Workflow Assistant Overview (Standard & Advanced)

Helps an agent to process tickets accurately and efficiently.

The workflow assistant is a ticket sidebar app that guides an agent through a predefined sequence of activities designed to process a ticket in the most accurate and efficient manner possible. The emphasis is on guidance rather than control.

Flowset now supports two different model types; Standard and Advanced.  These models work slightly differently which means the workflow assistant will look slightly different depending on the model type being executed on the ticket.

Much of the workflow assistant UI is populated with names as defined in the workflow definition (e.g. Activity Name, Task Field Names).  Some parts of the UI are static messages. The Workflow Assistant uses the language associated with the agent to display these messages in the appropriate language.  Languages supported are English, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian and Portuguese Brazilian.  If the agents language is not in this list, the app will default these messages to English.

Standard Model

The assistant gives a contextual overview, showing where the agent is in the overall process.

It presents :

1. The name of the workflow running on the ticket
2. An optional description of the workflow
3. The name and completion status of the current activity within the workflow
4. One or more conditions required to complete the activity
5. A button to show or hide only those ticket fields relevant to the completion conditions
6. The completion status of the condition
7. One or more Activity Tasks that must be completed against the current activity
8. One or more following activities that become available once the current activity is complete
9. Access to live context sensitive diagrams showing the current activity within the workflow diagram, plus optional documentation for the overall workflow and the current activity
10. Access to the Audit details for workflows running or that have run on this ticket

Generally the user still interacts with the Zendesk Agent Interface in the normal manner, with the assistant reacting to changes that are being applied.

A typical workflow will start on an activity and require the agent to interact with the ticket, completing fields and activity tasks, to satisfy it's completion conditions. At this point the assistant will present one or more following activities that the agent can select to progress the workflow. The next activity is carried out in a similar manner and, once complete, a new list of onward activities are presented for selection. This process repeats until a finish transition is chosen that completes the workflow.

The transitions to the next activities are not available until all the completion conditions and activity tasks for the current activity are complete. Transitions to onward activities can also have their own conditions, so their availability may change depending on the current state of field values on the ticket.  It is perfectly possible for an onward transition to loop back to a previously encountered activity in the same workflow.

At any point the agent can access context sensitive documentation for the current workflow and activity, including dynamic diagrams that show the precise position of the current activity in the graphical workflow definition, including any levels of decomposition.

Advanced Model

When using advanced models, the workflow assistant again gives a contextual overview of the workflow running on the ticket.  Advanced models emphasize the use of activity tasks to capture data and guide the agent through the right path.  All interactions occur within the workflow assistant and do not rely on manipulating ticket fields using the Zendesk Agent Interface.

It presents :

1. The name of the workflow running on the ticket
2. An optional description of the workflow
3. The name and status of the current activity within the workflow
4. Activity Tasks that will capture details from the agent.  These may include details that will be populated into Zendesk ticket fields, but the Agent will input details via the workflow assistant.
5. One or more following activities that become available once the current activity is complete
6. Access to live context sensitive diagrams showing the current activity within the workflow diagram, plus optional documentation for the overall workflow and the current activity
7. Access to the Audit details for workflows running or that have run on this ticket

If the Activity requires that values be provided to populate Zendesk ticket fields, these will be presented in the workflow assistant.  Typically any ticket fields that are used in the Activity Tasks will be disabled in the Zendesk ticket form to prevent them from being updated there.

Once the activity task fields have been filled out appropriately, following activities become available at the bottom of the assistant that allow the workflow to progress to the next activity.  This progression from activity to activity will continue until the final transition will end the workflow.

Sometimes a transition to a following activity may not be available (greyed out) if the task fields have been filled in such that this activity is not a valid next activity based on the data provided.  Sometimes, there may be additional information that needs supplying in order to make the next activity available.

Context sensitive documentation is available a any time by clicking the information icon at the top.