Automations and Triggers

Automations in Freshdesk are business rules that run immediately after a ticket is created or updated and automatically perform actions if specified conditions are met. Automations save both time and effort by performing repetitive tasks - letting agents focus on solving customer problems. 

There is a standard set of default automations that you can use, and you can also create your own automations. Admins and agents with permission to manage business rules can create automations.

There are three types of Automations in Freshdesk classified based on the events that trigger these automations.

• Ticket creation automations
• Time-based automations
• Ticket updates automations

Ticket creation automations

Ticket creation automations runs on every ticket as soon as it is created in your helpdesk. You can create rules to perform tasks such as automatically assigning sales inquiries to the sales team, prioritizing tickets based on specific keywords, sending auto-responses, and much more.  

Time-based automations

Time-based automations scan all your tickets once every hour and check if a ticket stays under a condition for a specific period. You can use these automations to follow up with collaborators from whom you need inputs, remind you about pending work, close tickets with no activity in a few days or weeks, and so on.

Ticket updates automations

Ticket update automations check for events that update a ticket and perform a set of follow-up actions depending on the trigger condition. You can alert an agent or supervisor in case of negative feedback, flag tickets with an email delivery failure, and much more using ticket update automations.

Please refer to the solution article for more detailed information on when and how to use the triggers for automations. 

You can also have a look at a webinar on getting the most out of Freshdesk's new automations to learn more about best practices, popular automation rules, and tips on how to set them up.

Go to Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation> New Rule. This automation will only work on tickets that are newly created in your account.

Refer the below solution article for a detailed setup of this automation.

All new tickets that come into your Freshdesk account can be updated with this automation.

You can automatically assign tickets from a specific email with a specific subject to an agent or group of choice using automation rules. Below are the steps to enable that;

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to ‘Admin’ from the menu. Under ‘Workflows’, click on ‘Automations’.

3. Choose the ‘Tickets’ tab and under ‘Ticket Creation’, click on the ‘New Rule’ button.

4. Give your rule a name.

5. Under ‘On tickets with these properties:’, define the ‘Requester email’ and ‘Subject’.

6. Under ‘Perform these actions:’, select ‘Assign to group’ and select the group you want to assign the tickets to.
   
   

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance.

There might be cases where a third person, a delivery partner, or the point of contact from a customer wants to be looped in on any conversation for tickets raised by other members from their end. To meet this requirement, you can create a new automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule

Sample rule:

Conditions: 

In Companies > Company name > is ABC

Actions: 

Add CC > requester@domain.com

Once you add the rules, here's how you can reorder them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt2VWBeuBU8&list=PLsYJ3BsyR4qGFujlW0iDtOBOf4IPVsAqt&index=14

With Freshdesk's automations, you can update your custom fields for incoming tickets based on specific business conditions. 

Let us consider the following example. Update a custom field, 'Billing Type' to Refund - if the ticket type is Billing AND email subject contains the word ‘Refund’.

Here is how you can do it.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Creation, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.

5. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, choose In Tickets, then If Type, select Is, and select Billing.

6. Click on Add new condition, and choose In Tickets, then If Subject, select contains, and enter ‘Refund’.

7. For the Perform these actions: section, select Billing Type from the dropdown and click on ‘Refund’.

8. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.

If you have any further questions or clarifications, please drop an email to support@freshdesk.com and our Product Specialist will be happy to assist you.

If you are receiving continuous spam emails from a contact, you can configure an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule to automatically mark tickets coming from the contact as Spam. 

Sample rule:

Conditions: 

In Contacts > Requester Name/Requester Email > is Requester/Requester@abc.com

Actions: 

Mark as Spam

Customers may reach out to your helpdesk outside your business hours for inquiries, complaints, sales queries, and the like. Setting up after-hour auto replies through Freshdesk ticket creation automations ensures that your customers receive instant acknowledgments and bolster brand trust. Once you define your business hours, you can send customized auto-responses reflecting your band voice by setting up the following automation rule.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and then Ticket Creation.

4. Click on the New Rule button and provide a rule name.

5. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, select In Tickets, if Created, During, Non-Business hours, then specify your business hours.

6. Under the Perform these actions: section, select Send email to requester option from the dropdown.

7. Customize your email with dynamic content using Insert Placeholder option.

8. Click on Preview and Save and then Save and enable.

   
   

   

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance.

If you would like the 'Type' of the ticket to be updated while the ticket is being created, create a new rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation and click on New Rule. 

Sample rule:

Condition:

In tickets > If Subject > Has any of these words > Issue or Refund

Action:

Set type as > Issue/Refund

Go to Admin > Workflows > Automations > New rule under the Ticket updates tab.

Sample rule:

When an action performed by: 

Agent or Requester

Involves any of the following events:

Status is changed from Any Status to Resolved 

Status is changed from Any Status to Closed

On tickets with these properties: 

if Source > is any of > Portal

Actions: 

Send email to requester (configure your email)

Creating custom email automations specific to groups when tickets are created or updated helps agents save time and meet unique requests. You can set up customized notifications specific to groups by creating, 

• Automation rule to run on ticket creation
• Automation rule to run on ticket updates

Automation rule to run on ticket creation

Follow the steps below to set up an automation rule to run on newly created tickets assigned to a specific group.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Creation, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.

5. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, choose In Tickets, then If Groups, select Is, and enter the group name.

6. For the Perform these actions: section, select Send email to requester from the dropdown, and customize the email content as per your business requirement.

7. Click on Add new action and select Skip New Ticket Notification option.

8. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.

   
   

   
   

Automation rule to run on ticket updates

Follow the steps below to set up an automation rule specific to groups to run on ticket updates.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Updates, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.

5. Under the When an action performed by... section, select Agent or requester option.

6. Under the Involves any of these events section, choose Status is changed, then From Any status, To Resolved (or Closed).

7. For the On tickets with these properties: section, select In Tickets, then If Groups, Is, then provide the group name that should receive the custom email notification.

8. Under the Perform these actions: section, select Send email to requester from the dropdown, and customize the email content as per your business requirement.

9. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.
   
   

To learn more about sending custom email notifications in Freshdesk, please have a look at the following videos on Youtube.

1. Custom Email Notifications: Sending Emails Automatically to Requesters from a Specific Company

2. Custom Email Notifications: How to Automatically Convey SLA Expectations to High-priority Customers

3. Custom Email Notifications: Automatically Inform Customers to Email Another Support Email Address

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up the automation rule.

When it comes to automation rules that run on ticket creation, the order in which the rules are listed under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation tab plays a huge role.

A new incoming ticket will trigger the first rule from the list, with which the conditions are met. Once the ticket satisfies the conditions of one rule, the conditions of the rules listed below will not be checked. Please make sure that the rule that isn't working for you is higher up on the list.

Also, click on 'Activities' on the ticket page to know which rule was executed on the ticket. Based on this, you can reorder the rules under the Ticket creation tab.

Ideally, you should have rules with specific conditions towards the top and the more generic rules lower down in the list.

To enable an already existing automation rule, go to Admin > Workflows > Automations. Go to the required automation rules tab > toggle the required rule ON. This will enable the rule, and the actions will be triggered whenever the condition match.

You can turn OFF the automated email notifications (New ticket created) under Admin > Workflows > Email notifications > Requester notifications. Set up automation rules that run on ticket creation (under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule) based on the email addresses as conditions and send separate emails to the customers under actions.

For global business panning across multiple geographies that cater to a multilingual customer base, you can directly assign tickets from each language to specific agents using an automation rule. 

Note : The rule will execute based on the requester's language only and not the ticket's content.

Please follow the steps below to assign tickets of a particular language to specific agents automatically.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Creation, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.
   

5. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, choose In Contacts, then Requester Language, select Is, and enter the language.

6. For the Perform these actions: section, select Assign to agent (or group) from the dropdown, and provide the Agent name or Group name to whom you wish to assign the tickets.

7. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.

You would be able to view the list of automations performed on a ticket, by clicking on the Activities button in the ticket page. This will display the updates made to the ticket, both manually and using automations, in a chronological order.

If you'd like to understand if the automation rules you've configured are useful for your helpdesk workflow, you can find this on the rules list page. The number of tickets that were impacted by a rule will be displayed alongside the rule.

In this article, we'll share some helpful resources for learning more about Freshdesk Automations. Whether you're new to the feature or looking to optimize your existing workflows, these resources can provide valuable insights and best practices.

One great resource to explore is this webinar recording on getting the most out of Freshdesk Automations, which offers tips and best practices for setting up automations in Freshdesk. During the webinar, you'll learn about popular automation rules and how to configure them to improve your team's efficiency and productivity.

Additionally, for more detailed information on Freshdesk Automations and their functionalities, you can refer to the Configuring Automations page in our solutions repository. Here, you'll find a comprehensive guide to configuring and using automations in Freshdesk, including examples and step-by-step instructions.

 

The email responses sent out by an automation rule will not be exported when a ticket export is triggered. However, ticket activities will contain this information. You can narrow down to the email conversations sent out through automations for each ticket.

To view the ticket activities, please click on the Activities button on the ticket page.

This can be achieved by reordering the rules to place this rule at the top of the list. For each ticket the automation rule that runs on ticket creation will execute the first matching rule and stop. Click on the Reorder button and rearrange the rules to have the most important rule at the top of the list.

Freshdesk enables you to forward your support tickets to other email addresses by setting up a simple automation rule. Here is how you can create an automation rule to forward your tickets under the ticket creation tab. 

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu bar. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose “Rules that run on Tickets” and under the Ticket Creation tab click on the “New Rule” button.

4. Provide the automation rule name and details about the tickets you wish to forward under the "On tickets with these properties:" section.

   
   

   

5. Under the "Perform these actions" section, select "Forward" as the option in the dropdown.

6. Enter the forwarding email address under the "To" textbox and mention the CC or BCC email addresses.

7. Customize the email message under the "Description" section. 

8. Choose the option to include the quoted text based on your business use case.

9. Click on Preview and Save. For every rule you create, Freshdesk creates an automatic summary of the rule that makes reviewing the automation quick and easy. 

10. Click on Save and Enable to get the rule working on upcoming tickets. 
    
    

    

The automation rule that runs on time triggers will run once in every hour and will execute the listed actions for all tickets that meets with its conditions. So, if a rule is configured to send out notification emails, it will result in bombarding the requester with multiple emails.

