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Freshservice Reference Roundtable: City of Denton

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Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 17:00

Freddy AI Unplugged - Expert Insights & AMA Session

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Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 16:00

Agent assistance bot vs Chatbot: When to get started with what?

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Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 16:00

Let’s Talk IT: Fresh features. Fresh insights. Freshservice in 2025 - SLOT 2

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Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 16:00

Let’s Talk IT: Fresh features. Fresh insights. Freshservice in 2025 - SLOT 1

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Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 08:00

Automation rules that run on Ticket Updates

Automation rules that run on ticket updates allow you to listen for particular events and automate a response to them. This article explains this concept in detail and provides step-by-step instructions for specific use cases. This article contains: About automation rules that run on ticket updates Manage your automation rules Create, edit, or clone automation rules for ticket updates Events Conditions Actions Examples and use cases About automation rules that run on ticket updates You can create Automation rules that run on ticket updates to react to real-time events in tickets. These rules constantly listen for events you've specified in your helpdesk, match them against conditions, and then perform automatic actions. For example: automatically reopen resolved tickets (action) as soon as a customer replies (event) assign an agent (action) if a note is added (event) by a third-party (condition) send a customer satisfaction survey (action) when a ticket is resolved (event) send an email to your supervisor (action) when you receive a bad customer rating (event) from a VIP customer (condition) Manage your automation rules To manage these types of automation rules, go to Admin > Workflows > Automation Rules and click the Ticket Updates tab. On the page, you'll see the following components: The New rule button: Click this to create a new rule. See below. The Reorder button: Click this to change the order of your rules. Rules are executed from top to bottom. The Search icon: When you have a long list of rules (across all three types), use this icon to quickly find one. Rule toggle: For each rule, use this toggle to enable or disable it. The overflow menu: The triple dot menu contains options to edit a rule, clone it, or delete it. Rule statistics: Under each rule, you can see when the rule was last modified, who updated it, and how many tickets were affected by this rule in the previous 7 days. Create, edit, or clone automation rules for ticket updates New: You can now create rules for actions performed by Collaborators. When you create a new rule or edit / clone an existing one, you're taken to the rule editing page. This page contains several sections, each explained below: The Rule Name field—Ensure that you write a descriptive name for each rule because this name appears in your list of rules and search results. The Event blocks: When an action performed by—trigger on a specific entity's behavior Involves any of these events—trigger when a particular action occurs. The Conditions block (On tickets with these properties)—filter when the rule triggers based on values in the ticket or the associated contact or company. The Actions block (Perform these actions)—the automations to perform when the rule is triggered. Click the following toggles to learn about events, conditions, and actions in detail. Events Events determine when the rule is triggered. You must specify at least one event. Click Add new event to specify more. The rule is triggered if any one event is met. The available events may vary based on your plan and whether you've enabled certain features. The following is a non-exhaustive list of available events. EventChoices When an action performed by... Agent - select specific agents added to your Helpdesk Requester - the ticket creator Agent or Requester - the assigned agent or the ticket creator Collaborator - any Collaborator agents. Learn more. System - Freshdesk itself. Involves any of these events (human events) These events are visible when you select a non-System option in the first block: Default or custom ticket property is changed Agent or Group is updated Note is added Reply is sent Customer feedback is received For many of these, you can specify exact values to target hyperspecific events, e.g. Status is changed from Pending to Resolved. Involves any of these events (system events) These events are visible when you select System in the first block: Mail sent to address failed (requester, or CC or forward address) Forward thread failed Ticket is marked overdue (for first response, next response, or resolution) Conditions Below the events blocks, there is a block called On tickets with these properties. This block filters when the rule is run based on a value in the ticket or its associated contact or company. The available conditions may vary based on your plan and whether you've enabled