Workflow Applying Accelerators

Accelerators improve an agents efficiency by populating fields and comments with predefined combinations of values for known use cases. They can also optionally select a next activity.

Flowset supports two different types of Workflow Model

1. Standard Models - Activity level behaviour.  Any fields involved in the control of the workflow are handled in the Zendesk ticket fields and not by the workflow assistant.
2. Advanced models - Activities are broken down into Task models.  Any ticket fields involved in the control of the workflow are handled by the workflow assistant and not by Zendesk ticket fields.

Due to the different way that Advanced models handles ticket fields, it is unlikely that Accelerators which set ticket field values will. be useful.  If a ticket field value is set by an Accelerator, the workflow assistant will ignore these changes because it is handling these field values itself.  It may still be useful to use an Accelerator to populate the ticket comment when using Advanced models.

The details below describe the use of Accelerators when using Standard models.

Standard Models

Visualization in the Workflow Assistant

If an activity has accelerators these are presented in a select combo at the bottom of the workflow assistant.

• Click the chevron to expand and choose an accelerator (1).
• The accelerator combo has a red flash symbol (2).

Comparison with Zendesk Macros

Accelerators have some similarities with Zendesk macros : 

1. They have a descriptive name and are chosen from a dropdown
2. They automatically populate ticket field values/ticket comments with predefined values

However there are differences too :

1. Accelerators are not global. The choices offered are only relevant to the current activity, eliminating the risk of selecting one that is inappropriate for the current stage of the workflow.
2. Accelerators can optionally select a next activity after its field/comments have been populated

Examples

A) Predefined Field Value Combinations

• The agent is about to choose an accelerator designed to satisfy the "Submission Requirements" completion condition for the current activity (1).
• Note these two fields are currently undefined (2).

After selection of the "Minor Retrospective Change" accelerator, the "Cab Type" and "CAB Change Level" fields have been given predefined values :

• The accelerator has now populated these two fields with values that satisfy the "Submission Requirements" (3).
• Note the activity completion condition has been immediately satisfied (4).

B) Predefined Field Value Combinations

Like Zendesk Macros, accelerators overwrite existing field values. Here the agent is about to choose a different accelerator :

• The agent is about to choose the "Major Emergency Fix" accelerator. It will still satisfy the "Submission Requirements" condition for the current activity (1).
• Note that the "CAB Type" has a value entered manually by the agent but the "CAB Change Level" is still undefined (2).

After selecting the accelerator, the "Cab Type" and "CAB Change Level" fields have been given new predefined values :

• The accelerator has now populated these two fields with new values that satisfy the "Submission Requirements". (The manually entered "CAB Type" value has been overwritten) (3).
• Note that the "Submission Requirements" condition is now satisfied and because the current activity is now complete, the next activities are being shown (4).

Accelerators that Select Next Activities

Accelerators can be defined so that after filling in comments and fields, they also select a next activity.  The next activity will only become selected if it is available to be selected.  That means

1. The current activity must be complete (i.e. completion conditions and outcomes satisfied)
2. The transition to the next activity is available (i.e. it does not have further conditions associated with it that are not satisfied)

The workflow assistant will apply any ticket field changes defined by the accelerator to the ticket and then check if the next activity is now available, and if so, select it.

Here we see that the completion conditions of an Activity are not complete.  Selecting the Reject Change Request Accelerator will

1. Fill in the ticket fields needed to satisfy the completion conditions.  This will make the next activities available
2. Add a comment template to the ticket
3. Because the next activities are available, it will select the transition to Reject Change Request

If the next activity was not available for selection after the accelerator values are applied to the ticket, the onward transition will not be selected.

Here we see that the completion conditions are not satisfied, but also the Task fields are not complete.  When we apply the same Reject Change Request accelerator, it will fill in the fields to satisfy the completion condition, enter a template comment, but the task field will not be filled in so the onward transition to Reject Change Request will not be available and will not be selected.

The completion condition has been satisfied and a comment template entered, but we cannot select the onwards transition because the current activity is incomplete.