A lot of business processes can be enhanced by sending notifications to people when certain stages are reached. For example, the Zingtree Task Manager makes it easy to notify key stakeholders when a process reaches a certain point, and if they need to act upon it. Notifications are simple messages that can be triggered from any node in your decision tree.
You have these options:
Text Messages: You’ll receive a simple SMS message to your mobile phone.
Emails: A simple, text email message.
Slack: Send a message to any of your Slack channels.
Notifications can be sent to one or more people and can include variables gathered during your Zingtree session.
How to Add Notifications
Text messages, Emails, and Slack Notifications are available via Account > My Apps:
Here’s how to add a notification:
From Account, My Apps, pick from Slack, Text Message or Email notification.
Add information about the notification. Text messages notifications look like this:Email notifications like this:Slack notifications let you select a channel to post to, like this:
Once you’ve added a notification to your organization, you can attach it to any node.
Edit the node where you want to send the notification from.
Click the Apps/Webhooks tab, and then Add App/Webhook.
Pick the notification you added previously, and enter the message to send. In this example, we’ll choose a Slack notification, and send a message about a new blog post.
Notice that the message above contains a variable #task_name#. You can include any variables from the Zingtree session in notification messages.
Click Save Changes when done.
You can add several notifications to a node; so, for example, you could send a text message and an email all at once.
Update August 2018: You can now include History or Breadcrumbs in embedded trees.
When using a Zingtree, have you ever thought how nice it would be to see some more context of where you are in the tree? Or the steps it took to get to where you are? Come and discover Zingtree’s two contextual publishing options: History and Breadcrumbs.
History allows you to see every step you took while using the tree:
Breadcrumbs show the sequence of node titles that appeared throughout your journey through the tree:
With both options, you can click on a link and travel back to any previous node in your journey. Visit the Zingtree Gallery and see for yourself what your end-users will experience.
How to Add History or Breadcrumbs
The Publishing Links tool makes it easy to add History or Breadcrumbs to your published trees. This works for both Hosted and Embedded trees.
Go to the Publishing Links tool.
Click Advanced Hosting Options underneath Hosted or Embedded.
Select Show History or Show Breadcrumbs from the Path Options:
Use the URL or embed code provided to add the option to your published tree.
Advanced Stuff: Modifying URLs Directly
You can also modify the URL for your published trees to add history or breadcrumbs.
For hosted trees:
Add &show_history=1 or &show_breadcrumbs=1 to the URL for the tree.
For embedded trees:
Add &embed_history=1 or &embed_breadcrumbs=1 to the iFrame URL.
One of the more common, interesting uses for interactive decision trees is as an online task management tool for streamlining recurring business processes. These are standardized workflows that have a series of repeatable steps, which may need to involve handoffs to different people on a team or even in another department. For example, your company may have an approval process for:
making purchases
approving project budgets
hiring or firing employees
creating blog posts (like this one!)
and any other repetitive tasks or processes your business uses
The Zingtree Task Manager is a dashboard for guiding your coworkers through decision-tree-based processes created using the Zingtree tools. This makes it easy for everyone to be held accountable, and to follow standard operating procedures.
Here’s a diagram of a simple purchasing process:
In this case, if the item is under $100, then the request is approved automatically. Otherwise, a manager needs to approve the order.
Set Up
Creating your first business process with interactive decision trees is not complicated. It involves these steps:
Enter your “agents” – the people who act upon your processes – and assign them to groups.
Create a decision tree, and assign each node (step of the process) to one of your Agent Groups.
Assign your tree(s) to various Agent Groups. Only people in those groups will be allowed to start or kill a project.
The Zingtree Task Manager was built with full-team functionality in mind. Anyone involved in a work process can use standardized decision tree workflows to navigate through the procedure. Certain steps can only be completed by specific people, and once you reach a step where it’s no longer your responsibility, that task is assigned to someone else.
For example, in the procurement process diagrammed above, an employee creates the purchase request and a manager approves or declines it if over $100.