One way to prevent this is to introduce a flag (checkbox or dropdown, which can be added under Admin > Workflows > Ticket Fields) in the condition, which will act as an additional check for that rule. 

Sample rule:

Conditions:

In tickets > If Hours since agent responded > greater than > 24

In tickets > if Custom checkbox > Not Selected

Actions:

Send email to Requester

Set Custom checkbox as Selected

In the above rule, the Custom checkbox field will be selected (as per the action) the first time the rule gets executed, and when the rule is triggered again in the next hour, the ticket would fail to match the condition of custom checkbox - not selected. This will ensure that the rule gets executed only once.

You can go to Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation and create a new rule.

Sample rule:

Conditions:

In tickets > If created > During > Non-business hours > choose your business hours

Actions:

Send email to requester > customize your email

Sample screenshot:

This loop cycle can be broken by setting up a new automation rule. Go to Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule:

Conditions: 

Choose Match ALL of the below

In tickets > If Requester email > is > support@domain.com (enter the customer's support email address here)

In tickets > If Subject or Description > contains > Ticket Received

Actions:

Skip New ticket email notifications

Mark as Spam

From the rules list page (Admin > Workflows > Automations > under Ticket Creation / Time triggers / Ticket Updates tab), you will get the stats for each of the rules - the number of times a rule was used in the last 7 days, when the last modification to the rule was performed, and who performed that modification. 

This will help Admins understand if the rules they've set up are effective in reducing some effort.

The automation rules (under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers) will work on all tickets except those tickets marked as Resolved or Closed that have no updates made in the past 30 days. 

For all tickets in statuses other than Resolved or Closed, these rules will get triggered if the conditions are met.

As of now it would not be possible to use more than one request type in a single Webhook. There is another limitation where only one webhook can be triggered by an automation rule.

To add a watcher to a ticket based on the subject or requester, you can make use of automation rules under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule. Specify the requester's email address or any other required parameter under Conditions and select Add watcher > choose agent name under Actions.

Businesses that support customers across different time zones will require tickets to be assigned to specific agents in that particular time zone. This can be done in Freshdesk by defining business hours and assigning your support groups to respective zones.

First, you can define the business hours by following the below steps;

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Team, click on Business Hours.

3. Click on ‘Add business hours’ to configure the hours relevant to your business and ‘Save.’
   
   

Then you can assign different groups and the agents within them to function on specific business hours.

1. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Team, click on Groups.

2. Click on the group you’d like to assign a business hour

3. Under ‘General Settings’, in the ‘Business Hours’ dropdown, select the business hour to be assigned to this group and ‘Save’
   For example, if you have two groups: Support - India, Support - USA, configure two business hours for each region and assign it to the corresponding groups.

You can also pick the assignment mode under ‘Group properties’ to assign the tickets to agents in a specific manner.

You can use the Round-Robin feature to assign tickets in the groups automatically.

  

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance.

Note: These configurations are available on the Pro and Enterprise plans (previously Estate and Forest plans.)

Involves any of these events:

Priority is changed > from Low > to High

You can choose to match case based on the keywords you enter, by enabling or disabling the toggle.

When you set up multiple products in Freshdesk, you can customize your email notifications using automations to ensure that your outgoing messages reflect your brand voice. Here's how you can set it up.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Creation, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.

5. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, choose In Tickets, then If Product, select Is, and enter the product name.

6. For the Perform these actions: section, select Send email to requester from the dropdown, and customize the email content as per your business requirement.

7. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.
   
   

To learn more about sending custom email notifications in Freshdesk, please have a look at the following videos on Youtube.

1. Custom Email Notifications: Sending Emails Automatically to Requesters from a Specific Company

2. Custom Email Notifications: How to Automatically Convey SLA Expectations to High-priority Customers

3. Custom Email Notifications: Automatically Inform Customers to Email Another Support Email Address

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up the automation rule.

Generally, when someone replies to a forward, the reply will come in as a private note. This will not reopen the ticket. In order for it to reopen the ticket, go to Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > Automatically reopen tickets when the customer responds and add a new event under 'Involves any of these events' as Note is added > any.

Once this event is added, the ticket status will change to Open whenever there are replies to a forward.

If an action has to be performed based on time-specific conditions such as 'Hours Since..', you can set up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers > New rule.

For example, to send a follow-up email when a ticket is 'Awaiting customer response' for more than 48 hours. Or, to automatically resolve a ticket that hasn't been updated in the last 72 hours.

Tickets automatically reopen when there's a customer response because of an automation rule - Automatically Reopen tickets after the customer responds (under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates tab > New Rule). You can modify this rule for it to not work for tickets that are 'Closed'.

Furthermore, when there's a reply from the requester on a ticket with status set to Closed, you can Trigger a webhook to create a new ticket with the latest response as the ticket's description (using placeholders). 

Here's the API documentation that will help you with the webhook.

If tickets have to be reopened when a customer responds, you can set up a simple rule by following the steps mentioned in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFo0ZShRRgU&list=PLsYJ3BsyR4qGFujlW0iDtOBOf4IPVsAqt&index=13

The automation rule that runs based on time triggers runs once every hour and processes all tickets updated in the past 30 days. These rules are processed sequentially, but a rule may cause certain actions that trigger subsequent rules.

