "deadline_pending" is set automatically by the Deadline-app when I submit the ticket after having set the deadline date and deadline time.
Conditions:
Actions:
Translation of the mail:
"Hi <name>,
We have not estimated the scope of the task regarding <title>, and we expect to have it solved no later than <deadline_date> at <deadline_time>.
Should you wish to contribute with further information, please reply to this mail.
Kind Regards
<assigned_name>
KR Helpdesk"
Now, I'm sure there's another way to do it, but this took me 5 mins to compose.
Currently it sends out whenever the deadline date/time changes. One improvement could be to set a tag first time it sends out this mail and then add a new trigger that - if the tag set first time exists - changes the mail content to say for example "We've pushed the deadline, sorry".
If anybody has some tips and tricks as to how to make this in another and faster way, or even without using external apps, please feel free to add a comment! :)
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Hello Kim,
Really great tip you shared, and we appreciate you breaking this down so well for everyone here in the community!
Best regards
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Hi Kim - thanks for this tip! I have a couple of concerns that I want to make sure you're aware of:
The "Notify requester and CCs of received request" trigger is set up to guarantee that your customers hear something from you as soon as they create a ticket. If you plan to deactivate this, it's critically important to ensure that whatever triggers you replace it with guarantee that your customers will hear from you. When you're new to Zendesk, it's easy to forget that triggers are the primary way that customers receive notifications of updates to their tickets.
In the case of your trigger above, it looks like if an agent set the ticket status to Pending or On-Hold when they add a comment to the ticket, the customer won't be notified. Similarly, if your agent neglects to set the Deadline Date field, Deadline Time field, and the deadline_pending tag, no notification will be sent to the customer. It's certainly possible to work around these issues (for example, by creating other triggers to handle those situations), but I'd highly recommend running tests on all the possible scenarios you might encounter to ensure your customers aren't left waiting for a response when your agent think they've sent one.
A couple other notes on the conditions for this trigger:
- Once a ticket has moved to Closed status, it can't ever be updated, meaning its status can never be changed away from Closed. So the condition "Status not changed from Closed" is unnecessary.
- It looks like you've got "Status not changed from On-Hold" in the list twice, so you can remove one of those.
In any case, thanks for posting this tip! Triggers give you a lot of power in how tickets are handled, and it's always great to see what our users come up with!
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Hi Dave,
Thank you so much for your comments, it's much appreciated!
You mention that the customer won't be notified, if an agent set the ticket status to Pending or On-Hold when adding a comment to the ticket. You also mention that if the agent forgets to set a deadline date, a notification won't be send as well.
In the above cases I think our solution so far would cover us. We have made a trigger that checks all tickets to see if there's a deadline set. If not, it automatically adds a preset one to the ticket. The Deadline application adds the tag "deadline_pending" to the ticket. As this trigger tests for that specific tag, it should send out the notification to the costumer, regardless of an agent setting the deadline date field or not.
Regarding 1) Ah, in our current system we're able to re-open closed requests (not incidents), so that's why that condition was included.
Regarding 2) My bad, that's obviously a mistake :)
We plan to test all our triggers in all possible (that we can think of) situations internally within the IT department, and - should we go with Zendesk - we also plan to include a handful of real users so we get some real data to test the system with when it's setup to our liking.
Again, thank you for your great input, it's one of the awesome things I've found about this community, the willingness to help our where ever it's possible!
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