Workflows

Workflows are automatic processes that can help you automate certain mundane tasks in live conversations or tickets (emails). As opposed to flows, workflows are never conversational; workflows only exist to help agents with simple (but often time-consuming) actions, like solving finished conversations or tagging tickets.

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Please note: Workflows are available on the Growth plan and above (see Which upgrades do I need?).

In this article, you will learn:

What the benefits of workflows are
How to navigate workflows
How to use workflow templates
How to create your own workflows from scratch
How to export and import workflows
What the available nodes are (triggers, conditions, actions)

Silent walkthrough. Turn on two workflow templates: edit and activate the automatic ticket reply, set auto-solve to 2 hours and activate it, then check the Applied to and Executed columns and open View statistics.

What are the benefits of workflows?

When you take advantage of workflows in Tidio, your agents can save time and focus on more valuable tasks in your project. Workflows can handle actions that are very repetitive (but necessary), allowing your team to concentrate their efforts elsewhere.

Workflows don't hold conversations with your visitors the way flows do - they won't ask questions or collect information. The only message a Workflow can send to a customer is a predefined email reply in a ticket (like an automatic reply to new tickets). Otherwise, they're used to perform mundane actions, for example:

Solving live conversations or ticket threads;
Assigning incoming conversations to agents;
Sending initial autoreplies to new tickets;
Changing ticket statuses;
Tagging tickets.

You can make use of the existing workflow templates (and modify them), but also create your own workflows from scratch.

Navigating workflows

You can access your Workflows section by navigating to Settings > Workflows in your Tidio panel:

The Settings sidebar shows "Workflows" selected under General.

Inside, you will find two main tabs: My Workflows and Templates. This is where you manage all your workflows in general - see a list of your added workflows, create new ones, or browse the available templates.

The Workflows page with the "My Workflows" tab selected next to "Templates".

In the upper-right of the Workflows section, you will also find the options to import existing workflows via JSON files, create new workflows from scratch, and a shortcut to add one of the existing templates; these options will be covered in detail later on in this guide.

In the My Workflows tab, you will see all your added workflows, what they're Applied to (Live conversations or Tickets), how many times each one was Executed in the last 30 days, and whether it's Active:

The "My Workflows" list with three workflows, their "Applied to" categories, execution counts, and "Active" switches.

You will also be able to sort them all as needed:

The workflow sorting menu with options for age, alphabetical name, active status, and execution count.

Lastly, any workflow (or workflow draft) can be managed in details by clicking the three dots next to it: Edit (or Edit draft), View statistics (a chart of how many times the workflow was executed), switch it Active, Clone, Export or Delete it. Please note that live conversation workflows can only be edited, enabled/disabled, or deleted:

The three-dots menu of a ticket workflow open in the My Workflows list: Edit, View statistics, Active with its switch, Clone, Export and Delete

Using workflow templates

The quickest way to get started with workflows is to use templates; they're an easy way to automate the most common tasks. Naturally, you can modify the templates to your liking as well.

Find the existing templates in the Templates tab:

The "Templates" tab with cards for assigning and solving conversations, replying to and solving tickets, and escalating tickets without agent response.

In there, you will find several templates ready to add and activate immediately (as well as the option to request a new template that you would find useful!). Each workflow template is marked with either the Live conversations or Tickets tag, letting you know which communication channel the particular workflow is meant for.

When you hover your cursor over a template, you will see the Learn more button appear:

The "Assign conversations automatically" template with its "Learn more" button visible.

Clicking on it will take you to the given template's setup screen, where you can see more details as well as customize certain aspects of the workflow.

Templates for live conversations

The live conversation templates are relatively simple workflows and do not offer much customization. There are currently two templates available for live conversations:

Assign conversations automatically
Solve conversations automatically

Assign conversations automatically

This workflow automatically routes incoming conversations to agents based on their workload or availability. For this purpose, you decide between using the Load balancing option or the Round robin option here.

The Load balancing option allows you to determine the maximum number of live conversations every agent can have at any given time. Incoming conversations are distributed among the online agents equally, but an agent can never be assigned to more conversations than specified.

The automatic conversation assignment settings with "Load Balancing" selected and a conversation limit of 3 per agent.

The Round robin option allows your agents to receive incoming conversations in sequential order; if an agent is offline, their turn is skipped and the new conversation is assigned to the next operator in line. There is no upper limit of conversations that can be assigned to each agent.

The automatic conversation assignment settings with "Round Robin" selected to assign agents in sequential order.

Solve conversations automatically

This workflow allows you to specify the amount of time after which conversations should be marked as solved automatically: under Triggers after, choose between 5 and 120 Minutes, or between 1 and 72 Hours. With Only auto-solve when the last message was sent by an agent checked (it is by default), this only applies to conversations where an agent has responded, but the visitor hasn't given any further reply of their own. Uncheck it to also solve conversations where the visitor wrote last. With the box checked, you'll also see a reminder that tickets, emails and conversations handled by flows are not auto-solved. Please note that without this workflow enabled, your conversations will still get automatically solved after 30 days without the visitor's reply; this is default Tidio behavior.

Templates for tickets

Workflow templates for tickets are slightly more advanced than those for live conversations, as they allow more customization to better suit your needs. There are currently three templates for ticket workflows:

Send automatic ticket reply
Solve tickets automatically
Escalate tickets without agent response

Send automatic ticket reply

This workflow provides instant email acknowledgment by automatically sending a predefined reply when a new ticket is received. You can personalize the message as well as modify more details of the workflow (if you use the advanced editor to modify the template further).