Here’s how the Task Manager could appear for an individual:
When someone Takes or Resumes a task, it looks like this:
Groups
Each person involved in a process (an “agent”) can belong to one or more groups. You can configure people and groups via Account > My Agents. So for example, a small team with two employees and one manager is set up like this:
Note that “Bill Zing” belongs to both the manager and employee groups.
When creating your process trees, you can tag each tree with the groups that are allowed to start the process.
Assigning Steps in the Process using Tags
Each node of your business process tree needs to include the Agent Group(s) allowed to act on that step of the process. You can see how our procurement process tree’s groups (outlined in red) are set up here:
The initial request step (node #1) is tagged with “employee”, so only people in the employee group can initiate a request. Node #6 – the Manager approval step – is tagged as “manager”, so only a manager can approve the purchase.
Assigning Agent Groups to a node is done using the Groups tab when editing a node. Here’s how node #1 is set up for an employee group:
Project Status: Success, Failure or In-Progress
At the end of a workflow, a project is either successful or a failure. When building your process tree, you can assign a result to each node in the node editor – like this:
Once a node is reached with a success or failure result, the process has ended.
Notifications
A notification can be sent when any node (process step) is reached so that the next person can be alerted and step in for their task. Notifications can be sent in a few different ways, including:
A text message
A simple email notification
A Slack notification
A customized email (using an email node)
Task Manager Operations
Your agents – people involved in your processes – can perform the following operations on each task:
Start: Begin a new task, and assign it a name.
Take: Take over the next step of a task. Only one person at a time can move a task to the next step.
Release: Release a task so another person can complete the step.
Resume: Continue with a task that you have previously taken.
Revisit: Go back to a previous step in the task you have permissions to act upon.
Reclaim: Take back a task from someone who has taken it.
Kill: End a task early, without following all the steps to completion.
In order to make decision trees that can help solve real-world problems, sometimes you need the ability to do more than just choose a path based upon a finite set of choices. For these reasons, we’ve introduced Logic Nodes into Zingtree.
In addition, we’ve found that many of our customer’s integrations are passing data variables into Zingtree, and there are situations where they would like to act on the value of those variables. Logic Nodes make this easy.
If you’re an existing Zingtree author, Logic Nodes replace Scoring Nodes from previous versions. Any tree that is using Scoring Nodes is automatically migrated to this new system, without losing any functionality or you having to do any updating of your trees.
Here’s How Logic Nodes Work
When you edit or create a Logic Node, you’ll see something like this:
Logic Nodes test the value of your Zingtree variables with a series of rules and jump to a node when a condition is met. The rules are applied in order, so once a rule condition is met, the node assigned to the rule opens next. You can also assign a default node to jump to in case no rules apply.
In the example above, if the variable fruit equals banana, then Zingtree will open node #8, the “Banana” node. If fruit is watermelon, then the default “Something Else” node opens.
About Variables
Variables can be numeric or text, and the comparisons work for either data type. You can bring variables into your trees in several ways:
Note: Your choice of variables is shown in a drop-down list. If Zingtree hasn’t encountered a variable yet in one of the above scenarios, then it won’t appear as an option.
Editing Rules
When editing your Logic Nodes, you can edit your rules as follows:
Reorder rules by dragging them up and down with this tool:
Delete a rule by clicking on this:
Select any existing variable from the Variables drop-down.
Select an operator (=, ≠, <, >, ≤, ≥ ).
Enter a value to perform the test upon.
You must also enter a default node to jump to if no conditions are met.
Zingtree Logic Nodes give your decision trees a bonus option for adding extra intelligence to your processes and troubleshooters. Do you have a cool application for Logic Nodes you’d like to share with us? Reach out and tell us your story!
This article was originally published on May 8, 2017, but all the information is just as important and relevant.
Over the last six weeks, we’ve been focusing resources on improving tasks that have been the topics of our most frequent conversations with customers. In general, here’s what we’ve improved:
Here are the details of everything that’s changed:
Visual Designer
For more details on what’s new in Designer, see this post.
Update: Question and Answer nodes are now just “Content” nodes.
