Create rules to take automatic actions on ticketsUpdated 2 hours ago

Rules let you automatically perform actions on tickets based on custom triggers and conditions. You can use them to tag incoming tickets, send auto-replies to common questions, assign tickets to the right team, close spam, and more.

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Requirements

• Available on all Helpdesk plans
• The account Owner, Admins and Leads can create and manage rules

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Create a rule

Rules apply across all stores and channels in your helpdesk. This means that rules you create will automatically run on tickets from all your connected integrations. To make a rule that applies to a specific store or channel, add a condition to the rule such as Channel is email or Integration is your store to filter when the rule is triggered. You can create up to 70 rules at a time.

Create a rule from a template

Rule templates are designed to automate common support workflows. Instead of building a rule from scratch, you can start from a template to get up and running in minutes.

1. From your helpdesk, click the  Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
2. In the menu, locate Ticket management, then select Rules.
3. Click Create rule.
4. Select a pre-built rule from the template library.
5. Review the description, then click Install rule.
6. Once you've installed the rule, customize it using the WHEN, IF, THEN builder.
7. To save, click Update rule.
   
   

Create a rule from scratch

For more complex workflows, you can create a rule from scratch.

1. From your helpdesk, click the  Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
2. In the menu, locate Ticket management, then select Rules.
3. Click Create rule.
4. Click Create Custom Rule.
5. Configure your rule using the WHEN, IF, THEN builder.
6. Click Create Rule.
   
   

How to structure rules

Every rule follows the same basic pattern: WHEN something happens (trigger), THEN do something else (actions). You can optionally add IF, AND or ELSE branches (conditions) to narrow down when the rule applies. When building a rule, it can help to think of a rule as made up of a WHEN statement block, a THEN statement block, and an IF, AND, ELSE statement block.

WHEN

The event that causes a rule to fire is the WHEN event, or the trigger. This is what causes the rule to run, and the configured actions (THEN) to occur. Rules will only run when the WHEN event occurs and all the IF,AND, ELSE conditions are met.

1. Click the Add events...dropdown menu in the builder to set the following events as a rule trigger:
   • Ticket created
   • Ticket updated
   • New message in ticket
   • Ticket assigned to user
   • Ticket snooze delay ends
   • Satisfaction survey responded
2. Once you’ve added a trigger, click THEN to start configuring the next block.

THEN

Once you've decided what will trigger the rule, you'll define what the rule does with THEN. If you don't add any IF, AND or ELSE conditions, the action you select will happen unconditionally, each time the WHEN event occurs.

1. In the builder, click THEN to open the dropdown menu.
2. Select Action from the list.
3. Click Select action, then choose an action from the list. Follow the prompts on screen to configure the action you've selected.
4. If you'd like multiple actions to occur, click THEN and select Actions for as many actions that you'd like to add.
   
   

IF, AND, ELSE

To add conditions to when the rule applies and the actions are run, select "IF" statement from the dropdown menu.

When configuring an "IF" statement, you'll decide the condition the rule looks for (ticket channel, subject, tags, customer data, etc.), the operator (is, contains, starts with, etc.), and the value the operator is comparing the condition against. An "IF" statement might look something like:

IF ticket status is open

Once you've added an "IF statement, you can set a nested THEN action. The nested THEN can either be an action, or another "IF" statement. Nested THEN blocks will only occur when the condition of the top-level "IF" statement is true.

To create an outcome that occurs when the condition of the "IF" statement is false, add an "ELSE" statement.

If you'd like an outcome to apply only when multiple conditions are met, add an AND condition, or an OR condition. AND requires every condition to be true, while OR requires at least one to be true. AND and OR conditions can't be used in the same "IF" statement, so if you need mixed logic (e.g., A AND (B OR C)), you'll need to nest another "IF" statement inside the THEN block.

1. In the builder, click THEN to open the dropdown menu.
2. Select "IF" statement from the list.
3. Click the ticket status, is, and open dropdown menus to configure the condition.
4. To add an AND, OR, or ELSE condition, click the IF dropdown.

Determine the order a rule is run

When you have more than one rule enabled in your helpdesk, the priority order in which they are executed is determined by the trigger type.

The priority order for triggers is as follows:

• Ticket created
• New message In ticket
• Ticket updated
• Ticket assigned to user

If you have multiple rules with matching triggers, they’ll be executed in the order they appear on the rules settings page, from top to bottom. Once every rule from a trigger has fired, the system will move on to the next trigger, executing all the rules with that trigger in the order they appear, and so on, until all your rules have run. To reorder the rules in your list, follow the steps below:

1. From your helpdesk, click the  Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
2. Under Ticket management, select Rules.
3. Click the  six dots icon next to the rule you'd like to reposition, then drag it to its new spot in the list.