The only reason for the time based automation rule to not work is if the conditions do not match during the time of execution (once every hour). Since we will not be able to identify when exactly this automation rule runs in the helpdesk, we will have to set an upper and lower limit for the time when it needs to be executed. 

If you want to send an email to a customer 24 hours after the ticket has been Resolved, then you will have to set the conditions as given below:

In tickets > If Status > is > Resolved.

In tickets > If Hours since resolved > greater than > 24

In tickets > If Hours since resolved > less than > 25

You can choose to match case by using the 'Match case' toggle that appears when the condition is set to 'Subject/Description/Subject or Description'. 

You can set up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule:

Conditions:

In tickets > If Subject or Description > contains > sample text

Action:

Set status as 'Closed' or 'Mark as Spam' or 'Delete the ticket' (based on your requirement)

You have agents on the portal with a multifaceted functionality and in order to help them reduce the redundancy in typing out each ticket response, you could guide them to set up canned responses on the portal. Please ask them to click on the gear icon that says "settings" where they could add canned responses which they could use. 

If you believe that an agent could create common canned responses for others in the team, then we do have a feature called roles available from the Estate plan which would allow you to give the agent the permission to edit canned responses. It is generally not available for agents as it is the responsibility of the admin to maintain and prepare canned responses for all the agents on the helpdesk. 

The auto-replies (out of office responses) will be considered as replies affecting SLA calculation and performance metrics related to the ticket. To avoid that, set up an automation rule (under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > New rule) to close the tickets automatically when these auto-responses come through.

When an action performed by: 

Requester

Involves any of these events: 

Reply is sent

On tickets with these properties: 

In Tickets > If Last Interactions > Contains > Out Of Office, Unavailable

Perform these actions: 

Set Status as > Closed

Whenever you use any of the 'Hours since..' options under the Conditions section of Time Trigger automation, you must define a timeframe so that they are only valid for a ticket once. If not, the rule will execute every consecutive hour.

Consider a scenario where you wish to notify an agent if the hours since requester responded is more than 6 hours. Here's how you can ensure that the time trigger automation is configured to run only once.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and then Time Triggers.

4. Click on the New Rule button and provide a rule name.
   

5. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, click on Match ALL of the below option.

6. Select In Tickets, if Hours since Requester responded, Greater than 6.

7. Click on Add new condition.

8. Then, select In Tickets, if Hours since Requester responded, Less than 7.

9. Under the Perform these actions: section, select Send email to agent option from the dropdown.

10. Customize your email with dynamic content using Insert Placeholder option.

11. Click on Preview and Save and then Save and enable.

    
    

    

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance.

If you wish to clear the overdue tickets in your helpdesk as a one-time activity, you can create an automation rule under time triggers. Here's how you can configure it.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and then Time Triggers.

4. Click on the New Rule button and provide a rule name.

5. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, select In Tickets, if Hours since ticket overdue, Greater than 0.

6. Under the Perform these actions: section, select Delete the ticket option from the dropdown.

7. Click on Preview and Save and then Save and enable.

Ensure to TURN OFF this rule once overdue tickets are deleted from your queue.

Note : This automation rule will run every hour and only process tickets updated in the last 30 days.

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance.

You cannot filter out just the merged tickets from the Tickets tab. As a workaround, you can automate adding tags to a ticket, when it is merged. To achieve this, create a new automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > New Rule.

When Action is performed by: 

Agent

Involves any of these events: 

Note is added > Private

On Tickets with these Properties: 

Last Interaction > contains > This ticket is merged into

Actions: 

Add Tag > merged_ticket

This would add the 'merged_ticket' tag on the ticket that is merged into another. After this is done, going forward, you can filter using this tag from the Tickets list page to get the list of merged tickets.

It is not possible to filter tickets from the Tickets tab with checkbox values. As a workaround, add an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers > New rule to add a tag with the Checkbox text to tickets for which the checkbox is selected. 

Once this is done, you can filter using that tag from the Tickets tab.

You can create an automation rule that will help reopen any ticket that is closed by specific agents under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > New Rule. 

When an action performed by...

Agent > mention the agents

Involves any of these events:

Status is changed from > Any status > to Closed

On tickets with these properties:

set your conditions

Perform these actions:

Set status as > Open

You can set up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule with a condition that says if the ticket comes from a particular requester or if the subject contains certain keywords, then the action would be to delete the ticket.

Please note that you will be able to see these tickets in the trash which can be accessed by clicking on the hamburger menu on the tickets list page to go to the Trash view.

With Freshdesk, you can utilize powerful automations that run on time triggers, saving time and effort by automatically performing repetitive tasks. The time trigger automation scans all your tickets once every hour and checks if a ticket stays under a condition for a specific period. 

Let’s consider a scenario where you want to reopen closed tickets that are 'Waiting on customer' for 2 or more days without a customer response. Here’s how you can set up a Time Trigger automation for reopening such tickets.

