Building advanced conditions (classic triggers)

How to refer to values of ticket and comment fields
How to use expression operators
- Options for “matches” operator
How to group condition expressions
How to manipulate data inside operands
How to assign tickets proportionally on the shift basis

How to refer to values of ticket and comment fields

You can use a reference in the trigger conditions. When the one is checked, the reference will be replaced by the ticket or comment property to which it refers.

Define the source of data

One of the options is retrieving properties of either a ticket or a comment. You can get the properties of a current or previous version of the ticket. One of the following keywords should be used to get a required property:

[Ticket] (can be used on any event)
[LastTicketVersion] (can be used on a Ticket has been changed event, see an example)
[Comment] (can be used on a Comment has been added event)

Get simple values

To get a column value for a ticket or comment, it is necessary to use column’s internal name:

[Ticket.TicketID]
[Ticket.Title]
[Comment.Body]
[Comment.Type]

In the example above, TicketID and Title are internal names of the columns in the “Tickets” list. Body and Type are the internal names in the “Comments” list. This way you can retrieve any simple value such as text, choice, or date and time. In the case of multiple values, they will be separated by semicolons.

Get lookup values

Sometimes you may need to access data from a lookup column. Reference to it will look like this:

[Ticket.Requester.Title]
[Ticket.Requester.Organization.Title]

In the example above, the tokens return a full name of the requester and a name of the requester’s organization via lookup columns. The “Requester” is a lookup column in the “Tickets” list that refers to the “Title” column in the “Contacts” list. The “Organization” is another lookup column in the “Contacts” list that refers to the “Title” column in the “Organizations” list.

Get person or group values

Getting data from the field which has a Person or Group type is almost the same as in the case with lookup fields. The only exception, that there is a fixed list of properties that you can refer to:

ID
LoginName
Title
Email

For example, references for a person or group specified in the “Assigned to” field will look as follows:

[Ticket.AssignedTo.ID]
[Ticket.AssignedTo.LoginName]
[Ticket.AssignedTo.Title]
[Ticket.AssignedTo.Email]

How to use expression operators

There is an operator in the middle of each condition expression. It performs some actions with data from both ends of expression and returns true or false. The operator can be a basic mathematical comparison:

equals (==)
not equal to (!=)
less than (<)
greater than (>)
less than or equal to (<=)
greater than or equal to (>=)

As well as a function:

contains (returns true if the left string contains the right one, it is case-sensitive)
does not contain (returns true if the left string doesn’t contain the right one, it is case-sensitive too)
matches (the function returns true if the left part is an occurrence of the regular expression which is in the right part of condition expression)

Options for “matches” operator

The pattern can contain inline options to modify the behaviour of the regular expression. Such options have to be placed at the beginning of the expression inside brackets with a question mark: (?YOUR_OPTIONS). For example options (?mi) will allow to process multi-line text with case insensitivity. List of available options:

allowing whitespace and comments (x)
single-line mode (s)
multi-line mode (m)
case insensitivity (i)
only allow explicit capture (n)

You can find additional information about inline options in this article.

How to group condition expressions

Condition expressions are grouped with the following logical operators:

AND (the group of expressions returns true if each element does)
OR (the group of expressions returns true if any element does)

By default, there is always one basic group of conditions even if you have just one expression. You can add nested groups which will return a common result for all expressions it contains.

How to manipulate data inside operands

Besides operators, you can perform some additional actions on data right in the operands’ fields (the left and right parts of expressions). There are boolean, arithmetical, and date/time functions. They can be applied to hardcoded data as well as to ticket or comment fields.

Boolean Functions

Name	Description	Usage	Result
`in()`	An argument of the function is a set of elements separated by comma. The function returns `true` if the first element is found among the rest ones.	`in(1 + 1, 1, 2, 3)`	`true`
`if()`	The function receives three arguments: condition expression, values to return depending on the condition (whether it is true or false).	`if(3 % 2 = 1, 'trueValue', 'falseValue')`	`trueValue`

Arithmetical Functions

Name	Description	Usage	Result
`Abs()`	Returns the absolute value of a specified number.	`Abs(-1)`	`1`
`Ceiling()`	Returns the smallest integer greater than or equal to the specified number.	`Ceiling(1.5)`	`2`
`Floor()`	Returns the largest integer less than or equal to the specified number.	`Floor(1.5)`	`1`
`Max()`	Returns the larger of two specified numbers.	`Max(1, 2)`	`2`
`Min()`	Returns the smaller of two numbers.	`Min(1, 2)`	`1`
`Round()`	Rounds a value to the nearest integer or specified a number of decimal places.	`Round(3.222, 2)`	`3.22`

Date/Time Functions

Name	Description	Usage	Result
`Today()`	Returns the current system date.	`Today()`	`#01/02/2017#`
`Now()`	Returns the current system date and time.	`Now()`	`#01/02/2017 13:47#`
`Date()`	Returns the date part of a particular datetime value.	`Date([Ticket.Created])`	`#01/02/2017#`
`AddMinutes()`	Adds the specified number of minutes to the specified date parameter.	`AddMinutes(#01/02/2017 13:45#, 2)`	`#01/02/2017 13:47#`
`AddHours()`	Adds the specified number of hours to the specified date parameter.	`AddHours(#01/02/2017 13:45#, 2)`	`#01/02/2017 15:45#`
`AddDays()`	Adds the specified number of days to the specified date parameter.	`AddDays(#01/04/2017 12:00#, 2)`	`#03/04/2017 12:00#`
`AddMonths()`	Adds the specified number of months to the specified date parameter.	`AddMonths(#01/04/2017 12:00#, 2)`	`#01/06/2017 12:00#`
`AddYears()`	Adds the specified number of years to the specified date parameter.	`AddYears(#01/02/2017 12:00#, 2)`	`#01/02/2019 12:00#`

How to assign tickets proportionally on the shift basis

To demonstrate how conditions should be configured, let’s consider the following example. There are three shifts with 2 agents in each to provide 24/7 support. New tickets are assigned to agents of a certain shift depending on the time of their creation. All tickets should be distributed proportionally between agents of a certain shift. We create a separate trigger for assigning tickets to each agent. The triggers will run on the creation of a ticket. Here’s how its condition will look like for one of the agents of the day shift.

It is necessary to check whether the ticket is assigned to nobody. A reference to assignee’s ID is used:

[Ticket.AssignedTo.ID]

For checking the time of creation, a reference to the accordant ticket field is required:

[Ticket.Created]

Use the Date() function to get the day. If you pass the reference [Ticket.Created] as an argument, it will return 12 AM of the day when the ticket is created:

Date([Ticket.Created])

Use the AddHours() function to define a certain time point of a day. I used the following functions to define limits of the day shift (from 8 AM till 4 PM):

AddHours(Date([Ticket.Created]), 8)
AddHours(Date([Ticket.Created]), 16)

Also, the division with remainder will be useful in this case. Divide the item ID by the number of agents in one shift. In this case, it’s 2. The possible remainders are 0 and 1. It means that we assign all tickets with the former to one agent and with the latter to another.

[Ticket.ID] % 2

Thus, the condition for the described example will look as follows for one of two agents of the day shift which lasts from 8 AM till 4 PM. All expressions are united with the logical operator AND since each should return true.

Condition for assigining tickets on the shift basis