Overview
The Trigger Rules feature exists for all of the ticket areas. Trigger business rules are able to define particular automated behaviors to occur when a ticket first meets specified criteria, or is ever updated and is meeting that criteria at the time of the update. This is a particular powerful feature within Vivantio and can, for instance, change the status, re-assign a ticket, send a notification email, even change the status of the parent ticket (please see Managing Groups of Tickets and Ticket Hierarchy in this section) based on various trigger criteria.
A common feature in Vivantio is the Expression Builder. Escalation uses this feature to create conditions for the menu item. Filters are added, which exist for All, Any or None of the conditions. The All option contains AND statements when conditions are created, whereas the Any option conditions OR statements.
For example, if one condition of Status = Open is created within the All section of the Expression Builder and two conditions of Priority = High , Priority = Medium are created from the Any section then the Expression Builder would apply all open tickets AND either the Priority High OR the Priority Medium, but not both. When conditions and filters have been set, they run automatically in the background applying the actions created. In Escalation, actions can be applied to change the owner, status, add an action and email based on the SLA timing of the ticket.
There are some special fields in the Expression Builder, these are:-
Ticket / Group Name / Equals / In my groups Ticket is assigned to any group the current user belongs to.
Ticket / Owner Name or Taken By Name / Equals / Logged On User Ticket is assigned to the current user.
Ticket / Owner Name or Taken By Name / Equals / Me and my Groups Ticket is assigned to the logged on user or in any group that this user belongs to but not assigned to a particular user.
Date Special Fields: -
Today The date matches today's date
Yesterday The date matches yesterdays date
Tomorrow The date matches tomorrows date
Days Before Today User can type a number in here
Days After Today User can type a number in here
Business rules behave in particular way:
1. A business rule will not fire if the last update was from another business rule or as a part of an automated workflow action to prevent chains of business rules detrimentally effecting performance
2. In the case that more than one business rule’s criteria is matched when a change is made to a ticket then all matching business rules will fire
3. When more than one business rule fires it is not possible to order the sequence that they fire in.
Guidance
Navigate to the Admin Area > System Areas > Select the System Area e.g. Ticket > Business Rules > Trigger Rules
There are many actions that you can perform when setting up a Trigger Rule, 3 of them are Dynamic Assignment, Round Robin Assignment and Weighted Assignment.
Dynamic Assignment
For approvals processes, such as Change Management, Dynamic assignment is a powerful feature, in which the submitters Line Manager can approve a task assigned to them.
This is achieved using a custom form field in the contact record which links to the line manager email address in Active Directory.
In the Admin Area > Change > Templates: A filter expression can be created using the line manager email, as shown below:
Using Trigger Rules set the logic in the expression builder, the example below is for on boarding a new starter, as task is assigned to the line manager
A filter expression can also be added in the same manner to dynamically assign a task to a Manager:
Weighted and Round Robin
These are configured in the Business Rules engine, Trigger Rules; and they have been designed to stop cherry picking within a team whose role it is to choose tickets from a Pending Queue. Here we are able to assign tickets automatically and by two different methods:
Round Robin
Round Robin assigns tickets to a team of people based on alphabetical order.
Weighted
Weighted assigns tickets to a team of people based on how many tickets they have; the person with the least tickets will receive the next ticket created, if two people have the same amount of the least tickets then It will assign in alphabetical order.
In the Admin Area > Ticket Type > Business Rules > Trigger Rules > create your logic in the expression builder, weighted example below:
And in the Actions tab select ‘Change Owner’ assigning the ticket to Weighted as shown in the screen shot below:
In the Admin Area > Ticket Type > Business Rules > Trigger Rules > create your logic in the expression builder, Round Robin example below:
And in the Actions tab select ‘Change Owner’ assigning the ticket to Round Robin as shown in the screen shot below:
The ‘Exclude OOO’ box will exclude any users who have been set as out of office in Vivantio.
To Add a Trigger Rule:
Click Add
Enter a Rule Name and select when the condition is to be executed, either when the Ticket first meets the condition or when it is matching the ticket updated
Enter the Condition(s) for the Trigger
Enter the Timing for the Trigger
Enter the Actions for the Trigger
Click Save
Please Note: You can choose different options for when the actions associated with this Trigger Rule are executed.
You can choose from:
Immediately
The actions will be executed as soon as the conditions are met. You might use this for sending out alerts when certain types of ticket are logged
After a delay
The actions will be executed after a fixed amount of time has passed. You might use this for sending out a survey 4 hours after a ticket is closed
Custom Form Field Date
The actions will be executed on the date/time specified in a Custom Form Field. You can also offset the actions to happen a set time before or after the date. You might use this to schedule future actions for tickets to happen on specific dates such as a reminder to users of planned downtime during a change.
To Edit a Trigger Rule:
Tick the box of the Trigger Rule you wish to edit
Click Edit
Make your changes
Click Save
To Delete a Trigger Rule:
Tick the box of the Trigger Rule you wish to delete
Click Delete
Click Ok to confirm the action
Sending an email using Trigger Rules
In Business Trigger Rules it is possible to include an action that sends an email.
In the ‘To:’ field it is possible to specify a variable, such as a caller custom form field
Example
{{caller.managerdetails.linemanager}}
Reviewed: 08 March 2023