1. Navigate to Admin. Under Workflows, click on Automations. 

2. Select Tickets. Under the Time Triggers tab, click on the New Rule button. 

3. Give your rule a name say, ‘Automatically reopen tickets waiting on customer for 2 or more days.

4. Under the ‘On tickets with these properties’ section, select the ‘Match ALL of the below’ radio button.

5. In Tickets, choose condition as ‘Status’, and then ‘Is’  ‘Waiting on customer’.

6. Click on Add a new Condition.

7. In Tickets, choose condition as ‘Hours since agent responded’, and then ‘Greater than’, and enter 48.

8. Under the ‘Perform these actions’ section, choose condition as ‘Set status as’ and then Open.

9. Now click on Preview and Save and click ‘Save and enable’ to have it work on your tickets.
   
   

Here is a video demonstration on how to reopen closed tickets through time triggers explaining the above scenario.

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up the automation rule.

When you perform a ticket export, a 'Reply' or 'Public note' will be considered as an interaction, whereas a private note will not. However, when you are setting up an automation rule (under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates ), and use the 'Last interaction' under 'On tickets with these properties' condition, private notes would also be considered as interaction along with replies and public notes.

Yes, this can be achieved by setting up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers tab > New rule.

Conditions:

Common condition that satisfies all the tickets (example: Source > Is > Email, Portal, Phone, Chat, Forum, Facebook, Bot, Feedback widget, Outbound email)

Actions: 

Add tag > required tag

Set up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation tab > New rule to add a specific tag when a particular email address is in cc of the ticket.

Conditions: 

In Ticket > If Ticket CC > is > sara@acmecorp.com

Actions: 

Add tag > CC_tag

Go to the Tickets list page, filter out tickets with tag 'CC_tag', to display all tickets with that particular email address in CC.

After an agent leaves your team, you can reassign the tickets assigned to them, to another agent, before deleting their profile from your account. You can follow one of the below two methods based on the volume of tickets.

If the volume of tickets is low, you can follow the below steps;

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator

2. Navigate to Tickets list view page from the menu

3. On the filter pane, under ‘Agents’, select the agent whose tickets you’d like to move and the time period

4. ‘Apply’ the filters for the list to update 

5. Select all the tickets on the page, click ‘Bulk update’, and select ‘Group’ and ‘Support Agent.’

6. 30 tickets are listed on each page; continue the process for all ticket list view page.
   

If there are a lot of tickets, set up a new automation rule to bulk update the tickets using the following steps.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab, and under Time Triggers, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.

5. Under ‘On tickets with these properties:,’ select ‘in Tickets,’ ‘if Assigned agent’ is the old agent whose tickets are to be moved.

6. Under ‘Perform these actions:’ select ‘Assign to agent’ and the new agent’s name in the dropdown.

7. Click on ‘Preview and save’ and then ‘Save and enable.’

8. Disable the rule once the tickets are moved.

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance.

Automatically update all the new tickets in your helpdesk with a specific action through ticket creation automation. Here’s how you can do it.

1. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, select Automations.

2. Choose the Tickets tab, and under Ticket Creation, click on the New Rule button.

3. Give your rule a name.

4. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, choose In Tickets, then Priority, select Is, and enter all the values - Low, Medium, High and Urgent.

5. Under the Perform these actions: section, add or modify the required actions as per business requirements. For example, you can 

   1. send an email notification to an agent by selecting ‘Send email to agent’ option from the choose action dropdown, then the Agent name followed by the email Subject and Description. 

   2. Assign all incoming tickets to an agent by selecting ‘Assign to agent’ option from the choose action dropdown, and then the Agent name.

6. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.

   
   

   

Note : Please ensure that you select the appropriate Rule execution type when ordering your rule. If you choose the 'Executing first matching rules' option and place this rule first, the remaining rules will not execute. Instead, you can select the 'Execute ALL matching rules' option to trigger all matching rules in order.

You can manually mark tickets as spam by filtering tickets with suspicious content so that such undesired emails don't clutter your helpdesk. Here’s how you can mark an email with a specific subject or description as SPAM through automations.

1. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, select Automations.

2. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Creation, click on the New Rule button.

3. Give your rule a name.
   

4. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, 

   1. select Match ALL of the below radio button,

   2. In Tickets, select If Subject or Description from the dropdown,

   3. select contains, and then enter the keywords to be detected.

   4. Click on Add new condition option.

   5. In Tickets, select If Requester Email from the dropdown,

   6. select Is, and then provide the email address.

5. Under the Perform these actions: section, choose Mark as spam.

6. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.
   
   

You can view these tickets marked as SPAM under the Spam folder on your Tickets View page.

The time-based automation rules under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers only work on an hourly basis. When you specify the time constraint that should be met or exceeded to trigger an automation, you can only specify whole hours and not  minutes. For time constraints concerning days, you can use the hours equivalent to the number of days instead.

If you have any further questions or clarifications, please drop an email to support@freshdesk.com and our Product Specialist will be happy to assist you.

Often, your agents need to perform a series of actions or tasks before they can push a ticket to the next level; tasks that are not unique to the ticket under concern. Scenarios in Freshdesk lets you perform a whole bunch of tasks with a single click, right from within a ticket.

For example, with tickets concerning refunds, you'd have to tag the ticket as a 'Return', assign the ticket to the Refunds Group and set the status of the ticket as 'Processing Refund' to be done with it. So, every time there's a ticket about a return, all you have to do is execute that scenario and the ticket is tagged, assigned and marked as 'Processing Refund' without you lifting a finger.

