Automation rules

An automation rule acts on a ticket without anyone touching it: “anything mentioning a refund goes to Billing”, “tickets from this customer start at High”, “tell the team about anything unanswered for two days”. Each rule has a moment it runs, conditions that pick the tickets, and actions to take on them.

Open Flow → Automation Rules. Only Joomla Super Users can manage rules.

The Automation Rules list, empty, with the introduction “Rules act on a ticket automatically” and an Add Rule button.

Column	What it shows
Order	The order rules are tried in. Use the arrows to move a rule.
Name	Click it to edit the rule.
Runs	When the rule is checked.
Match	All or Any of the conditions.
Stops others	Whether a match stops the rules after it.
Times run	How many times the rule has acted on a ticket.
Published	Whether the rule is active.

Adding a rule

Click Add Rule.
Enter a Rule name and choose when it Runs.
Choose Match: All conditions must be true or Any condition may be true.
Set the first condition. Click Add condition for more.
Set the first action. Click Add action for more.
Click Save Rule.

The Add Automation Rule form filled in: Rule name “Refunds to Billing”, Runs “When a ticket is created”, the condition “Subject contains refund”, and the actions “Move to department Billing” and “Set priority High”.

Field	What it does	Default
Rule name	Your name for the rule. Required.
Runs	When the rule is checked. See below.	When a ticket is created
Match	All conditions must be true, or Any condition may be true.	All
Conditions	Which tickets the rule applies to. At least one is needed: a rule with no conditions never matches anything.
Actions	What happens to a matching ticket, in order from top to bottom.
Ordering	The rule’s position. Lower numbers run first.	After the last rule
Stop other rules	Yes stops the rules after this one when this one matches.	No
Status	Active or Disabled.	Active

When rules run

Runs	Checked
When a ticket is created	Right after a new ticket is saved, whether a customer or staff member raised it or it arrived by e-mail.
When a ticket is replied to	After each reply, from the customer or the team.
When the status changes	After a ticket’s built-in status changes.
On a schedule, by ticket age	By the help desk’s background job, on every open ticket.

Rules for an event run in Ordering order. Each rule sees what the rules before it changed.

A scheduled rule acts once per ticket. It can act on that ticket again only after its conditions stop being true and then become true again. Saving a scheduled rule resets this, so it judges every ticket afresh. Closed and merged tickets are skipped.

The background job runs when someone opens a page of your site, at most once every 30 minutes, or on a schedule if you set up the Joomla scheduled task JS Support Ticket: ticket maintenance. A notice at the top of some screens offers Create the task when it is missing.

Conditions

Each condition is a field, a test and a value. Text tests ignore upper and lower case.

Field	Tests offered	Value
Subject, Message, Customer email, Customer name	contains, does not contain, is, starts with, ends with	Text
Department, Priority, Help Topic, Status	is, is not	Picked from a list
Hours since created, Hours since last reply, Hours since last change	is more than, is less than	A number of hours

Hours since last reply counts from the ticket’s creation when nobody has replied yet. The hour fields are what make a scheduled rule useful, for example “Hours since last reply is more than 48”.

Actions

Action	Does
Set priority	Changes the ticket’s priority.
Move to department	Moves the ticket to the department you pick.
Assign to agent	Assigns the ticket to the staff member you pick.
Add Tag	Adds a tag to the ticket.
Set status	Sets the built-in status: New, Pending, In Progress, Answered or Closed.
Notify agent	Sends an in-app notification to the staff member you pick, or to All agents in the ticket’s department.

Changes made by a rule are recorded in the ticket’s history, with the rule’s name. Set status only changes the status: it does not send the e-mails or start the follow-ups that closing or answering a ticket by hand does, and it does not trigger rules that run When the status changes.

All agents in the ticket’s department reaches every active staff member with access to the department, plus the agent the ticket is assigned to. Staff marked away are left out unless the ticket is assigned to them. If an earlier action in the same rule moved or assigned the ticket, the new department and agent are used.

Deleting a rule

Click the delete button in the list. Changes the rule already made to tickets stay.