Create rules to take automatic actions on ticketsUpdated 7 days 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, automatically close spam tickets, and more.

Create a rule

You can create up to 70 rules, and when active, they 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.

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 dropdown menu in the top-left corner.
2. Select Workflows.
3. In the menu, locate Tools, then select Rules.
4. Click Create rule.
5. Select a pre-built rule from the template library.
6. Review the description, then click Install rule.
7. Once you've installed the rule, customize it using the WHEN, IF, THEN builder.
8. 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 dropdown menu in the top-left corner.
2. Select Workflows.
3. In the menu, locate Tools, then select Rules.
4. Click Create rule.
5. Click Create Custom Rule.
6. Configure your rule using the WHEN, IF, THEN builder.
7. Click Create rule.

How rules are structured

Every rule follows the same basic pattern:

• WHEN something happens (trigger) → THEN do something else (actions).
  • You can optionally add IF, AND, OR, 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 block, a THEN block, and an IF/AND/OR/ELSE block.

WHEN

The event that causes a rule to fire is the WHEN event, or the trigger. Rules will run when the WHEN event occurs and the ticket meets the conditions defined in any IF, AND, OR, or ELSE statements.

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, 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 to configure it.
4. If you'd like multiple actions to occur, click THEN and select Actions, and repeat for each additional action you'd like to add.

IF, AND, OR, ELSE

To further specify when the rule applies and the actions 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 against which the condition is compared. 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 dropdown menus to set the condition, operator, and value.
4. To add another AND, OR, or ELSE condition, click the IF dropdown.

Determine rule execution order

When you have more than one rule enabled in your helpdesk, the trigger type determines the priority order in which rules run.

The priority order for triggers is as follows:

• Ticket created
• New message in ticket
• Ticket updated
• Ticket assigned to user
• Ticket snooze delay ends
• Satisfaction survey responded

If multiple rules have the same trigger, they'll run top to bottom, in the order they are listed on the Rules page. Once all rules for one trigger have fired, the system moves to the next trigger and repeats the process until every rule has run. To reorder the rules in your list, follow the steps below:

1. From your helpdesk, click the dropdown menu in the top-left corner.
2. Select Workflows.
3. In the menu, locate Tools, then select Rules.
4. Click the  six-dot icon next to the rule you'd like to reposition, then drag it to its new spot in the list.