Workflow + Reply step + API

Hey ​@Brice BENE 👋 Jacques here from Intercom Support. I hope all is well today!

Thank you for describing the behavior you're seeing with your workflow trigger and API-based ticket state changes. I can confirm that this is expected behaviour: when a ticket state is changed via the API, the system treats this as a bot action rather than a teammate action. As a result, workflows with triggers like "If teammate changes the state of a ticket" will not fire in response to API-initiated changes.

There is no indication that the presence of a Reply step in your workflow would block the trigger. The key factor is the source of the ticket state change - only changes made by a human teammate in the UI will trigger these workflows.

This limitation is not clearly documented in our public help center, but it is consistent with how other workflow triggers (such as those for conversation attribute changes) behave.

If you need workflows to trigger on API-based changes, please let us know more about your use case. We can share this feedback with our product team for future improvements.

Hello Jacques!

Thank you for your answer. 

Actually “If teammate changes the state of a ticket” is triggered when API changes the ticket state. This is working fine. 
Problem is when workflow is not “finished” (= pending from customer action). 

If my workflow contains only “read only” steps, everything is fine. But as soon as I try to involve a customer, if he’s not responsive, another API change of the ticket state will not trigger the workflow as it did the first time. 

We have a vicious circle here. Let me explain it:

In all cases, workflow starts from API ticket state update. 

I ask the customer a question using “Reply” step. Workflow is waiting for an answer from the customer. 

Nothing can re-trigger the workflow until customer has responded. Not even the same initial event “If teammate changes the state of a ticket”. Customer is actually becoming “unresponsive”. 

But the trigger “If customer has been unresponsive” is never triggered because initial trigger of the workflow has been done via API. 

So basically, the less the customer is responsive, the less you can reach him.. Do you see the vicious circle here? 😁 

For me there is a pretty simple solution. To add a parameter from the API to force/allow the trigger. So API leads the flow, which actually makes total sense to me. 
 

And sorry, your answer is not [yet] the best answer ​@Jacques Reynolds, no need to set it up. I will as soon as I get it.  🙂