Triggers & Actions

Triggers and actions are the building blocks of your workflows. Triggers listen for events and start workflow execution, while actions perform tasks like creating tickets, sending messages, or updating records. Understanding what triggers and actions are available helps you design effective automations for your team.

​

Triggers

Triggers define what events will start your workflow. Every workflow needs exactly one trigger that listens for specific conditions and provides context to the rest of the workflow.

​

Ticket Triggers

Ticket Created triggers respond when new tickets are created in your workspace. You can filter these triggers to only activate for tickets in specific queues, with certain request types, or meeting priority requirements. This is useful for automatically assigning tickets, setting initial tags, or notifying team members about new requests.

Ticket Status Changed triggers activate when tickets move between statuses like from “Open” to “In Progress” or “In Progress” to “Resolved”. Configure these triggers to watch for specific status transitions and optionally filter by queue or assignee. Use these to send notifications, update related systems, or trigger follow-up processes.

​

Slack Triggers

Slack Reaction Added triggers respond when users add specific emoji reactions to messages. You can filter by emoji type, channel, or user to create targeted automations. This enables workflows like escalating tickets when someone reacts with an urgent emoji or automatically creating tickets from flagged messages.

​

Manual Triggers

Manual triggers let you start workflows on demand, which is useful for testing new automations or handling special cases that don’t fit automatic triggers. These triggers can include test data to help validate your workflow logic during development.

​

Actions

Actions perform the actual work in your workflows, from creating tickets to sending notifications. Actions can use information from triggers and previous actions to make dynamic decisions and process data.

​

Ticket Actions

Create Ticket actions generate new tickets with configurable properties like title, description, queue assignment, priority, and tags. Use information from triggers to automatically populate ticket details, such as creating follow-up tickets that reference the original ticket information.

Update Ticket actions modify existing tickets by changing properties like priority, tags, or custom fields. These are useful for automatically escalating tickets, adding processing tags, or updating fields based on workflow progress.

Status management actions change ticket status and can include resolution notes or assignee notifications. Use these to automatically resolve certain types of tickets or move tickets through your support process based on completion criteria.

Assignment actions help distribute tickets by automatically assigning them to specific users or teams. Configure assignment logic based on ticket properties, user availability, or workload balancing rules.

​

Slack Actions

Send Direct Message actions deliver private messages to specific users. These are useful for notifying assignees about new tickets, alerting managers about escalations, or providing status updates to requesters. Messages can include dynamic information from earlier workflow steps.

Send Channel Message actions post to Slack channels with optional mentions and formatting. Use these to announce new high-priority tickets, share status updates, or coordinate team responses. Channel messages help keep teams informed about workflow activity.

Slack Mirror actions create real-time connections between tickets and Slack channels, keeping conversations synchronized. This is valuable for teams that primarily work in Slack but need ticket tracking for formal processes.

​

User Management Actions

Okta integration actions help manage user access by adding users to groups or applications. These actions are useful for onboarding workflows that automatically grant appropriate access based on user roles or department information.

User group management helps maintain proper access controls by automatically adding or removing users from groups based on workflow conditions. This ensures users have the right permissions without manual intervention.

​

Utility Actions

Wait actions pause workflow execution for specified durations, which is useful for creating delays between actions or allowing time for external processes to complete. Use these to space out notifications or wait for system updates.

Arithmetic actions perform calculations on workflow data, enabling workflows that count items, calculate scores, or process numeric information from tickets and other sources.

​

Configuring Triggers and Actions

When setting up triggers, use filters to ensure workflows only execute for relevant events. Too broad a trigger will create unnecessary workflow runs, while too narrow might miss important events. Test your trigger conditions with realistic data to verify they work as expected.

Action configuration involves mapping data from triggers and previous actions to action inputs. The workflow builder provides tools to reference information from earlier steps, enabling dynamic workflows that adapt to the specific situation that triggered them.

Data flows automatically between workflow steps, so information captured by triggers becomes available to actions. This enables sophisticated automations that use context from the triggering event to make appropriate decisions and take relevant actions.

​

Best Practices

Design triggers with specific conditions to avoid unnecessary executions. Use appropriate filters for queue, priority, status, or user criteria to ensure workflows only run when needed. Monitor trigger frequency to identify potential issues with overly broad conditions.

Configure actions to be idempotent when possible, meaning they can be safely repeated without causing problems. This helps ensure reliable workflow execution even if there are temporary system issues or retries.

Test workflows thoroughly with realistic data before publishing them. Start with simple trigger and action combinations, then gradually add complexity as you become more familiar with the system. Use manual triggers during development to test workflow logic without waiting for real events.