You've landed on our support article. If you are looking to learn about automations in Freshservice, check out our IT Automations page.



Workflow Automator allows you to automate all the repetitive tasks and manual processes that you perform on a daily basis. This includes processes like assigning tickets to the right agent or team, following up on approval, and so on. With the Workflow Automator, you can create a workflow using simple drag-and-drop actions. 



Components of a workflow


A workflow is made up of three components: 

  • Event - defines when a workflow has to be triggered
  • Condition - defines the parameter(s) that need to be validated during the execution of a workflow
  • Action - The outcome of the workflow
  • Reader Node - The reader nodes are used to read and reference information from the custom objects into the workflows


It is not necessary that a workflow should have only one condition or an action. You can add multiple conditions and actions to a workflow. (We’ll be seeing this later with a detailed example). 



To create a workflow:

  • Navigate to Workflow Automator: Go to Admin > Helpdesk Productivity > Workflow Automator.

  • Create a New Workflow: Click the "New Automator" button in the top right corner. Choose the module for your workflow, such as "Ticket" if you're creating a ticket workflow.

  • Name and Describe: Provide a name and description for your workflow to help other admins understand its purpose.

  • Set Up an Event: Define when the workflow should be triggered by setting up an event. Choose the trigger conditions and click "Done."

  • Add a Condition: Specify the parameters for the workflow to check after being triggered. Click the condition icon, drag it next to the event, set the parameters, and click "Done." To add more parameters, click "Add New Condition."

  • Add an Action: Define what action the workflow should perform. Click the action icon, drag it next to the condition, choose the action, and click "Done."

  • Complete and Activate: The Automator will save your workflow as a draft as you add conditions and actions. When ready, click "Activate" to activate the workflow.


The above-mentioned steps will help you in creating a workflow. But, in order to understand the level of flexibility offered by the Workflow Automator, let’s take a look at a few examples. 


To gain more clarity on how to set up a workflow, watch the video. 




Scenario 1: Routing tickets to a specific team


Let’s take a scenario where you wish to route all hardware related tickets to a dedicated hardware team. To convert this into a workflow, 


  • Head to Admin > Helpdesk Productivity > Workflow Automator > New Workflow > Ticket 
  • Provide a name and description for the workflow.



  • Choose the options in such a way the workflow is triggered whenever a ticket is created. Select the options Ticket is and Raised. 



  • Provide a label to the event and click Done
  • Now, your screen will look like this



  • Drag a condition icon and place it next to the event. 
  • Select the parameter if Category is and choose the value Hardware



  • Provide a label for the condition and click Done.


 


  • Drag an action and place it next to the condition. 
  • Select the option Assign to group and choose Hardware Team




  • Provide a label and click Done



Now, the workflow to assign all hardware related tickets to the hardware team is ready. The workflow will be triggered when a ticket is created and it will check whether the category is ‘hardware’. If yes, then the ticket will be assigned to the hardware to the hardware team. 


Now, in the next scenario, we’ll go a little further and see how this workflow can be used to assign tickets of different categories to different teams. 


Scenario 2: Routing tickets to different teams


Let’s take a scenario where you want to assign hardware, software, and network-related tickets to hardware, software, and network teams. Let’s take the workflow discussed in the previous scenario and see how we can customize it assign tickets to multiple teams. 


Follow the below-mentioned steps to expand the previous workflow to accomplish more. 

  • Drag a condition and place it at the bottom of the previously existing condition. 
  • Set the parameter if Category is and choose the value Software



  • Provide a label and click Done
  • Drag an action and place it next to the condition. 
  • Select the option Assign to group and choose Software Team.



  • You can follow the same step to assign network related issues to the network team. 



Scenario 3: Setting up Multi-stage approval


Consider a scenario where you want to set up a multi-stage approval process. Whenever an employee requests a laptop priced higher than $1500 dollars, the request needs approval from the employee’s reporting manager and the company’s IT head. 


To set up this workflow:

  1. Set the workflow to be triggered when a ticket is created. 
  2. Add a condition and set the parameter when Type is Service Request
  3. Add another condition and choose the parameters When a service request includes any Apple Macbook
  4. Choose Cost under sub condition and enter the value 1500.
     


