Action Flow Academy

Hey ​@Fiona11, 

Thanks for sharing these concerns around action flows and apologies for any confusion our documentation, or lack there of, may have caused. I’ll be sure to share this feedback internally with the right teams as I can imagine you’re not the only one experiencing this. 

Just to confirm, have you had a chance to look at these related articles?

• Creating custom action flow triggers
• Creating action flows to automate processes across Zendesk and external systems - (this article in particular covers the anatomy of action flows)
• Editing and managing action flows

Let me know!

Hi Brett

Thanks for your reply.

As I mentioned, I’ve read all of the articles about action flows but I don’t understand how those instructions translate to any real world example. 

For example, the flow I mentioned: when a trigger is added, add a task list to the ticket.

When I create an action flow, it asks what the trigger is. There’s no option for ‘tag added’ so I choose Ticket Status changed. It asks for the variable. I don’t know what this means but maybe it’s where I add the tag. The instructions mention inputs, I don’t see this in the trigger set up. I then add the step of adding the task list. It asks for a ticket ID - I’m not sure what that means, it’s whatever ticket it’s triggered on. 

I’m not a developer and it feels like the instructions were written on the assumption that people using this will have a technical background. There’s no explanation of what these things mean (in plain language) or how they would apply in any real world use cases. 

Thanks

Fiona

Hey ​@Fiona11 , appreciate you sharing some additional context here. If you’re okay with it, I’d like to get a ticket created on your behalf so our customer support team can dig into this with you. They’ should be able to point you in the right direction as well as look into any technical issues you’re running into. 

Regarding the documentation around this feature, I’ll pass this feedback along to our team that manages these articles so they’re aware of these pain points. 

Let me know if you’d like for me to create that ticket for you in the meantime.

Thanks!

​@Fiona11 Action flows are, as best as I can tell, an early attempt at automation. I know at relate both last year and this year they talked it up but anyone who has experience with other automation platforms like MS PowerAutomate, BluePrism, or UI Path will see this as a… poor imitation(?) or rather a limited automation experience. With that said I use Action Flows a lot. If I would have to provide guidance on how to figure out how to use it I would simply say “click all the buttons and spent some time playing with different triggers and tasks”.  A good example of this is with the use case you asked about:

“When I create an action flow, it asks what the trigger is. There’s no option for ‘tag added...”

To have an action flow trigger based off when a tag is added you would need to go to Tickets > Routing > Ticket tags changed. From there you would need to go to the condition and select Ticket Tags changed to open the steps properties and select tags (added). The operation I use is typically contains at least 1 of and then you would provide the tag name.
 
As a side note: the properties mentioned above are the variables or input that each trigger and task will use.

 

Aligning with your frustration this is not straight forward and it took me some time clicking buttons to discover it. I’ve vented this frustration to my CSM and AM as well.

The next part of the example:

“...add this task list to it”

This can be done by using the Add task list action. In that action you will need to provide a Ticket Id but not just any Ticket Id the Ticket Id from the one that triggered the task or one of the trigger properties. If you click into the Ticket Id box you should see ‘Select a variable instead’ go ahead and click that and you will see your list previous tasks to pick from.
 

Click on the correct task/trigger to open its properties. In this case it would be Ticket tags changed. The property list for that task/trigger opens and you can select a variable from there as input.
 

To finish setting up the Task list action its just a matter of selecting the correct active task list which you would have created earlier. 
 

I know this isn’t a super polished, well explained demo of how to use Action flow but the key take away should be that in order to truly figure this out go ahead and explore the feature, Ie click on all the buttons and if they look right play with them to see how it works. A test ticket and the action flow’s test button goes along way with figuring out what’s what.

Hopefully this helped you out some.​​​​

Hi Brett

Thanks for your reply.

Yes that’d be great thanks. I’m sure everything works as it’s supposed to but I’ve spent many hours now trying to figure it out and gotten nowhere. I think what I’m trying to do is fairly simple so I’m not sure what’s going wrong or what’s not clicking for me. Thanks!

What tool are you actually using to add tags? Manual entry, a trigger, or another action flow?

Honestly the docs make action flows sound way more abstract than they are. For your specific case where a tag triggers a task list, you probably don't even need variables or inputs. That's for passing data between steps. You just need one trigger condition: if ticket tag contains X then add task list Y. That's it.

The confusion usually comes from the interface showing you all the advanced options upfront. Variables are for when you want to reuse a value across multiple steps, like a ticket ID you're passing to an external API. If you're just adding a checklist inside Zendesk, ignore them completely. What does your current flow look like? Maybe I can spot where it's breaking.

​@Fabi.SPL Thanks! I’ve mostly figured this particular use case out but it would be great to have more explanation and guidance on how to use Action Flows and when to use them vs actions within a Use Case etc. Hopefully Zendesk can add more documentation or other types of support!