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Sign InTesting Workflow Automations
Workflow automations in OneDesk are automatic actions which are carried out on your items in response to a trigger. You can set up automations for many day-to-day operations in your organization, such as assigning items, or for more specialized needs requiring several filters.
After creating an automation and saving it, the automation is active in OneDesk. If you would like to test the automation works before putting it to use, there are several methods you can use to verify your automations.
For the basics of creating automations see: About Automations.
Testing Workflow Automations
The easiest way to test your automations is to create a test item and trigger the automation with that test item. For example, in More Applications -> Administration -> Automations we’ll create an automation which runs on incoming tickets with “urgent” in their name, setting the priority to 5 stars:
After saving the automation, create a test ticket called “test urgent ticket” - since the ticket’s priority is 5 stars after being created, we know the automation works:
How to Test Automations Which are Harder to Trigger
If an automation is harder to trigger because of specific filters and trigger conditions, you can verify that the actions of the automation work by changing the automation’s filters and trigger to something easily met, such as the item’s description changing. After verifying that the action affects the item as desired, you can change the filters and trigger back to the specific trigger needed.
For example, we have an automation set up which checks every day for resolved tickets which have not been modified in more than a month. Tickets that meet these criteria are automatically archived:
As it is, this automation is difficult to test. First, you would need to wait for tickets to be resolved and untouched for more than 30 days, and then you would also need to check back every 24 hours to see whether these old tickets have been archived.
To more easily test this automation, remove the filter on last modified date, and change the trigger to something you can easily trigger, such as the description changing:
After going into a resolved ticket’s detail panel and changing its description, we see the ticket has now been archived:
Now we know the automation works in principle, and can change the filters and triggers back to what they were before.
Tracing Automations
If an automation is not behaving as expected, or you suspect that an automation is not running, you can trace the automation’s activity in your account with the Activities application. Access the Activities application in More Applications -> Analytics -> Activities:
Automations will be denoted by the bot icon and the “Performed By” name will be the automation’s ID number. You can access the automation by hovering over the bot icon and selecting the automation ID. More info on tracing automations.
