What is a Trigger and how do they work – Gravity CX

Understanding and Using Triggers in Zendesk

Triggers are business rules that run immediately after a record, such as a ticket, is created or updated and automatically perform actions if specified conditions are met. Triggers automate record updates and notifications across products.

Key Functionality

Triggers are comprised of conditions and actions.
Conditions are the qualifications needed for the trigger to fire.
Actions represent what will be performed when those qualifications are met.
Ticket and object triggers run automatically any time a ticket or a custom object's record, respectively, is created or updated.
Changes that automations make to tickets can cause triggers to run.

Types of Zendesk Triggers

Ticket triggers: Run any time a ticket is created or updated. There are several standard ticket triggers that Zendesk provides.
Object triggers: Run any time a record is created or updated for the specified custom object.
Chat triggers: Run when a selected event occurs. There are several standard chat triggers that Zendesk provides.
Messaging triggers: Messaging triggers function the same way chat triggers do. There are several standard messaging triggers that Zendesk provides.

Essential Facts About Zendesk Triggers

Triggers run based on conditions and perform actions on the qualifying ticket.
Triggers always run immediately after the qualifying event happens.
The one exception is ticket triggers don't run or fire on tickets after they are closed.
Ticket triggers can fire when a ticket is being set to closed, except when the ticket is automatically closed by the system after 28 days.
Triggers only fire if the trigger's set conditions are met.
Actions applied by one ticket trigger can affect how other triggers run and fire for a ticket. In other words, triggers can loop around.

Creating Ticket Triggers

Here's a step-by-step guide to creating ticket triggers:

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.
Enter a Name for your trigger.
(Optional) Enter a Description for your trigger.
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.
Select a Category, Field operator, and Value for each condition you add.
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.
Enter the action information.
Click Create trigger.

Editing and Managing 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.
Ticket triggers run in the order they are listed on the Triggers page in Admin Center.
Actions applied by one trigger can affect how other triggers run and fire for a ticket, so the order of your triggers is very important.
To help you manage large numbers of ticket triggers, they can be organized into categories.
You can have a maximum of 7000 active ticket triggers.

Standard Ticket Triggers

Zendesk provides a set of standard ticket triggers with default notifications that are best practices in a typical ticket workflow. You can use the standard triggers as they are or clone them to modify and repurpose.

Examples of standard ticket triggers:

Notify requester and CCs of received request: Notifies the requester and anyone who is copied on the ticket that their request has been received and has become a ticket.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Ticket | Is | Created
  - Ticket > Status category | Is not | Solved
  - Ticket > Privacy | Is | Ticket has public comments
  - Ticket > Comment | Is | Public
  - Ticket details > Current user | Is | (end user)
- Actions:
  - Notify by > User email | Ticket > (requester and CCs)
Notify requester of new proactive ticket: When an agent creates a new proactive ticket with a public comment, the requester is notified via email.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Ticket | Is | Created
  - Ticket > Privacy | Is | Ticket has public comments
  - Ticket details > Current user | Is | (agent)
- Actions:
  - Notify by > User email | Ticket > (requester and CCs)
Notify requester and CCs of comment update: When an agent or end user adds a comment to the ticket, the requester and CCs are notified via email.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Ticket | Is | Updated
  - Ticket > Comment | Is | Public
- Actions:
  - Notify by > User email | Ticket > (requester and CCs)
Notify assignee of comment update: Notifies the assigned agent when a comment is added to the ticket.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Comment | Is | Present (public or private)
  - Ticket > Assignee | Is not | (current user)
  - Ticket > Assignee | Is not | (requester)
  - Ticket > Assignee | Not changed
  - Ticket > Status category | Not changed from | Solved
- Actions:
  - Notify by > User email | Ticket > (assignee)
Notify assignee of assignment: Notifies the agent who has been assigned to a ticket of the new assignment.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Assignee | Changed
  - Ticket > Assignee | Is not | (current user)
- Actions:
  - Notify by > User email | Ticket > (assignee)
Notify assignee of reopened ticket: Notifies the assigned agent of a solved ticket that the ticket was updated with a new comment by the requester and reopened.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Assignee | Is not | (current user)
  - Ticket > Status category | Changed from | Solved
  - Ticket > Status category | Is not | Closed
- Actions:
  - Notify by > User email | Ticket > (assignee)
Notify group of assignment: Notifies a group when a ticket is assigned to a group to which they belong.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Group | Is not | -
  - Ticket > Assignee | Is | -
  - Ticket > Group | Changed OR Ticket > Assignee | Changed
- Actions:
  - Notify by > Group email | Ticket > (assigned group)
Notify all agents of received request: Notifies all non-restricted agents when a new ticket is created that has also not been automatically assigned.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Ticket | Is | Created
- Actions:
  - Notify by > User email | Ticket > (all non-restricted agents)
Auto-assign to first email responding agent: Assigns the ticket to the agent when the agent replies to the ticket notification they received by email.
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Ticket | Is | Updated
  - Ticket > Update via | Is | Email
  - Ticket > Assignee | Is | -
  - Ticket details > Current user | Is not | (end user)
- Actions:
  - Ticket > Assignee | Ticket > (current user)

Custom Triggers

You can create custom triggers to meet specific business needs.

Example of a custom trigger to automatically assign tickets based on certain conditions:

Automatically assign tickets with "Billing" tag to the "Billing Team": Assigns tickets with the tag "Billing" to the group "Billing Team."
- Conditions:
  - Ticket > Ticket | Is | Created
  - Ticket > Tags | Contains at least one of the following | Billing
- Actions:
  - Ticket > Group | Billing Team

Ensuring Triggers are Working Well

Do not deactivate all triggers. If all triggers are deactivated, email notifications about ticket activity will not be sent.
Ensure you thoroughly test your custom triggers.
If you want to alter a standard trigger, clone it and create a new trigger based on its structure, then deactivate the standard trigger.
When building a ticket trigger, it's important to make your conditions as specific as possible.
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.
It is recommended to keep your trigger statements simple. The more complicated a trigger is, the harder it will be to troubleshoot and maintain.
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.
Consider deactivating the Notify all agents of received request trigger to avoid clogging your agents’ inboxes unnecessarily. Unless you have a very small team, you probably don’t need to inform all of your agents about every ticket submitted.

For more information about Zendesk Triggers, see Zendesk Trigger Resources