About actions for auto assist and action flows

Actions are available for use byauto assist, which is part ofthe Copilot
add-on, and byaction flows, which perform a pre-defined series of automated
actions. There are two types of actions: standard and custom actions.



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Auto assist, part of the Copilot add-on, helps you automate customer
support tasks by suggesting actions and action flows. You can use standard
actions or create custom ones via APIs. Mark actions as pre-approved
for automatic execution. Keep in mind action limits and ensure proper
sequencing for conditional fields. Use pre-approved actions wisely to
streamline processes without needing agent approval.




Actions are available for use by
auto assist,
which is part of
the Copilot add-on,
and by
action flows,
which perform a pre-defined series of
automated actions. There are two types of actions: standard and custom
actions.


This article describes what actions are and how they are used in Zendesk.


This article includes the following topics:


Understanding actions for automated tasks


Understanding standard actions for auto assist


Understanding custom actions


Understanding pre-approved actions for auto assist




Related articles:


Creating actions for auto assist and action
flows


Managing actions for auto assist and action
flows





Understanding actions for automated tasks


You must have the
Copilot add-on
to use auto assist.


Auto assist suggests relevant actions and action flows to your agents
to help them
solve customer requests. When auto assist suggests an action, the
agent can approve
it and the system carries out the action automatically, saving the
agent time.
Similarly, when auto assist suggests an action flow, the agent can
approve it and
the system carries out all of the
steps
automatically.


Actions and action flows can be linked directly in procedures to
ensure that auto
assist performs the correct action for a user's request. Additionally,
you can
include custom actions as steps in action flows.


There are two types of actions:
standard actions for auto assist
that require no configuration from you
and
custom external actions
that you configure based on an API.


Standard actions don't appear on the Actions page in Admin Center
and can't be
modified.



Auto assist action limits


Auto assist can suggest up to four actions at a time in most
cases. Reply
suggestions and agent instructions count towards this limit.


For example, if auto assist suggests a reply, agent instructions,
and two
actions, such as updating the ticket status and the ticket priority.
In this
case, the action limit will be met.


The exception to this limitation is if auto assist suggests a
macro as an action.
When this happens, then the suggestion can include only agent
instructions in
addition to the macro. Auto assist can't suggest a macro and
any other type of
action at the same time.


Keep these limitations in mind when
writing procedures,
especially when
including steps that combine multiple actions.





Understanding standard actions for auto assist


You must have the
Copilot add-on
to use auto assist.

Auto assist includes the following standard actions:

Update ticket status to any standard or custom status
Update the priority, type, and tags ticket fields

Update checkbox, date, decimal, dropdown, number, or regex custom
ticket
fields


Leverage a Shopify integration to look up a Shopify order, cancel
and refund an
entire Shopify order, or refund selected items from a Shopify
order. (See
Workflow recipe: Canceling and refunding a
Shopify order with auto assist.)



You can also update the ticket assignee and group, but these capabilities
don't
appear in the standard actions list. To update the ticket assignee
or group in a
procedure, enter an instruction such as, "Set the ticket assignee
to [Agent name]"
or "Change the ticket group to [Group Name]." Auto assist recognizes
the instruction
and applies its built-in logic automatically when the step is triggered.


When you insert a standard action in a procedure, you must specify
the value you want
auto assist to update the ticket or field to. The reference to value
is entered
directly after the standard action in the procedure.





You can reference the value by entering it in plain text or by using
a value from the
conversation, another field, or another action.


For example, say you insert the action
Change field 'Language'. You
could enter any of the following to specify a value:


Change field 'Language' to
Spanish


Change field 'Language' to
the value from "Product
language" field


Change field 'Language' to
the language used by the
customer


Change field 'Language' to
language returned by Action or
Action flow




If you insert a standard action in a procedure that updates a
conditional ticket field,
then you must
position the action to update the conditional field before the action
that updates
its parent ticket field. This is because actions are executed sequentially
and
required fields must be set first for the subsequent actions to succeed.


For example, if the parent field in a conditional ticket field is
named
"Product" and is configured to display the conditional field "Model"
when the value
"Laptop" is selected. In this case, you should position the action
to update the
"Model" field before the action to updated the "Product" field.







Understanding custom actions


Custom actions allow you to update data outside of Zendesk using
an API you define.
These actions allow you to query and modify your internal business
systems or
perform a third-party action. The more actions you configure, the
more options are
available to auto assist when it generates suggestions for agents.



