Creating ticket triggers for automatic ticket updates and notifications

Location:
Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules >
Triggers


Ticket triggers
are business rules that run immediately after a ticket is created or
updated
and automatically perform actions if specified conditions are met. For
example, a ticket
trigger can be used to notify the customer when a ticket has been opened.


Triggers are composed of conditions, which are
the qualifications
needed for the trigger to fire, and actions, which
are performed when those
qualifications are met. See
Anatomy of a trigger).
In
other words, if the conditions are true, then the trigger will perform
the actions.


There is a set of
standard ticket triggers
that you can use in addition
to creating your own triggers. Admins and
agents in custom roles with permission
to manage business rules can
create ticket triggers.



Tip: If you want to learn more about
setting up business rules to meet specific
business needs, check out the
Zendesk Support for Admins, II
training
course.



This article contains the following topics:


Essential facts about ticket
triggers


Creating ticket triggers





Essential facts about ticket triggers


In addition to the
essential facts that are true of all Zendesk
triggers,
consider the following information specific to ticket triggers:


The order of your ticket triggers and categories designates
the order in which they're
fired. It's important that triggers and categories are
arranged in the appropriate order
to match the
intended workflow.


The ticket event log only records the actions applied to
tickets by triggers if they
result in a net change in ticket field values. If a trigger
runs and fires, but results
in no change to the ticket, it isn't logged in the event
log.


You can have a maximum of 7000 active ticket triggers. This
includes all standard and
custom ticket triggers that are active.


To help you manage large numbers of ticket triggers, they
can be organized into
categories.


Ticket triggers run in the order they are listed on the Triggers
page in Admin Center.
This is important because actions applied by one trigger
can affect how other triggers
run and fire for a ticket.


On non-Enterprise plans, ticket triggers are visible to agents,
including light agents
and contributors, but can only be edited by admins. On Enterprise
plans, triggers are
visible only to
agents in custom roles with permission
to manage
triggers.


Ticket triggers do not work on
AI agent tickets.





Understanding when ticket triggers run and fire


Every time a ticket is created or updated, all of your ticket
triggers run in a
cycle against that ticket in the order the triggers are listed.
A ticket trigger
fires and updates the ticket if its conditions
are met during the cycle. A cycle
is the entire process of a ticket being checked against all your
ticket triggers.


If a ticket trigger updates a ticket during the cycle, the cycle
starts over. All the
ticket triggers run again, except any ticket triggers that have
already fired and updated
the ticket. This means a ticket could loop through the ticket
trigger list several times
before all of the triggers have either updated the ticket or
been skipped because
conditions were not met. (See the image below.)


A ticket trigger might run (that is, be
checked) several times during a cycle,
but it never fires (that is, take action)
more than once in the same cycle because
the trigger isn't checked again after it fires. And a trigger
doesn't fire at all during
the cycle if the conditions are not met.


Because the ticket trigger cycle starts over every time a trigger
fires, actions in
ticket triggers can affect one another. A ticket update by one
trigger might cause another
trigger, where conditions were not previously met, to be true
and fire. So the order of
your triggers is very important.







The importance of specific conditions


When building a ticket trigger, it's important to make your conditions
as specific as
possible. The Ticket | Is condition is
a good way to narrow ticket trigger's scope
so that it only runs when a ticket is created or when it is updated,
but not both. Without
this condition, ticket triggers run everytime any ticket is created
or updated. This can
lead to unnecessarily long processing times for the trigger cycle
and unintentional
automated actions occurring.


Commonly, the Ticket | Is | Created
condition is used to route newly created
tickets based on initial criteria, while
Ticket | Is | Updated is used to
send
notifications. When used in combination with other nullifying
conditions, such as
Tags
| Contains conditions
or Priority | Is not, the
Ticket | Is condition
can help ensure your ticket triggers are only running and firing
when you want them
to.


It's also important to watch out for ticket triggers that undo
or modify an action
contained in another ticket trigger. This can cause conflicts
and lead to unpredictable
behavior. For example, if one trigger assigns tickets based on
the channel from which it
was received, and another assigns tickets based on the presense
of tags. If a ticket meets
the criteria for both triggers, the last one that fires in the
cycle is the assignment the
ticket will ultimately have. However, because the actions in
one ticket trigger can affect
whether a ticket meets the conditions for another trigger, it's
not always easy to predict
the order in which your triggers will fire for a given ticket.
Therefore, it's important
to avoid defining conflicting triggers and to use nullifying
actions and conditions, such
as adding a tag and then creating a condition around the precense
of that tag, to minimize
conflicts.





Creating ticket triggers


Ticket triggers are business rules that run immediately after a ticket
is created or
updated and automatically perform actions if specified conditions
are met. There are
standard ticket triggers,
which you can modify, and you can create
additional triggers.


You must be an admin or an
agent in a custom role with permission
to create triggers.


The following video gives you an overview of how to add triggers:





Automating notifications with ticket triggers [2:02]

To create a ticket trigger


In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules >
Triggers.


On the triggers page, click the Ticket
tab.


Click Create trigger.

Alternatively, you can use the options menu icon
( )
to Create trigger below
the selected trigger or
Clone
and modify a copy of the existing
trigger.



Enter a Name for your trigger.

Use a consistent naming convention to help
you recognize similar types of triggers.



(Optional) Enter a Description
for your trigger.

You can provide details
about what the trigger does. You'll be able to search
for triggers based on
description.



Select an existing Trigger category
for your trigger or
create
a new one.


Click Add condition to set
up the trigger to meet All
or Any
conditions.

Conditions are the qualifications needed for the trigger
to
fire.



Select a Category,
Field operator, and
Value for each condition
you add.

The field operator determines the relationship between
the condition and the value. For example, if you select
the field operator "Is", your
condition will need to be equal to the value. Different
conditions will contain
different field operators.


See
Building trigger condition statements.



Note: It is recommended
to keep your trigger statements simple. The more
complicated a
trigger is, the harder it will be to troubleshoot
and maintain.




Click the Add action to set
the actions that occur when trigger conditions are
met.


Select Category and a
Value for each action you add.

See
Building trigger action statements.



Enter the action information.

Depending on the action you
select, you will enter different information. For example,
if you select the "Type"
action, you'll need to select a ticket type.


If you're
configuring an email notification action, see
Understanding how to format email notifications.



Click Create trigger.

New triggers are automatically set to active. If you
want to create an inactive trigger, click the arrow next
to Create trigger and
select Inactive.





Your new trigger is added to the
end of the list of triggers.



Note: Each business
rule must be less than 65kb.






You can
reorder
the list of ticket triggers or
edit
any ticket trigger.




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