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Automation Studio - An Overview

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Every business has processes that involve multiple flows, decisions, and stakeholders. A customer onboarding process, for example, may require sending welcome emails, assigning account managers, scheduling follow-ups, and updating records in a specific sequence. Similarly, industries like healthcare, finance, retail, and manufacturing require coordinated execution of tasks while minimizing manual effort.
While traditional workflows can effectively handle simple and repetitive tasks, complex business processes often require conditional logic, parallel execution paths, integrations, and scheduled actions.
Automation Studio helps overcome these limitations and supports both simple and complex use cases through a visual development approach.

What is Automation Studio?
Automation Studio is a user-friendly, no-code automation solution that provides a visual interface to design, view, and control automation flows. It empowers administrators to see the complete sequence and order of execution at a glance, making it easier to build, understand, and maintain complex automations.

Multiple actions can be triggered and executed simultaneously using fork blocks, delay blocks can be used to schedule tasks as required, and conditional logic such as if blocks can be added to control the automation flow precisely.
Zoho Desk processes automation types in a specific hierarchy. When an event occurs, each automation type executes in a defined sequence. Because Automation Studio is asynchronous by nature, it executes last, after all other automations.

Benefits
  1. Asynchronous execution - Run multiple rules and trigger actions without waiting for a rule to get executed.
  2. Flexibility and customization - Design different rules based on business requirements and combine different block types (Action, If, Fork, Delay) for complex logic.
  3. Operational independence - Each department can create their own rules according to the team's requirements. 
  4. Efficiency - Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks helps the team run processes automatically, without manual intervention.

Building blocks 

A flow in Automation Studio is built using two essential elements: Events that trigger the rule, and Blocks that define the logic and actions within the rule.

Events 

Events are the triggers that initiate rules. They determine when a rule should begin execution and it could be triggered based on record-based actions such as ticket creation, updates, and deletion.

Notes
Note:
  1. The availability of actions will change based on the module and the event selected for the rule.
  2. At least one event must be configured for the automation flow to be valid.

Blocks 

Functional units that define the logic and actions of a flow.
 
 
Block Type
Purpose
Description
Examples
Action
Execute tasks
Performs operations like sending alerts, updating fields, or executing custom functions.
  1. Sending an automatic acknowledgment email to a customer.
  2. Assigning a ticket to the zPhone team.
  3. Updating a ticket status to Awaiting customer response.
If
Add conditions
Evaluates criteria and proceeds only if the condition is met. Otherwise, that path terminates.
  1. Checking if the ticket is of high priority.
  2. Scanning a subject line for keywords like error or network issue.
  3. Verifying if an order value is greater than 10k.
Fork
Parallel paths
Splits the flow into up to 5 independent branches, each executing simultaneously.
  1. Routing orders simultaneously to different regional teams based on the customer's state (e.g., California or New York).
  2. Separating workflows by product type to apply unique SLAs and agent groups for Zphone and Zpad.
Delay
Schedule/Pause
Pauses the flow for a fixed duration or until a specific date/time.
  1. Waiting 7 days after a ticket closes to send a happiness survey.
  2. Pausing a workflow until 2 weeks before a contract expires to send a warning alert.
  3. Waiting 3 days for a customer reply before sending a reminder email.
 
For more information on each block type, refer to the Building blocks article.

Business Scenarios

AI-driven ticket summarization and automated routing
An e-commerce company wants to automatically summarize customer complaints using AI, send an acknowledgement based on the summary generated, and assign the tickets to the respective teams.

Flow Configuration
  1. Event: Ticket Created
  2. Action 1: Generate Content - Provide the Context and Prompt to summarize the ticket thread based on the requirement.
  3. Action 2: Send Email Reply to the customer using the summary generated in action 1.
  4. Fork block:
    1. Path 1:
      1. If block: Product Name is zPad
      2. Action block: Assign ticket: zPad Support team
    2. Path 2:
      1. If block: Product Name is zPhone
      2. Action block: Assign ticket: zPhone Support team
This flow uses action chaining, where the output of one field becomes the input for another.

Customer tickets receive an immediate acknowledgement with an AI-generated summary. It also automatically assigns tickets to the appropriate teams, reducing manual response time and improving routing efficiency.
Notifying customers and automatically closing inactive tickets
A SaaS company has multiple support requests that remain open due to lack of customer responses. This impacts the ticket count for the team and SLA compliance.

To address this, the organization wants to remind customers about tickets that need their responses and close inactive tickets after a specific time if no response is received.