You can execute a Scenario and update either a single ticket or multiple tickets.

• Automating a Scenario for a single ticket:
  Go to the Ticket Details page > Click on the More button > Execute Scenarios > Choose the Scenario you wish to execute
• Executing a Scenario in bulk:
  Go to Tickets tab > Select all the tickets you want to apply the scenario on > Click the 'Scenarios' button > Choose the Scenario you wish to execute on the selected tickets

Alternatively, you can also use the keyboard shortcut 's' on the ticket list page or the details page instead of clicking on the Scenarios button.

Agents can create their own Scenarios, apart from being able to use the ones created by Admins. This way, based on the kind of tickets agents work with, they can create rules to perform multiple actions with a single click.

Click on the gear icon from the navigation bar > Scenarios > Click on the New Scenario button > Name your scenario > Add desired actions.

Note: This Scenario will be visible only to you. 

Go to Admin > Agent Productivity > Scenario Automations  > New Scenario. Give your scenario a name, set up the required actions to be executed. Set the availability - to just yourself, or all agents or agents belonging to a specific group. Hit 'Save'.

You can set scope/visibility for the scenarios when you create one:

• Myself - Visible only to the agent creating the scenario
• Agents in Group - All the agents in the group can use/execute this scenario
• All Agents - All agents in the helpdesk can use/execute this scenario

There are two methods through which you can automatically add internal notes to your helpdesk tickets.

Creating a Scenario

Creating an Automation rule

Creating a Scenario

Scenarios in Freshdesk enable your agents to perform a number of tasks with a single click, right from within a ticket. For instance, if someone submits a ticket requesting an RCA(Root Cause Analysis) document, you can configure a Scenario to add an internal note, such as "Request for RCA. Please loop in the QA team." 

Here's how you can configure the Scenario.

1. Navigate to Admin tab. Click on Agent Productivity and then select Scenario Automations.

2. Click on the New Scenario button and give your Scenario a name and description.

3. Under the Actions block, select action as Add Note.

4. You can use the Insert Placeholder option to customize your note with dynamic content.

5. For private notes, select the Add as Private Note, and don't notify the requester option.

6. You can choose to share this Scenario with all the agents in your helpdesk or agents of a particular group to manage their ticket replies efficiently.

7. Click Save. 

Now that you have configured the Scenario, you can use this in your ticket replies by selecting the Execute Scenario option from your Ticket View page.

Creating an Automation rule

You can configure an automation rule under Ticket creation or Ticket updates with the help of webhooks to add notes for new tickets or update existing tickets when they meet specific criteria. Let's learn how to create a Ticket updates rule to add a note for the scenario mentioned in the above section.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Updates, click on the New Rule button

4. Give your rule a name

5. Under the When an action performed by… section, choose Requester.

   
   

   
   

6. Under the Involves any of these events: section, provide the conditions that trigger the webhook as per your business requirements

7. For the On tickets with these properties: section, configure ticket properties for which you wish to add notes.

8. Provide the following details under the Perform these actions: section.

   1. Select Trigger webhook option for Choose action dropdown.

   2. Select Request type as POST.

   3. Under URL, make use of the Freshdesk’s Update ticket API call.

   4. Enable Required authentication.

   5. Provide your API key.

   6. Select JSON Encoding and choose Advanced Content.

   7. Enter the following payload in the custom API reques like

    {

    "body” : “test”,
        “private” : false

                

}

9. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save.
   

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up automation rules for adding notes to tickets as per your business requirements.

No, currently this is not possible. However, you can make use of the 'Trigger Webhook' option in an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates to Add a Note/Reply to the Ticket with an Attachment. Refer to this doc for corresponding APIs.

You can configure an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation /Ticket updates > New rule to Add a Note/Reply to a ticket by triggering a webhook. Modify the webhook, to add an attachment in the note/reply so that this would be sent to the customer automatically. Please find detailed information on adding an attachment to a note or reply from this documentation.

If you would like to be notified about any updates made to certain tickets that are not assigned to you or that you are not a part of, you can add yourself as a 'Watcher' by clicking on the star icon (or use the keyboard shortcut 'W') on the ticket page.

You can automate this by setting up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > New rule:

When an action performed by.. 

Requester

Involves any of these events: 

Reply is sent

On tickets with these properties:

In tickets > if Requester email > is > sara@acmecorp.com

Perform these actions: 

Send 'Email to Agent' > customize your email 

Alternatively, you can also add the corresponding agent as watcher under Actions.

You can setup an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers > New rule to delete the tickets in your account.

Conditions: 

In tickets > if Source > is > select all the sources you use

Actions: 

Delete the ticket

Note: Make sure to Turn OFF the rule once all the tickets have been deleted.

Please note that the Time Trigger rule can perform actions on the tickets which were created or updated in the last 30 days. Tickets which were inactive beyond 30 days will not be impacted by this rule.

If you are looking to export tickets with a common subject line, there are a few steps you can take to make this process easier. While there is no direct way to do this, a workaround involves adding a tag to all related tickets. Here's how you can do it:

1. Create a new automation rule: To add a tag to all related tickets, you can create a new automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers > New Rule. In this rule, you can set conditions based on the subject line of the ticket and add a tag to all tickets that meet those conditions.

