Ticket Automations

Ticket Automations are used to create rules and conditions for Tickets, then perform a certain action for those Tickets that meet the criteria. For example, if a ticket isn't updated in four hours, send an alert in Slack. You can setup an Automation and then every hour or so they will run on all of your Open Tickets. They don't run "on the hour," but they will run every hour.

What it does

• A Ticket Automation will run a maximum of 10 times per Ticket, and then no longer run.
• You can also use HTML to craft your email triggers to clients.
• Lets you check multiple AND conditions and perform multiple actions—if condition 1 AND condition 2 are true, then do actions 1 and 2.
• Runs during business hours if enabled, or during the hours of 9:00 am - 5:00 pm local time if business hours are disabled. See when the Automation runs for more info.

What it doesn't do

• Ticket Automations will not run on Resolved Tickets.
• Let you have OR conditions.
• Run outside of business hours unless you explicitly set a condition for it to do that.

Table of contents

• Video tutorial
• Getting started
• Add/edit an Automation
• When the Automation runs
• List of Conditions
• Lists of Actions
• Example Automation

Video - Deep Dive

The training portion lasts about 6m 15s.

Getting Started

First navigate to Admin > Tickets - Ticket Automations to view a list of your current Automations. You can do a few things from here.

1. Type a full or partial Automation name and click Search to find those matching that name.
2. Start a New Ticket Automation.
3. Show all disabled Automations.
4. Click a name to edit the Automation.
5. Shows which Tickets currently meet the criteria for this Automation to run.
6. Run the Automation right now so that you don't have to wait an hour for it to run.
7. Make a duplicate of the Automation so you can edit it to do something different.
8. Delete the Automation.

Add/edit an Automation

1. In the upper right, click New Ticket Automation to add a new one (or click an Automation name to edit an existing one).
2. Fill in the Automation Name with a description of what you want it to do. If you do not enter a name, the Automation will be listed as Automation on the Ticket Automations page.
3. Under the Conditions section, click the + button.
4. Now add the condition you want tickets to match by selecting or entering values in the the left, (sometimes) middle, and right dropdowns or fields. See the list of conditions below for more details.
   
5. You may click the next green + button to add as many new conditions as you like. These are AND conditions; i.e., "If condition 1 is true AND condition 2 is true, then..." We do not currently have a way to add OR conditions.
6. If you need to delete a condition, on its right click the red X.
7. Under the Run the Following Actions section, click the + button.
8. Now select an action in the dropdown that appears and enter or select the values to use in the fields that appear. This action will be performed when the conditions are true for a ticket. See the list of actions below for more details.
   
9. The Available Template Tags at the bottom shows all tags you can put in fields that allow you to type values. For example, you could put "We received a part for {{asset_name}} and will begin repairs" in the Body field of an email.
10. Automations will keep running on the same tickets as long as the Conditions are met, up to 10 times. To run them only once on those tickets, add an Action to make a Condition no longer true. For example, if a Condition is "Ticket Status is New," have an Action be "Change Status: In Progress."
11. As with conditions, you may click the next green + button to add as many new actions as you like. When the conditions are met, it will perform all the actions.
12. If you need to delete an action, on its right click the red X.
13. Once finished, click Save.
14. You will return to the Ticket Automations page and your new Automation will within an hour, and then every hour after that. You can click Run Now by the Automation to immediately run it.

When the Automation runs

As mentioned at the top, if business hours are enabled, ticket automations will only run during those hours. If business hours are disabled, ticket automations will only run during the hours of 9:00 am - 5:00 pm as determined by your Time Zone setting.

The exception to this is if you set a Condition of Business Hours - Only Run Outside of Business Hours. However, if business hours are not enabled, it will ignore this condition and still only run automations from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. So we encourage you to set up and enable business hours.

Once an Automation runs, it will post an update to each ticket's Communications log that met the Conditions.

Conditions

The Conditions are the criteria that the Tickets have to meet for this Automation to run. For example you could use the "Hours until due date" Condition to track which Tickets were getting close to their due date. You can also use multiple Conditions to track things like Tickets that are set to "Invoiced" that have not been updated in X hours.

These are all the Conditions available to use.

* Will only run outside of business hours if business hours are enabled. See when the automation runs.

Actions

The Actions are run on the Tickets that meet the criteria set up in Conditions. You can do things like have the system add comments and change the Ticket info such as priority. You can also use multiple Actions. See an example Automation below.

These are all the Actions available to use and what they do.

Example Automation

Here is an example Ticket Automation that you can use to see how a Ticket Automation might look. When the Conditions find invoiced but unpaid Tickets that have been open for too long, it will send an email to the customer as well as the assignee.