  5. Add an action and choose the options Send approval email to and Reporting Manager. Provide a label and click Done. 
  6. This completes setting up the first stage of approval. 
  7. To add the second stage of approval, add another condition and choose the parameters when Request Approval is Approved. 
  8. Add another action next to the newly added condition and choose the option Send approval email to and IT head. 
  9. In the event of notifying the requester through email, you can add another action and choose the option Send email to Requester. Enter the subject and add the content for the email and include placeholders wherever necessary. 
  10. Provide a label and click Done



Saving a workflow


As you keep adding conditions and actions, the automator will automatically save the workflow as a draft. If you wish to activate the workflow, you can click on Activate.


Editing a workflow


You can click any part of a workflow: an event, a condition, or an action and make changes to the selected conditions and parameters. 


Deleting a workflow


 You can now choose to delete either a YES/ NO condition branch (or) delete an action in a workflow.



Cloning a workflow


You can clone an existing workflow and make necessary changes to it. To clone a workflow, 


  1. Go to Settings > Workflow Automator
  2. Select the workflow which you would like to clone and click on Clone.



  3. Provide a name for the new workflow and enter a description. 
  4. Now, the workflow will be cloned under a new name.
  5. Make necessary changes to the event, condition, or action and save your workflow. 


Cloning a Node


Configuring workflows for different business use cases might require multiple nodes with almost the same values and manually creating these nodes repeatedly is a tedious process. 

You can now Copy/Clone a Node and configure automation faster by being able to copy multiple nodes with the same value in a click. The provision is applicable to all event, condition, action, app and reader nodes.


To clone a node:

  1. Hover on a node or even after opening the side model you will notice a 'Clone’ button. 
  2. Click the button to copy the entire node data & drop it wherever you want it within the same workflow. 
  3. Once copied it will act as a normal node.

 


Enabling/Disabling a workflow


A workflow, when created, will be saved as a draft. If you wish to activate the workflow, click on the Save and Activate button on the top right corner. The workflow will now be activated. You can then use the toggle switch to enable/disable the workflow. 



Reader Nodes 


Before Using Reader Node

Click on the image to zoom in

After Using Reader Nodes
Click on the image to zoom in





What are Reader Nodes?


Let’s say you want to route your service request based on the service item requested. 



The reader nodes are used to read and reference information from the custom objects into the workflows. You can create conditions based on which a record is read into workflows from the custom objects. 


For example, if a service request was raised requesting for a Macbook, the reader node can read the record from the business object by matching the service item information, and returns the right agent groups and approvers to route the request to.



Note: 

  • The reader node returns only one record. If multiple records match your conditions the reader node returns only the first record. You can choose a sorting order to ensure that the first record is picked right in such conditions.
  • You can set up only up to 10 filter by conditions in the reader node. Please note that, if you are using dependent fields like category, every dependent field is considered as a unique condition. 


To learn more about custom objects and reader nodes, you can refer to the articles here.

JSON Parser Node




The JSON Parser node enables you to parse any JSON payload within the context of the workflow and use the outputs with subsequent conditions and actions.
You can use the JSON Parser node right away to work with JSON outputs from app actions that get custom attributes from GSuite, Okta and JIRA... Looking ahead you will also be able to use this to parse rest API responses within the workflow automation. Learn More

Image: Left side: The source of the payload and a sample JSON payload is configured
Right side: Outputs can be generated automatically or configured manually using JSON path expressions. 



Image: The outputs configured in the JSON parser node can be referenced and used in the subsequent nodes


Freshservice Api:

You can click here to refer to the Freshservice API documentation for guidance on performing API calls such as GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE in web requests or webhook.


Faqs:


1. Why is the workflow not being triggered in the tickets?

  • Check the activities column within the ticket to confirm the execution of the workflow. If not check if the workflow conditions and event have matched the ticket.
  • Workflows can only be executed for manual actions. System-triggered actions or another workflow cannot trigger the workflow execution at the moment.
  • The workflow will trigger only after the previous workflow executed in the ticket has ended, if you have web-request or any app actions the subsequent workflow will not be triggered until the workflow ends, and we request you to re-order the workflow and have basic automations ( without any web-request or app actions) on top followed by advanced automations.
  • If approvals are part of the process, consider re-arranging the workflows and testing by initiating a new workflow.
  • If there's no prior workflow executed, clone the existing one, then reorder the cloned workflow to the top. Disable the original workflow and test the cloned version.