2. Filter tickets using the tag: Once you have added the tag to all related tickets, you can filter tickets using that tag from the tickets list. To do this, go to the tickets list and click on the filter icon. From there, select the tag you added in the previous step and click on apply. For detailed information, check this article on how to export tickets from the list view.

3. Export tickets: Now that you have filtered tickets using the tag, you can export them from the tickets list. To do this, click on the export icon and select the format you want to export the tickets in. You can choose from CSV, XLS, or XML formats.

If you have a pro plan, you can also schedule a Ticket Properties Export of tickets with that tag under Report > Schedule Export. This will allow you to export tickets automatically at regular intervals without manually filtering and exporting them every time.

By following these steps, you can easily export tickets with a common subject line and save time. If you have any further questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out to our customer support team for assistance.

You can alert agents or groups and send custom email notifications for unassigned tickets waiting in your helpdesk for an extended period of time.

Please follow the steps below to send email alerts for unassigned tickets through Freshdesk automations.

1. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, select Automations.

2. Choose the Tickets tab and under Time Triggers, click on the New Rule button.

3. Give your rule a name.

4. Under the On tickets with these properties: section, 

   1. select Match ALL of the below radio button,

   2. In Tickets, select If hours since created from the dropdown,

   3. select Greater than, and then enter 1.

   4. Click on Add new condition option.

   5. In Tickets, select If Assigned agent from the dropdown,

   6. select Is, and then None.

   7. Click on Add new condition option.

   8. In Tickets, select If Agent interactions from the dropdown,

   9. select Is, and then enter 0.

5. Under the Perform these actions: section, ‘Send email to agent’ or ‘Send email to group’ option from the choose action dropdown, then the Agent or Group name followed by the email Subject and Description.

6. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.
   
   

This rule will now send email alerts to the specified agents or groups when a ticket remains unassigned for over an hour. 

You can also choose to send an escalation email to a specific agent in a group by updating the group properties. Here’s how you do it.

1. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Team, select Groups.

2. Click on the Edit option next to the required group.

3. Navigate to Group Properties tab.

4. Under the Ticket escalation settings section,

   1. Choose the required time for ‘If a ticket remains unassigned for more than’ option.

   2. Select the agent name under ‘then send an email to’ option.

5. Click on Save.
   

      

You can automatically assign a ticket to the agent who responds to the ticket first, by enabling the ‘Automatically assign ticket to first responder’ default automation rule in Freshdesk.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Under Workflows, click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and then Ticket Updates.

4. Find the default automation rule ‘Automatically assign ticket to first responder.’

5. Check if the rule is enabled, else, use the toggle on the right to enable the rule.

   
   

   

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance.

Sometimes, a customer may not reply to the support response in time, and the ticket may be closed due to inactivity. If you wish to reopen a closed ticket when the customer replies, you can enable the default automation rule ‘Automatically reopen tickets when the customer responds’ under Ticket Updates automation.

You can also edit the rule to customize the rule according to your business requirement. 

Here is a video demonstration on how to reopen closed tickets when customer responds, explaining the above scenario.

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up the automation rule.

You can set up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > New Rule to send out satisfaction surveys to customers when the ticket is assigned to a specific group. 

When an action performed by.. 

Agent

Involves any of these events

Status is changed > Any status > Resolved

On ticket with these properties

In tickets > If Group > Is any of > Support

Actions:

Send email to requester > (you can add the content of the notification email and insert the placeholder for Satisfaction Survey)

The automation rules under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers tab work on tickets that have been updated in the last 30 days. For tickets which are resolved/closed and idle for more than 30 days, the rule will not be applied. 

The time frame of 30 days cannot be extended.

Freshdesk has a default automation rule that sets the status of tickets marked as Resolved longer than 48 hours, as Closed. 

To modify this rule, you can navigate to Admin > Workflows > Automations > Time triggers > Turn ON the rule 'Automatically close resolved tickets after 48 hours'. You can choose to increase/decrease the number of hours. Turning OFF or deleting this rule will not mark the resolved tickets longer than 48 hours as Closed automatically.

Once you install the Slack App in your account, you can use automation rules to push messages to Slack for new tickets or ticket updates. Here's how you can set it up. 

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Creation or Ticket Updates, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.
   

5. Enter the ticket properties and triggering events or conditions for which the automation should be executed.

   
   

   
   
   

6. For the Perform these actions: section, select Push to Slack option from the dropdown, and then select the appropriate Slack channel in the Push to dropdown.

7. Enter your message under the Message block. You can customize the message with dynamic content using Insert Placeholder option.

8. Click on Preview and Save, and then Save and enable.

   
   

   

        

To learn more about sending custom email notifications in Freshdesk, please have a look at the following videos on Youtube.

1. Custom Email Notifications: Sending Emails Automatically to Requesters from a Specific Company

2. Custom Email Notifications: How to Automatically Convey SLA Expectations to High-priority Customers

3. Custom Email Notifications: Automatically Inform Customers to Email Another Support Email Address

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up the automation rule.