certain features. The following is a non-exhaustive list of available conditions. ConditionChoices In Tickets The email address of the requester, or the To or CC fields Default or custom ticket properties, including tags Updated during, after, or before specific business hours Latest interaction or number of interactions from the requester or agents Whether the ticket is merged, has attachments, or comes from a specific ticket form Custom objects. Learn more. In Contacts The requester's email, name, title, timezone or language The requester's Twitter follower count or whether they're verified The segment of the requester In Companies The company's name, domain, health score, tier, industry, or renewal date The segment of the company Each of these has specific contextual filters to target hyperspecific cases. For example: Is / Is not / Is any of / Is none of Contains / does not contain / Has any or none of these words Starts with / ends with Greater than / lesser than You can chain conditions to create complex use cases. Click Add new condition to specify additional ticket properties. You can specify whether the rule should be triggered if ANY of the conditions are met, or if ALL must be met. Click Add new filter to add a second condition block. Use the AND/OR operators to determine whether the rule should be triggered by satisfying both or only one of the conditions. For example, the following setup will be triggered in 3 cases: If the ticket was created by someone at the "Acme Inc" company AND the ticket subject contains any of these words - "urgent", "escalation", "problem", or "serious" OR if the Source of the ticket is "Phone" or "Walk-in" (for any company) OR if the Priority of the ticket is "Urgent" (for any company) Actions Below the conditions block is the Perform these actions block. When the rule is triggered, the actions specified here are executed in order. You can define multiple actions by clicking Add new action. The available actions may vary based on your plan and whether you've enabled certain features. The following is a non-exhaustive list of available actions: Set default or custom field as—choose a ticket property and define what its value should be. Reassign agent or group Add tag or watcher Create a new ticket—specify a new ticket's subject and description, and choose whether to inherit ticket properties Add note—write a note to add to the ticket and define persons to notify. Send email to group, agent, or requester—draft an email with a subject and description. Delete the ticket or mark it as spam If you choose to update a field, that field's type is automatically validated. For dropdown fields, you can only select from valid options and for numerical and date fields, you can only provide valid numbers and dates. For text-based actions such as emails and notes, you will be able to use dynamic placeholders to insert ticket properties. There is an additional action called Trigger webhook that enables much more functionality. See Using webhooks in automation rules. Once you are done adding events, conditions, and actions, click Preview and Save. A summary will be auto-generated. Review it and click Save and enable. Examples and use cases The following are step-by-step instructions to create automation rules for particular use cases. This section contains: Pre-configured automation rules on ticket updates Automatically assign ticket to first responder Automatically reopen tickets when the customer responds Add assigned agent as a watcher on the ticket Create a new ticket via Webhook on replies to closed tickets Automate ticket management Prevent a closed ticket from reopening when a customer replies Notify an agent if a note is added to a ticket by a third party Prevent specific agents from closing tickets Notify agents when a ticket is deleted Add tags for merged tickets Automate email notifications Automatically send email notifications for specific events Notify customers about agents who are out of office Receive notifications for tickets that are assigned to another agent Automate Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys Send CSAT surveys to customers Address tickets based on CSAT responses Pre-configured automation rules on ticket updates To help you get started, Freshdesk provides a standard set of automation rules. You can choose to enable, disable, or modify them based on your requirements. Automatically assign ticket to first responder When an agent replies to an unassigned ticket, this automation rule assigns the ticket to the agent so that they can continue to take ownership. Click on the rule to view or edit the rule. Automatically reopen tickets when the customer responds The recommended best practice for agents is to focus on ticket views that only have open tickets. This ensures a clutter-free view and eliminates the need for agents to monitor for customer responses. When a customer responds to a resolved or closed ticket, this automation rule automatically reopens it, making it appear in an agent's open ticket view. To ensure not all tickets are reopened, the rule executes only if one of the conditional blocks matches: If the ticket status is not closed or resolved and if the incoming email is not an auto-response, OR If the incoming email is not an auto-response and if Freddy's suggestion is not Thank you Note. See Setting up

