Setting up intelligent triage topics

As part ofintelligent triage, topics classify what a ticket is about. You can use the topics that appear in tickets to automate your workflows.


What's my plan?







Add-on

Copilot









As part of intelligent triage, topics classify what a ticket is
about. You can use the topics that appear in tickets to automate your workflows.
To begin, it's helpful to understand the use cases where topics can help in ticket workflows. Here are some
ways you can use them:

Redirect customers to self-serve. For example, you can deflect tickets with account password or sign
in issues by sending an auto reply with an article that describes how to solve the
problem.


Route tickets to the right groups. For example, you can assign a refund topic directly to agents who
specialize in handling refunds.


Increase ticket priority. For example, you can increase SLA priority for tickets that report
scam issues.



To help you get the most out of Zendesk's AI Copilot features, this
article provides an overview on how admins can get started with topics. It contains the
following sections:

Step 1: Set up the channels for topic detection
Step 2: Use triggers to create workflows based on topics
Step 3: Track your progress with the Intelligent triage dashboard

Related articles

About intelligent triage
Intelligent triage use cases and workflows
Overview of the Intelligent triage dashboard



Step 1: Set up the channels for topic detection

You can set which ticket channels include topic detection.
For example, you might want your agents to view topics on email
channels, but not messaging channels.
To set up channels for topics


In Admin Center, click
AI in the sidebar, then select Intelligent triage > Topic. A list of intelligent triage topics appears.

Click Manage settings. A Manage settings page
appears.

For topic detection, add the Channels you use the most. Some channels are
already added by default.
For a full
list of channels you can add, see Automatically classifying tickets with intelligent
triage.

Click Save.




Step 2: Use triggers to create workflows based on topics

Once you are familiar with the use cases where topics can help and
configure which channels include topic detection, you can create ticket triggers to manage
ticket workflows based on topics. For example, you can create a trigger to automatically
route any ticket with an Account activation topic to a group of agents in your company who
handle account services.
To create a trigger based on topic
To automate ticket workflows, create ticket triggers based on topic.

In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules >
Triggers.
On the Triggers page, click the Ticket tab, then click Create
trigger.
Enter a Name, Description, and Category for your trigger. See Creating ticket triggers for details.
In trigger Conditions, add the Topic you want to use as part of the
trigger condition. You can use the values included on the Topics
list to specify a condition. See Accessing and viewing intelligent triage topics.
For
example:
Topic | Is | Account::Account activation


In trigger Actions, add the actions you want to perform when the condition
applies. For example:
Ticket > Group | Account services

For more information on trigger conditions and actions, see Ticket trigger conditions and actions reference and Zendesk chat and messaging triggers conditions and actions
reference.

Click Create trigger.


Tip: You can incorporate intelligent triage classifications
into your omnichannel routing workflow for email and messaging tickets. See this article for details.



Step 3: Track your progress with the Intelligent triage dashboard

Zendesk Explore includes an Intelligent triage dashboard you can use to extract valuable
insights into your tickets. Use these insights to improve your workflows and determine how
effective your support is.
To open the Intelligent triage dashboard

Open the product menu and select Analytics. A list of Explore dashboards appears.

From the list of dashboards, click the Zendesk Copilot: Intelligent triage
dashboard. As you drive more volume of tickets, the
intelligent triage dashboard will help you understand your service operations and
provide insights to identify opportunities to improve.

Tip: You can also view suggestions for improvements in the
Recommendations section of the Overview: Copilot page.




{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8903424797722",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8903424797722",
"headline": "Setting up intelligent triage topics",
"description": "You can set up and manage intelligent triage topics to classify tickets, create triggers for automated workflows based on these topics, and track performance using an analytics dashboard.",
"articleSection": "Using Intelligent triage ticket predictions",
"datePublished": "2025-02-16T19:55:58+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-06-10T21:44:07.578895+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8903424797722"