Fix: Designer no longer shows things like ' in labels.
Fix: Designer no longer hangs with “contains” operation in logic nodes.
Update: Designer shows better symbols in logic branches
Update: Can now move logic node branches in Designer
Update: Designer has no more “save” button. Changes are saved automatically.
New: Pop-up editor can now be used to edit button links or logic nodes. Changes appear instantly in the Designer view.
Fix: Adding nodes now makes them appear in the proper display order when viewing the tree in Simple Overview.
Update: Designer pop-ups can now change the root node.
Update: Removed Undo/Redo buttons.
Fix: Designer PNG export crops unneeded whitespace from the image file.
Update: Designer loads 2x faster!
Update: Unlinked buttons appear as red arrows and buttons.
Update: “unlinked” node position can be moved and saved.
Update: New node icons. These also appear in hi-res for Retina displays.
Fix: Button labels no longer occasionally return after being turned off.
Email Nodes
New Email Node option to automatically send email, and then continue to another node.
Creating email templates is much easier – no longer need to upload HTML files, or use a special link node.
You can customize the “Send Message” button for email forms.
After sending email, the next step can go to a new node instead of requiring a URL.
Document Nodes
New: Document node now has a button option which can continue the session at another node.
Update: Document node content selector now shows just content nodes with no to/from links.
Zendesk Agent Scripting App (Version 12)
Fix: Now properly sets or unsets checkbox custom fields (Tim J.)
Fix: New tickets now works properly in all cases (Linus P.)
New: Zendesk App Theme.
Version 12 now in Zendesk App Marketplace.
Other Updates
Update: Question and Answer nodes are now just “Content” nodes.
Update: New icons for all node types.
Fix: Editing nodes where there are a lot of variables in content editor list now loads faster (Oliver).
Fix: “return to Tree” tree node no longer adds unwanted variables to the list of options in Logic Nodes.
Fix: Wizard now properly sets display order for node reordering.
Fix: Simple Overview no longer shows nodes used in document nodes in the incoming link count.
Fix: Setting scoring value to ‘=0’ now resets the value to zero (Jay H.)
Fix: Persistent button link nodes from within a subtree now work properly (Lasse)
Fix: When editing a node, “Assign button click variable” no longer sometimes ticked when no variable is present.
Update: Added search to Gallery.
Fix: treetaglist macro no longer shows duplicate live and dev versions of matching trees. DEV master shows dev versions only when duplicates are detected, LIVE master shows live versions when duplicates are detected (Lasse)
New: Added Bootstrap Table styles in content editor (hover, border, striped, condensed) (Kim M, Rachel V, Justin B)
Fix: Entering values for scoring uses running total without requiring ‘+’ in front of number, as per documentation (Lisa F., Chad Y.)
Fix: Prevents variable names from starting with a digit (Gabriele P.)
Fix: Fade transition no longer shows last node when “back” is selected (John H, John K.)
Fix: Fade Transitions work properly with logic nodes (Werner G.)
Fix: Fade transitions and breadcrumbs now work properly (Ben M.)
Fix: Persistent nodes clicked from a subtree now hide last node properly with transition/fade effect.
New: GDPR page at zingtree.com/gdpr
New: Can now drag and drop document files into the content editor to upload them to our servers (PDF/DOC, etc.) (Lucas K.)
Fix: Kustomer integration now adds tags properly when jumping to the root node of a tree via a tree node (Katie)
Update: Periods now allowed in tags (Amanda D.)
Fix: No longer sending “score=” in Webhook calls for an empty score (John H.)
Fix: Adding, editing or removing collaborators from DEV version sets proper access to Live version (Lasse)
Update: Date picker now has expanded year ranges (Ronnie L.)
New: Can add extra emails for billing notifications (Tom M.)
Fix: Button click values like ‘123ABC’ now store as strings, not ints (was saved as 123) (Mark C.)
Fix: Default Theme updated so link colors are set properly.
Fix: Logic nodes drop-down selections now work when related trees have no variables.