Flow configuration
Event: Field Update. Criteria: Ticket status changed from any value to waiting for customer response
Fork Block:  
  1. Path 1:
    1. Delay block: 7 days
    2. If block: Ticket status is Waiting for customer response and Customer responded time time field is greater than or equal to 7 days.
    3. Action block: Send an email alert to the customer.
  2. Path 2:
    1. Delay block: 10 days
    2. If block: Ticket status is Waiting for customer response and Customer responded time time field is greater than or equal to 10 days.
    3. Action block: Update record: Ticket status to closed.
Customers receive automatic reminders after 7 days of inactivity. Tickets remaining in the Waiting for Customer Response status for more than 10 days are automatically closed, reducing ticket backlog and improving SLA compliance.


Automatic ticket prioritization and assignment based on Due date
A support team wants to automatically determine ticket priority based on the due date of a ticket and assign them to the appropriate teams, eliminating manual effort and ensuring critical issues are addressed first. 

Flow configuration
Event: Ticket Created
Fork Block:  
  1. Path 1:
    1. If block: The due date is less than 5 hours.
    2. Action block: Update Record: Priority to high.
    3. Action block: Assign ticket: L1 team.
  2. Path 2:
    1. If block: Due date is between 5 hours to 1 day.
    2. Action block: Update Record: Priority to Medium.
    3. Action block: Assign ticket: L2 team.
  3. Path 3:
    1. If block: Due date more than 1 day.
    2. Action block: Update Record: Priority to Low.
    3. Action block: Assign ticket: L3 team.
Automatically updating tickets based on changes in a custom module
A manufacturing organization has customers who raise queries that require on-site inspection and intervention from field service agents when a product issue occurs. When a field service agent visits the site and resolves the issue, the organization wants the associated ticket to be closed automatically, eliminating the need for manual intervention.

Flow configuration
  1. Module: Site Inspections (custom module)
  2. Event: Site Inspection Updated.
    Criteria: Site Inspection Status is changed.
  3. If block: Inspection status is approved.
  4. Action block: Update Record: Ticket module and change the status to Inspection approved.

When a field in a custom module (Site Inspections) is changed, a field in the standard module (Tickets) can be updated using the Dot Walking method.
 

 For more information on how to create rule, refer to Creating a rule using Automation Studio.
 

How is Automation Studio different from Workflow?

Feature
Automation Studio
Workflow

Execution type
Rules are executed asynchronously. Multiple rules can run simultaneously without waiting for one to complete. For example, when a ticket is created, Automation Studio can trigger multiple actions at the same time, such as sending an email, updating a field, and assigning the ticket, all in parallel.

Rules are executed synchronously. 
Execution order
Actions are executed in the order configured by the user. Actions can be arranged in the sequence that suits the business process.
The execution order is predefined and hard coded by the system on selected actions only. 
Action chaining
Action chaining is supported. The output of one action can be used as the input for another. For example, an AI-generated summary from one action can be used as the content for an email in the next action.
Action chaining is not supported. Each action runs independently, and data cannot be passed between actions.

Parallel execution
A path can be forked into multiple branches, with each one getting triggered independently. For example, when a ticket is created, multiple actions can run simultaneously, such as sending an email to the customer, notifying the team lead, and updating the ticket priority.
Single path execution. One action can lead to another action only, it cannot be forked to multiple actions. 
Conditional logic
Conditional nodes like if can be used to control the flow. For example, if the ticket priority is High, assign it to the L1 team. Otherwise the flow gets terminated.
Conditional check between actions are not supported. If logic cannot be added within a workflow rule.
Scheduled actions
Scheduled actions are supported using the Delay block. A flow can be paused for a specific duration or until a certain date/time. For example, wait 7 days after a ticket is closed before sending a feedback survey.
Scheduled actions are not supported. All actions execute immediately when the rule is triggered.

Execution Hierarchy

Zoho Desk processes automations in a specific sequence. When an event occurs, each automation type executes in the following order:
  1. Direct Assignment Rules
  2. Workflows
  3. SLAs
  4. Round Robin Assignment
  5. Blueprints
  6. Notification rules
  7. Automation Studio
Notes
Note:
  1. Because Automation Studio executes last (asynchronously), it can leverage the outcomes of all earlier automations. However, it may also override changes made by those automations. Be cautious when configuring rules to avoid unintended data overrides.
  2. The execution order between multiple Automation Studio rules triggered by the same event cannot be guaranteed. All matching rules execute simultaneously.