Configuring Multiple Business Hours in Freshdesk

When you have parts of your support team working across different regions, times or time zones, managing the working hours of each group becomes a hassle. Since each center wakes up at a different time, it makes sense to align their SLA timers with their business hours. Multiple business hours in Freshdesk allows you to create different sets of working hours and holidays, which can then be assigned to specific groups. How does having multiple business hours help? When your whole team operates out of the same office and they clock in and clock out at the same time everyday, just having one set of official business hours sounds fine. But when your team works out of multiple centers, or follows different work hours, it is easier for you to lay down a separate set of business hours for each team. By dedicating separate business hours, SLAs can be executed properly based on time or place of origin and your team won't be incorrectly penalized. When would setting up another set of business hours be necessary? Centers at NYC and LON: If you have a geographically distributed team working across multiple time zones, setting up different business hours for each center makes sense. Different teams to manage different climes: If you've split your Global Support Teams by the regions from which customers raise support issues, you might want each set of agents to work on the same hours as the customers they help. Day Workers and Night Owls: If you have special teams that rotate your 24x7 support center by jumping in at different shifts, you might want to set definite working hours for each group. How to create multiple Business Hours Login to your support portal Go to Admin > Team > Business Hours Click New business hours You can create new business hours based on either location or a specific team Be sure to specify the appropriate Time Zone setting for your Business Hour You can also import holidays according to whichever country your team is working from Once you've created the business hours that you want, here's how to assign them to groups: Login to your support portal Go to Admin > Team > Groups Select the appropriate group based on location and team Under the list of Business Hours, select the corresponding one Click Save and your all incoming tickets assigned to that group will have SLAs executed based on the Business Hours that you just defined Here, the Billing team has been assigned Sydney's business hours.

Modifying and deleting agent profiles

In your Freshdesk account, the roles that an agent is associated with are structured in the following manner: Account Administrator > Administrator > Supervisor > Agent You can also set up custom roles to customize helpdesk access for your agents. Modifying and deleting agent profiles As a standard rule, if you want to delete or edit another agent’s profile, you have to be an Admin who can manage agents - that is, you need access to Admin > Team > Agents in order to modify or delete another agent’s profile. There are a few rules when it comes to modifying or deleting an agent's profile: You cannot delete yourself (your access). If you’re an Admin, you can edit or delete the profile of other Admins and Agents but not Account Admins. If you’re an Account Admin, you can edit or delete any profile on the helpdesk. Guide to editing or deleting an agent’s profile Soft delete an agent's profile Login to your support portal as an Admin. Go to Admin > Team > Agents, and find the agent whose profile you want to modify. Click Edit or press the trash button to delete their profile. If you can’t see those buttons, it means you don’t have the necessary privileges to modify their profile (the agent could be an Account Administrator and you might only have Administrator privileges). Note: If an agent is deleted, he/she will be converted to a contact in your account and their profile can be found under the Customers tab. All the tickets assigned to the deleted agent will automatically become 'unassigned'. Go through this link to understand what happens to tickets assigned to an agent when their access is deleted. Hard delete an agent's profile The admin can navigate to an agent’s profile and 'Delete' the agent. When you delete an agent from Freshdesk, all tickets assigned to that agent will automatically become unassigned and the agent would be converted into a customer in your Freshdesk Account. To permanently delete this agent, follow same steps as you would to delete a contact. If the deleted contact has been an agent with the account, we anonymise their data and permanently delete their PII (Personally Identifiable Information) but not their contributions to the business like tickets responded to, knowledge base articles created, etc as that would be detrimental to business and is construed as property of the organization. Note: If you are using SSO for login purposes, you will have to update the required attributes (profile details) in the SSO system for the changes to reflect inside Freshdesk.

Ticket Scope vs. Agent Role - what’s the difference?