Using Zendesk APIs with custom actions


Because you can create custom external actions using any API,
it's possible to
create an external action that points to a
Zendesk API.
If you do this, however, there are some
considerations to keep in mind:



These API requests count against your overall Zendesk API
rate limits. See
Managing API usage in your Zendesk
account.


Custom actions support bursts of up to 280 action executions,
and can then
continue at a rate of 6 executions per second during a recharge
period. This
limit applies to custom action executions in action flows
and auto assist
cumulatively.


As part of action setup, you’ll
create a connection
to authorize
the request, which uses a Zendesk API token or OAuth token.
This connection
might have greater access privileges than your agents and
end users, so
you’ll need to be cautious that you don’t accidentally expose
information
they shouldn’t see.


In the future, you’ll need to migrate your Zendesk API actions
to
out-of-the-box Zendesk actions if and when equivalent actions
become
available.


Be mindful of how changes made by these API requests may
interact with other
parts of your Zendesk configuration, such as triggers, automations,
and
apps.





About inputs for custom actions


An input for a custom action is the information that the action
uses in order to
run.


You can create inputs for actions that reference the following
types of
information:


Generated information, based on the conversation between the end user
and the agent

Auto assist uses generative AI to extract
information from the conversation and passes it to
an action or
action flow as an input.


For example, say you have an input
named "order_id" with the description “the customer’s
order number,
which is typically an integer of 9 or 10 digits”.
If an agent asks,
"Can I please have your order number?" and the end
user replies,
"Sure, it's 987654321", the action will pass this
information to the
"order_id" input.



Ticket fields

Custom ticket fields, and
certain
standard ticket fields listed below,
can be used as
inputs. When using a ticket field as an input, enter
a name and
description that's detailed enough that auto assist
understands
which ticket field you're specifying.


For example, entering
"email" as an input isn't clear enough. Instead,
you may want to
name an input "requester_email" with a description
such as "the
email address of the end user who requested help."



Ticket ID

When using the ticket ID as an input, you must use
the specific name zendesk_ticket_id
and set the type as a
number. Auto assist populates that input with the
ID of the
ticket.


When making use of the input in your API
configuration, you can wrap the input placeholder
in quotes to
convert it to a string, or incorporate it into a
larger string.


For example, you could have the following property
in your
API body:


"note":"Ticket number {{zendesk_ticket_id}} has been updated!"





Auto assist has access to read custom ticket fields and the standard
ticket
fields below:


Assignee email
Assignee name
Brand
Custom ticket fields
Priority
Requester email
Requester name
Status
Subject
Type



Note: Actions don’t work on
AI agent tickets.






Understanding pre-approved actions for auto assist


You must have the
Copilot add-on
to use auto assist.


In auto assist procedures, you can mark custom actions and action
flows as
pre-approved.





Marking a custom action or action flow as pre-approved means that
it won't be
suggested to an agent for approval. Instead, it's automatically executed
in the
specific part of the procedure where it was inserted.


For example, say you have a custom action that checks if an order
can be returned.
You can mark this action as pre-approved in a procedure and auto
assist will
automatically perform this action when a customer asks about returning
an order.


As a best practice, the following types of actions are good candidates
for marking as
pre-approved:



Information-gathering actions:
Actions that only read data (such as
checking the shipping status) and can be executed multiple times
without
changing existing data. Actions that write data, such as an action
that refunds
an order, should be marked as agent-approved so that an agent
can validate the
action before it's executed.


High-confidence actions: Actions
in procedures that have a high agent
acceptance rate. You can check actions' acceptance rate in your
reporting. See
Metrics and attributes for Zendesk
AI.



There are some risks with using pre-approved actions. Keep in mind
the following:


It's not guaranteed when actions will run in a conversation
and pre-approved
actions may be executed in a different order than specified
in a procedure.
This can happen if auto assist determines a pre-approved
action should be
executed sooner or later than specified in a procedure, based
on the
ticket's context. For example, if an end user asks at the
beginning of the
ticket for something that's covered by the action at a later
stage of the
procedure, then the action might be executed sooner than
specified in the
procedure.


For actions that should be executed only if prior conditions
are satisfied,
it's possible that auto assist may execute the action without
satisfying its
prior conditions.




To mark a custom action or action flow in a procedure as pre-approved,
see
Creating procedures for auto assist.


When a pre-approved action is executed automatically, an event is
logged in the
ticket's events.





The conversation log also displays executed pre-approved actions
so that agents are
aware.