Update: Link control in editor and new link nodes now defaults to new tab (Jonathan B.)
Update: Content editor no longer shows link options for Google, Facebook
Update: Content editor link manager now has a tooltip option.
As always, if you have any ideas to share with us on this or any other features, please let us know!
As a part of our continued efforts to make building decision trees easier and easier, we’ve updated the Zingtree Visual Designer tool to work better than ever.
Here’s what’s new:
Question Nodes and Answer Nodes are now a single type: Content Nodes. This makes it easier to add button options to any node with content in it.
The pop-up node editor can now edit button assignments, and these are immediately updated in the Designer view.
The “Save Layout” function is eliminated, as any changes to the tree are saved automatically.
Creating an image of the tree design via the PNG Export option now generates a full-size image, and eliminates unnecessary whitespace at the edges.
You can change the Root Node from within Designer (via the pop-up editor).
Designer loads 2x faster in most cases.
Unlinked buttons appear as red arrows, and the “UNLINKED” node can now be moved and repositioned.
Deleting buttons now updates the button order rank of the remaining buttons.
New, sharper hi-res icons.
Here’s an example of what you’ll see in the new Designer:
One other thing: We’ve eliminated the Undo and Redo buttons. Since changes to the tree save automatically, any previous versions can be retrieved using the Snapshots tool.
This update was a lot more work than it appears on the surface, as often we find that incremental improvements in the overall tree-building experience take a lot of time to build and test.
We hope you like the update! Please reach out with any questions, observations or suggestions.
One of the most frequent requests we get from customers is about sending email. We’ve spent a lot of time to make this process as simple as possible.
With Zingtree, you can use Email Nodes to send email in two ways:
Automatically, with no end-user interaction.
Showing a pre-defined form for the end-user to enter a message.
Emails can include everything you need:
The Session transcript.
Variables entered during the session.
Images and formatted text.
Attachments.
Sending Emails Automatically
Emails can be sent automatically, with no end-user interaction. Start by creating an Email Node as follows:
Click Tools, then Add Node.
Select Email Node as the node type. The Send Method should be set to Send Automatically.
The Email Node editor appears.
Add a Page Title (mostly for your reference when using the Zingtree editing tools)
In Send Email to, enter the delivery email address. You can enter multiple recipient email addresses separated by commas.
Enter a subject and a message. The message can include images, formatted text, or placeholders for variables. For example, if you collect a variable called name, just add #name# into the email body for it to appear.
Check Include Session Data in Email to include the Q&A transcript, and any data collected in the email. You can also check “Securely deliver session data via Link”, which will provide a link to the session information, instead of including it in the email body.
In After Sending, choose a node to go to next. Or, choose Go to URL, and enter a URL to launch instead, like this:
Click Save Changes when finished.
How to Create an Email Form Node
Your end-users can be presented with a stock email form, which looks like this:
You can make a node that displays this form by creating an Email Node as follows:
Click Tools, then Add Node.
Select Email Node as the node type. The Email Node editor appears.
IMPORTANT: For the Send Method, select Show Form Before Sending.
Add a Page Title (mostly for your reference when using the Zingtree editing tools)
Add text for the Send Message button.
In Send Email to, enter the delivery email address. You can enter multiple recipient email addresses separated by commas.
You can enter a default subject or message. These are pre-filled in the email form.
Check Include Session Data in Email to include the Q&A transcript, and any data collected in the email. You can also check “Securely deliver session data via Link”, which will provide a link to the session information, instead of including it in the email body.
In After Sending, choose a node to go to next. Or, choose Go to URL, and enter a URL to launch instead, like this:
Click Save Changes when finished.
Summary
These two methods are the recommended ways to send email, and should be used in place of any other methods.
As always, if you have any ideas to share with us on this or any other features, please let us know!
Some of our larger customers have asked for a simple process for managing changes to their decision trees. When there are multiple people involved in making edits, and the final versions need approval, the Zingtree Push Live tool makes this procedure a breeze.