2. Workflow is not working when being triggered by another workflow, how to resolve this issue?


Workflows can only be executed for manual actions. System-triggered actions cannot trigger the workflow execution at the moment.



3. Can two workflow automations run at the same time or why is one automation being triggered and not others?


No, two workflow automations cannot run simultaneously in Freshservice. Only one workflow automation can be executed at a time, but multiple workflows can execute on the ticket in sequential order. The execution will be based on the order in the Admin > Workflow Automation.


4. Is it possible to recover a deleted workflow?


No, it is not possible to recover a deleted workflow in Freshservice. Once a workflow is deleted, it cannot be restored.


5. How to send survey using workflow automation?


Currently, our automation system lacks a direct placeholder for surveys, but our backend team is actively addressing this. In the interim, you can utilize the placeholder {{ticket.satisfaction_survey}} as a workaround. Note that this placeholder is currently only accessible by default in Email Notifications.



Have the placeholder used in the action node as shown below.



6. How to create a workflow automation for a service catalog item? 


Navigate to the respective workflow, in the workflow condition set the requested item to the respective catalog item as shown below.



7. Is it possible to add more than one event in automation and also restrict the event performer?

You can include multiple events within an automation workflow in Freshservice and also add the respective event performer for whom this should trigger as shown in the below image.


8. How do I set the event and/or the condition to filter on a new onboarding ticket?


In the workflow condition, designate the source as either "Employee Onboarding" or "Employee Offboarding." This will exclusively activate tickets with these specified source values.


9. How do I setup a workflow, to only trigger a Ticket if its from a specific domain and no others?


You have the option to configure the condition to include the "From" email address containing the relevant domain, thereby limiting the activation of the workflow.


10. How do I get the ticket notes into an email with Workflow Automator using the Placeholders?


Currently, you can only incorporate the last public comment into emails using the placeholder feature. Private notes cannot be included at the moment.



11. Is there a way to clone a workflow from one workspace to another?


Copying workflows from one workspace to another isn't feasible due to the variations in configurations within each workspace.


12. Is there an option to change the description of a ticket using a workflow?


Navigate to the appropriate workflow and add the necessary event and condition nodes. Then, drag and drop the web request node and use the API call provided below.


https://api.freshservice.com/v2/#update_ticket_priority


Set the authentication type to Basic Auth. Use the admin API key, which you can find by clicking on the profile icon at the top right, as the username. For the password, use a single letter such as 'a' or 'x'.


13. How to skip new ticket/ticket creation email notification?


Please go to Workspace > Global Settings Admin > Workflow Automation. Add necessary conditions based on your usecase, set the event to "Ticket is Created" and in the action node, select "Skip New Ticket Email Notifications."


14. How to create child ticket/related ticket from workflow automation?

From the workflow automation use the web-request node Post call to perform this action by referring to the below api documentation to create child tickets.


https://api.freshservice.com/v2/#create_child_ticket


Set the authentication type to Basic Auth. Use the admin API key, which you can find by clicking on the profile icon at the top right, as the username. For the password, use a single letter such as 'a' or 'x'.


15. Can offboarding or onboarding requests be set up to include a list of tasks instead of multiple tickets?

Please create workflows to add tasks to onboarding or offboarding request tickets by navigating to Admin > Workflow Automation > Create a new workflow. Select the event based on your use case and set the condition source to "employee off-boarding" or "employee onboarding." Then, in the action node, add the tasks.


14. How to change the priority status of default tickets coming in via email?


Go to Global Settings / respective workspace Admin > Workflow Automation. Create a new automation with the event "ticket is created" and set the condition "if source is email." In the action node, set the priority as needed.


15. How to automatically assign tickets to a group if the ticket is not assigned when it is created?


Navigate to your workspace Admin > Workflow Automation. Create a new automation with the event "ticket is created." Set the condition to "if the group is null" and in the action, assign it to the respective group..