Looking for the Automatic response setting that used to be in your email settings? It's no longer there - this template is now the way to send an automatic reply to new tickets.

The "Send automatic ticket reply" editor with an acknowledgement message, formatting controls, and a "Save" button.

Solve tickets automatically

This workflow lets you specify the amount of time (in days) that needs to pass for a ticket to be solved automatically. This only applies to tickets where the agent has responded and there has been no further reply from the original sender.

The "Solve tickets automatically" settings with "Triggers after" set to 3 days.

When a ticket is solved this way, there is also a follow-up message sent automatically; you can modify this message to your liking:

The "Customise follow-up message" editor with a ticket closure message inviting the customer to reply if they still need help.

Escalate tickets without agent response

This workflow helps you identify cases where an assigned agent hasn’t responded within a specified amount of time, allowing the ticket to be handled by another team member. You can set the amount for time required (in hours):

Once this amount of time passes without any response from the agent, the agent is unassigned from the ticket, and the ticket is made available for other team members to see. An internal note is left inside the ticket, which you can customize as well:

The escalation workflow internal note editor explaining that the ticket was unassigned after a prolonged lack of agent response.

Customizing template details with the advanced editor

With the workflow templates for tickets, you get the option to use the advanced editor and customize the workflow in much more detail:

The "Solve tickets automatically" template with an arrow pointing to "Advanced editing" at the bottom left.

Inside the editor, you will see a workspace that includes several nodes that are part of the given workflow. The nodes include a trigger (it determines when the workflow starts running), conditions, and actions.

Among other things, conditions can be used to decide which ticket source(s) should be considered:

The "Ticket source" condition with separate outputs for tickets created from a mailbox, by Lyro, and from the widget.

... or how to change the ticket status:

The "Change ticket status" action with "Change status to" set to "Solved".

Naturally, you can also change the workflow's automatic reply (if any is being sent in the given template), or add other conditions, etc.

Please note that you can also create your own ticket workflows from scratch, instead of customizing the existing templates; see the next section of this article for more details!

Creating your own workflows

In the top-right of the Workflows section, you can use the Create from scratch button to start building your own custom ticket workflow:

The Workflows toolbar with an arrow pointing to the "Create from scratch" button.

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Please note: creating workflows from scratch (as well as using the editor to modify existing templates) is currently only available for tickets, not for live conversations.

In the example below, let's create a workflow that tags any ticket where the word "refund" was included in the subject, and the original sender hasn't responded in three days.

Triggers

The first step is to add a trigger. There are currently three to choose from:

In this case, let's select Customer hasn't replied to your ticket message and set it to 3 days (which is the default):

The customer reply timeout trigger with "Triggers after" set to 3 days.

Please see this section of the guide for a detailed list of all the available triggers.

Conditions

Next, we'll add a condition. The list of available conditions is as follows:

What we need is the Ticket subject condition; after dragging it onto the workspace and connecting with the trigger, add the word "refund" and use the contains option:

The "Ticket subject" condition connected to the customer reply trigger, with "contains" selected and "refund" entered.

Please see this section of the guide for a detailed list of all the available conditions.

Actions

Finally, we need to add an action that the workflow will carry out if the condition is met. The available actions are as follows:

In this case, we need to use Add a ticket tag. Connect it with the condition before it (making sure to use the refund option when connecting), and select one of your existing ticket tags from the list inside the action. If you don't have the appropriate ticket tag yet, you can create it:

The "Add a ticket tag" action with the tag menu open, showing "needs follow up", "urgent", and "Create a new Ticket tag".

Please see this section of the guide for a detailed list of all the available actions.

Once you're done with your setup, the workflow should look like the example below:

The completed workflow connecting the customer reply timeout to a "refund" subject condition and the "needs follow up" ticket tag.

Remember to name your workflow in the upper-left, and hit Activate to save all your changes and enable the workflow right away. If you prefer to just save it as a draft and not use it yet, you can hit the Close button instead. Your new workflow will be listed in the My Workflows tab:

The "My Workflows" list showing the active "Refund ticket - tag for followup" workflow applied to tickets.

Exporting and importing workflows

Very similarly to transferring flows between different Tidio projects, you can also export and import your workflows. This allows you to save existing workflows as backups outside of Tidio, and import these workflows into other Tidio projects.

To export a chosen workflow, click on the three dots next to the workflow in your list, and select the Export option:

The workflow three-dot menu with "Export" outlined for emphasis.

This will generate a JSON file and download it onto your computer, and the file will include the workflow's name.

To import this workflow into another Tidio project (or the same project, if you've accidentally removed or somehow broken your workflow), click on the Import button in the top-right of the Workflows section:

The Workflows toolbar with an arrow pointing to "Import".

In the window that pops up, either browse your computer for the JSON file or simply drag-and-drop the file into the window:

The "Import a Workflow" dialog with a browse or drag-and-drop upload area accepting JSON files.

Once the import is complete, you will be notified about it onscreen, and your imported workflow is going to be listed (as a draft) in the My Workflows list.

The nodes available in Workflows

Each Workflow is composed of a combination of different nodes: triggers, conditions, and actions. They are used as needed, depending on what you aim to achieve. See the available nodes listed and described below.