Introduction to modern triggers in HelpDesk for SharePoint

What is a trigger?

A trigger is one of the automation tools available in HelpDesk. Many default triggers are available out of the box. These triggers send notifications to agents and requesters about significant events. For example, a trigger notifies clients when a new reply is added to a ticket:

HelpDesk trigger configuration showing trigger conditions and actions

Whenever a new comment is added, HelpDesk runs the trigger. It then checks the condition to determine whether the added comment is not the initial comment and is a reply. If the condition is met, the trigger sends notifications to the requester and CC contacts. Trigger settings define when to run the trigger, what conditions to check and what actions to perform. You can create triggers for other cases. More information is provided in the following sections.

How to create a new trigger?

Let’s create a trigger that assigns sales tickets to a specified agent and tags them accordingly.

New trigger

Open HelpDesk settings and go to the Triggers tab.

HelpDesk settings page with the Triggers tab selected

Create a new trigger.

HelpDesk Triggers tab with the option to create a new trigger

General properties overview:

Active defines whether HelpDesk will run the trigger for a specified event; use this option to temporarily disable some triggers;
Record runs in ticket history adds a record to the History tab of a ticket form when the trigger performs at least one action;
Title is a name used to identify the trigger in the list;

Set the general properties as follows:

HelpDesk trigger General properties section with trigger settings

Events

The Execute when field contains possible events within your HelpDesk site that can start the trigger. Their names are self-explanatory:

Ticket was created, a new item on the Tickets list is created;
Ticket has been changed, an item on the Tickets list is modified;
Comment has been created, a new comment in the existing ticket is created.

For this example, select the event Ticket was created.

HelpDesk trigger Execute when field showing available events

Conditions

The trigger will execute the specified actions only if conditions are true. You can combine them with logical operators AND/OR, select ticket or comment fields on one side, and enter custom values on the other. It is possible to build more complex conditions using functions and regular expressions. Review the article Building advanced conditions for more information.

HelpDesk trigger condition fields and available references

Let’s check whether the title of a newly created ticket contains such keywords as Quote or Invoice to identify it as a sales ticket. Select [Ticket.Title] in the left dropdown and type the keywords in the right part of each condition. The custom strings should be enclosed in single quotes for proper processing. Also, set the operator to contains. Note that the operator is case-sensitive.

HelpDesk trigger condition checking whether the ticket title contains specified keywords

Actions

The main point of any trigger is to perform some actions. There can be as many actions as you need, and they can be arranged in the order you want. To add one, just click Add action.

The available actions depend on the selected event. For Ticket was created, you can use:

Assign ticket to assign tickets to selected agents according to the configured assignment method;
Send email to send an email message based on a template populated with ticket data;
Set field to assign a value to a selected ticket field.

Change comment type to private is available only for the Comment has been created event.

For more information on the actions, check the article Actions reference. In this example, assign a ticket to a certain agent and tag it as Sales. Set the “Assigned to” field to the email address of the agent responsible for sales tickets.

HelpDesk trigger Set field action configured for the Assigned to field