Notify Side conversation recipient through Automations

Hey all. Unfortunately, automations in their current form only work directly on tickets and ticket information, so we can't use them to keep track of side conversations or create replies on them automatically.

However, we can try to at least keep the agent assigned to the main ticket that the side conversation(s) belong to that the ticket has gone quiet and they should probably check up on them.

One approach we’ve explored isn’t foolproof but might be a step in the right direction. Basically, the idea is:

• Create a trigger (or macro) that fires on the creation of a side conversation that:

  • Tags the ticket with side_conversations and waiting_on_third_party

  • Sets the ticket status to on-hold

  • Sets the assignee to the current user (creator of the side convo)

• Create an automation that marks a ticket as having a stale side convo

  • Conditions:

    • Ticket contains the waiting_on_third_party tag

    • Ticket has not been updated by assignee in ___ hours

    • Ticket status is less than solved

  • Actions

    • Add stale_side_conversation tag

• Create a trigger that

  • Conditions:

    • Side conversation is replied to

    • Assignee is not requester

    • Assignee is not current user

    • Ticket status is less than closed

  • Actions:

    • Set status to Open

    • Remove the waiting_on_third_party and stale_side_conversation tags

• Create a trigger that removes the stale distinction and gets things ready for the cycle to happen again when the assigned agent replies to a convo (maybe this one isn’t necessary?)

  • Conditions:

    • Side conversation is replied to

    • Assignee is the current user

    • Status is less than on-hold

  • Actions:

    • Set status to on-hold

    • Add the waiting_on_third_party tag

• Create a view that lists an agent’s stale side convos with the following conditions:

  • Tags contain stale_side_conversation

  • Status is on-hold

  • Assignee is current user

This basic framework is a potential starting point for at least trying to surface some tickets that have side conversations that need a reply. Some caveats:

• This is pretty coarse grained and brute force. It pretty much requires that an agent sends off the side conversation and moves onto something else and doesn’t do much while waiting for the side convo reply.

• Multiple side conversations in one ticket add another dimension of complexity

It may be possible to further refine this approach... Perhaps the ticket could be made into a task type and the due date is used (if the stale calculation can be measured in days instead of hours). I'd love to hear if any of you experts have more ideas.

Hopefully this can help keep agents on top of the side conversations that need some nudging.