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.

 

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 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 are not meant to automate any interactions between you and your visitors (like providing or collecting information). Instead, they can be 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:

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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, their type and basic statistics:

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Lastly, any workflow (or workflow draft) can be managed in details by clicking the three dots next to it (please note that live conversation workflows can only be edited, enabled/disabled, or deleted):

 

 

 

Using workflow templates

 

The quickest was 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:

 

 

In there, you will find several templates ready to add an 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:

 

 

 

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 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.

 

 

 

Solve conversations automatically

This workflow allows you to specify the amount of time (in minutes or hours) after which conversations should be marked as solved automatically. This only applies to conversations where an agent has responded, but the visitor hasn't given any further reply of their own. 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 then those for live conversations, as they allow more customization to better suit your needs. There are currently two templates for ticket workflows:

• Send automatic ticket reply
• Solve tickets automatically

 

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).

 

 

 

 

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 abd there has been no further reply from the original sender.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

... or how to change the ticket status:

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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 two to choose from:

• Ticket has become available for agents
• Customer hasn't replied to your ticket message

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Conditions

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

• Ticket status
• Ticket source
• Customer email address
• Ticket subject
• Ticket tag

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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:

• Send a public reply
• Change ticket status
• Add a ticket tag

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.