When you create a new agent or edit an existing one in Freshdesk, you have to define their role as well as the scope of tickets that they're allowed to see. To be clear, Ticket Scope and Agent Roles are two different entities in Freshdesk, but they can be used together to achieve want you want in terms of access control and permissions. Agent Role defines the kind of activities an agent is allowed to do in your helpdesk. This covers activities such as replying to tickets, adding notes and so on, but doesn't define the tickets that they'd be allowed to perform these activities on. Note: It is mandatory to associate an agent with a role while creating a new agent in your helpdesk. Ticket Scope defines the level of access an agent has with respect to tickets in your helpdesk. You can choose between three levels of Scope: (a) Global (b) Group-Level (c) Restricted Agents with global access can view all tickets across your helpdesk, whereas, agents with group and restricted access though, can only view tickets that have been assigned to the group they belong to or assigned to themselves respectively. Please note that the Scope only controls what agents can view, not what they do - that is what the Roles are for. For example, you can assign roles to the agent to define whether they can reply to a ticket or forward a conversation, and then set their scope to specify which tickets they can actually view. That means you can set the scope of an agent to just view tickets assigned to them, but give them complete control over all your configurations and setup. You can even create an agent with global access, allowing them to view everything coming into your support, but if you tighten the noose on their roles, all they can do is add a private note to the ticket. If you are unable to view a ticket and encounter an error message stating, "The ticket is either not there or you don't have permission," the issue could be due to one of the following reasons: The ticket may have been permanently deleted from the Helpdesk. The ticket might be outside your access scope, meaning you have restricted ticket access. You can contact your Account Admin to determine your assigned scope. Related articles Creating a custom role Introduction to Collaborators Advanced ticket scope

Creating a custom role

If you need to fine-tune the permissions for different agents and groups, you can create custom roles. Custom roles support a long list of permissions for every segment of Freshdesk. For example: Community Manager: A custom role with no Ticket permissions to view, modify, or reassign tickets, but has Forums permissions to handle the user community. Analyst: A custom role with no Solutions permissions to edit articles, but has Analytics permissions to manage reports and dashboards. Processing Agent: A custom role that can view tickets and respond to them, add or edit notes, and edit properties, but cannot create, delete, or merge tickets. Tip: Regardless of role permissions, all agents can still view tickets (based on their scope), add private notes, and create solution articles as drafts. About role permissions You can create a vast variety of custom roles with unique sets of permissions to suit your business needs. Depending on your Freshdesk plan, you may be able to manage the following groups of permissions: Permission Category Description Tickets Create, edit, delete, and manage tickets, ticket list views, and notes Scenario Automation Manage personal or shared scenario automations Solutions Create, edit, delete, and manage articles, categories, and templates Forums Create, edit, delete, and moderate forum topics and categories Customers Create, delete, or export contacts, companies, and segments Field Service Create, manage, or delete service tasks, access the scheduling dashboard, and manage automation for service tasks. Analytics Access analytics reports and manage team dashboards Administration Access operational admin actions including managing agents, portal settings, billing, and more. General Create new tags and schedule out-of-office for themselves Freddy Copilot Access the Freddy Copilot add-on (consumes a license) Freddy Insights Access the Freddy Insights add-on Custom Objects View, create, update, or delete custom object records About admin permissions From a management perspective, you could also use roles to specify three levels of Admin controls: You can create users with no access to admin controls at all. You can create an Operational admin and allow them to manage agents and/or set up automations but not modify configurations. You can nominate agents as Super admins, who get complete configuration access to your Admin tab. You can specify whether a Super Admin can access Account and Billing information. Learn more about Admin Roles, Assuming Identities, and Deleting Agents. How to create a custom role As an admin, go to Admin > Team > Roles and click New Role. Enter a name and description for this role and set the agent type to whom this role should apply. Scroll through the list of permissions and check the appropriate checkboxes and radio buttons. Click Save. You can now apply the role to agents. Learn how. If you have a custom role configuration in mind but aren't sure how to implement it in Freshdesk, contact support@freshdesk.com.