When the automation rule pushes an update to the corresponding group in Slack, the message will contain the following:

1. User Defined Message: This will be available as the first data element. It will have actual values for the dynamic placeholders used in the rule.
2. Standard Freshdesk ticket data snippet: The standard data snippet contains the following: 
   1. Ticket ID and Subject as the header with link to the ticket in Freshdesk
   2. Requester Name
   3. Priority
   4. Name of the assigned agent
   5. Description of the ticket abbreviated to 120 characters
   6. The Slack message will also be color-coded in the sidebar based on ticket status for easy recognition. The following priorities have the respective colours - Urgent, High, Medium, and Low

NOTE: In case you are using dynamic variables to configure custom messages for Slack, use the following variables for ticket description, last public note, and last private note so that only the text content of the description and notes is sent to Slack, otherwise the html tags will get pushed to slack as well.

 

• Use {{ticket.description_text}} in place of  {{ticket.description}}
• Use  {{ticket.latest_public_comment_text}} in place of {{ticket.latest_public_comment}}
• Use {{ticket.latest_private_comment_text}} in place of {{ticket.latest_private_comment}}

Freshdesk does not have a default agent email notification for notes added by a third party (reply to a ticket forward). Instead, you can configure an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > New Rule:

When an action performed by...

Agent or requester

Involved any of these events 

Note is added > Private note 

On tickets with these properties

--None--

Actions:

Set Status as > Open or any custom status (optional)

Send email to Agent > Assigned agent > customize your email

Customer Satisfaction(CSAT) surveys are a commonly-used key performance indicator to track your support experience with the customers. In Freshdesk, responses for such CSAT will not reopen the tickets by default. If you wish to follow up with your customers whenever you receive feedback, you can set up an automation rule as follows.

1. Navigate to Admin. Under Workflows, click on Automations. 

2. Select Tickets. Under the Ticket Updates tab, click on the New Rule button. 

3. Give your rule a name.

4. Under the ‘When action is performed by’ section, select Requester.

5. Under the ‘Involves any of these events’ section, select Customer Feedback is received then, Any. You can also choose to reopen tickets only for negative feedback by selecting Extremely dissatisfied option.

6. Under the ‘Perform these actions’ section, choose condition as ‘Set status as’ and then Open.

7. Now click on Preview and Save. 

8. Click ‘Save and enable’ to have it work on your tickets.

   
   

   
   

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up the automation rule.

You can use the 'Event Performer' placeholder, instead of the placeholder for Agent Name. This will help you get information about the agent who replied to a ticket or updated its properties.

Email:  {{event_performer.email}}

Name: {{event_performer.name}}

You can create automation rules to add tags to a ticket based on the ticket properties. Please follow the below steps to set up a ticket updates automation rule for adding tags to a ticket.

1. Login to your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Navigate to Admin from the menu. Select Workflows and click on Automations.

3. Choose the Tickets tab and under Ticket Creation, click on the New Rule button.

4. Give your rule a name.

5. For the ‘On tickets with these properties:’ section, configure ticket properties for which you wish to add tags.

6. Provide the following details under the ‘Perform these actions:’ section.

7. Select ‘Add tag’ option in the ‘Choose action’ dropdown.

8. Select the one or more tags you wish to add

9. Click on ‘Preview and Save’, and then ‘Save and enable’.
   
   

Please reach out to support@freshdesk.com if you require further assistance in setting up automation rules for adding tags to tickets.

When one of your agents is out-of-office and you wish to notify the customer about the same when they reply, you can set up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket updates > New rule:

When an action performed by...

Requester

Involves any of these events:

Reply is sent

On tickets with these properties:

In tickets > If Agent > Is any of > Saul

Actions:

Send email to requester > customize your email

There is no direct way inside Freshdesk to send out an SMS. However, integrations with MOBtexting and Teckst will help you achieve this. Alternatively, you can also use Webhooks to trigger an action in an external application or tool.

Any email address can be added in CC at the time of ticket creation using an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation tab > New rule.

Configure the required conditions and under actions choose 'Add a CC':

Do make sure that the email address is entered without a trailing space.

For actions that are performed by any of the agents you can set an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket Updates > New rule:

When an action performed by...

Agent

Involves any of these events:

Ticket is > Deleted

On tickets with these properties:

--None--

Actions:

Send email to group > Assigned group > customize the email

You can set similar rules for when a ticket is Resolved and Closed.

You can set up an automation rule under Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule to add tags to a ticket when it comes from a particular domain. 

Conditions:

In Tickets > If Requester email > Contains any of > sauls.com

Actions:

Add tag > Sauls

This sample rule will check the requester's email address for the domain @sauls.com and when the condition satisfies, the tag 'Sauls' will be added to the ticket. You can do the same for required domains and create multiple rules. Remember, the order of the rules are important. Make sure to place the most important rules first in the list. For every incoming ticket, this automation will execute the first matching rule and stop.

Or you can choose the 'Execute all matching rules' option by clicking on the gear button above the rules list for executing all the rules on tickets.

Go to Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket creation > New rule and set up a rule as shown below:

Conditions:

In Tickets > If Requester email > Contains any of > test.com OR spam.com

Actions:

Mark as spam

You can also reorder the rules added. Here's a video that can help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt2VWBeuBU8