Introduction to triggers in HelpDesk for SharePoint

New trigger

Open HelpDesk settings:

Go to the Triggers tab and create a new item in the list.

General properties overview:

• Active, it defines whether HelpDesk will run the trigger on a specified event; use this option to temporarily disable some triggers;

• Log trigger runs in ticket history, it adds a record to the History tab of a ticket form if trigger actions were performed on its basis;

• Trigger name, a name to identify the trigger on the list;

• Order, the integer number that defines a trigger’s position in the queue of triggers to run in ascending orger (the triggers with the lower number have more proirity).

Set the general parameters as follows:

Events

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

• Ticket has been 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 the current case, I select the event Ticket has been created.

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.

Let’s check whether the title of a newly created ticket contains such keywords as Quote or Invoice to define 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, pay attention that it is case-sensitive. After configuring the condition, click the Validate button to ensure that there are no syntax errors.

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.

There are three types of available actions:

• Set field, the action assigns a value to the selected field of a ticket;

• Send email, the action sends an e-mail message based on a template that is filled with ticket data;

• Start workflow, the action starts a selected SharePoint 2013 workflow.

For more information on the actions, check the article Actions reference. In this example, we assign a ticket to a certain agent and tag it as Sales. So, I set the field “Assigned to” to the e-mail of the agent responsible for sales tickets.

Then, I add another action and set the “Tags” field to the Sales value. After saving, the trigger is ready for use.