How do they work?

Triggers consist of two parts: conditions and changes. Conditions answer the question, “when should this trigger fire?” Changes answer the question, “what should happen when it does?”

Triggers are evaluated in alphabetical order, by name. In some situations triggers might be the wrong choice, see Limitations for more information.

Hint

🤓 Email trigger behavior can be manipulated

Please have a look at Email header manipulation in case this is a relevant use case for you.

Conditions

When creating a trigger, define your conditions here:

../../_images/conditions-of-a-trigger.png

Trigger conditions are and-selectors and thus all conditions must apply as configured for the trigger to fire. You can configure triggers to fire based on the properties of:

  • The Ticket itself

    e.g., Was this ticket newly created? Is the ticket currently open? When was the last time we received contact from the customer on this ticket?

  • New Articles on the ticket

    e.g., Was this article added by email? by phone? Was it created by an agent, or a customer? Does the subject contain a certain set of words?

  • The Customer that created the ticket

    e.g., What is the customer’s name? Is the customer a VIP? What department does the customer work in?

  • The Organizations that the ticket’s customer belongs to

    e.g., What is the name of the customer’s organization? Does it have a note attached to it containing a certain set of words?

  • The Execution time the trigger is being triggered

    e.g., Only send an auto-reply if the message was received outside of regular business hours. (“Regular business hours” can be defined on Calendars setting.)

Actions

When creating a trigger, define your changes here:

../../_images/actions-of-a-trigger.png

A trigger can do the following things once its conditions have been met:

  • Modify the ticket

    e.g., Escalate its priority, close it, reassign it, rename it, add tags, etc.

    Date & time attributes (like Pending till or Escalation at) can be specified in absolute or relative terms.

  • Send an email or SMS

    Either to the customer, the agent who owns the ticket, or every agent in the system.

    Tip

    Sending emails allows you to include the attachments of the triggering article if required.

  • Fire a webhook

    Connect Zammad to another web service or application to give it live updates about new tickets.

  • Add internal or public notes to the ticket

    This allows you to help your agents with specific information if needed. (e.g. automated changes a trigger applied to the ticket)

Note

In order to send emails with Triggers, you need to configure an email address for the group the trigger is working in. If you don’t, Zammad will skip the Trigger completely.

Hint

Certain actions (such as email, SMS and notes) support Variables, which can be used to build highly-customized message templates.