Push Live lets you have two versions of a tree – a development version and a live version. Your team makes changes to the development version, and when these changes are ready to go live, an administrator approves these changes by invoking the Push Live tool to update the live version of the tree.
Using Push Live is optional, and can be implemented at any time.
Overview
Here’s how Push Live organizes the publishing process:
An author or authors make changes to a tree.
Once the new tree is approved for release, an adminmistrator invokes a Push Live so that the new tree is available to end-users and agents.
All changes and push events are tracked through the Snapshots tool.
Setup
Here’s how to set up a tree for Push Live:
Select your tree from My Trees.
Go to the Settings tool, click the Push Live tab, and check Enable Push Live.
Make sure to click Update All Settings next.
Managing Live and Development Versions
You can switch between the development and live version of your tree from the main Tree Tools screen. Go to My Trees, and select a tree, or use the All Tools option in the Tools drop-down on every page.
Select Development or Live from the Version selector:
IMPORTANT: Use Live Publishing Links
The live version of a tree has different links than the development version. Make sure you are using the Publishing Links code for the live version of your tree by switching to the live version before using the Publishing Links tool.
The tree ID for the live version of a tree is the same as the development version, except that it adds 000 to the end of the ID. For example: If your tree ID is 123456789, the ID of the live version is 123456789000. So you’ll need to use different publishing links when making the live version of your tree available to others.
Pushing Changes Live
In order to update the live tree, you need to have Administrator rights on that tree.
Once you’re ready to “go live”, invoke the Push Live tool from the main Tools page, or the Tools drop-down. You’ll be asked for update notes on this version, which makes it easy to track what changed.
You can see the history of changes (with the update notes) for each update of the live version using the Snapshots tool (under More Tools).
Using Tree Nodes with Live Versions
If you have several trees under the Push Live process, and you are using tree nodes to link them together, Zingtree will ensure the proper development or live version is linked. When editing in the development version, use tree nodes that reference the development versions for your other trees. When you push live, those tree nodes will go the live versions of the other trees if they exist.
Here are the rules:
Tree nodes in the development version go to development versions of other trees.
When you push live, tree nodes in the live version go to live versions of those trees.
If a live version of a tree node doesn’t yet exist, the development version is used instead.
Give Us Feedback!
Is this Push Live feature useful to you? Do you have any suggestions to make this process work even better for you? Let us know!
This article was originally published on January 16, 2018.
If you’re a Zendesk user in a Contact Center environment, you’ll want to be using our Zendesk Agent Scripting app. This makes it easy to guide, train and onboard agents and is a huge productivity booster for everyone.
Version 12 gives you the option to show your script directly in the right-hand panel when viewing a ticket, like this:
Or you can use less sidebar space, and make it appear as a button in the right-hand panel:
Click Open Script, and you’ll see your decision tree in a larger pop-over like this:
Pause and Resume
This happens automatically: If another agent picks up a ticket, they return to the last viewed node, and can see each step taken previously by opening the History.
Benefits of the Zendesk Agent Scripting App
Standardization: Show a guided path for each ticket, so that Agents follow the proper operating policies or troubleshooting procedures.
Pause and Resume: If a ticket is transferred, the supervisor or new agent is taken to the last place in the script, and can see the history of the previous steps taken.
Automatic Script Selection: The Agent Scripting App can choose a script based on the Zendesk brand, Zendesk ticket tags, or the value of a custom field.
Agent Feedback: Agents can send feedback directly to the authors of the decision trees with a single button click. Feedback is delivered to each author’s email, and includes the tree ID and node number where the feedback was sent from.
Zendesk Ticket Data in your Scripts: Values in any custom field, the agent name, customer info, as well as Zendesk ticket tags and user tags, are transferred into your script so you can display them, or use these variables to branch via Logic Nodes.
Automatic Ticket Updating: Tags and custom fields in the ticket can be updated from actions in the script – either via buttons clicked in the script, or from data entry collected.
New Features in Version 12
If you’re using version 11 of the Zendesk Agent Scripting app, you may want to upgrade to take advantages of these new benefits:
Option to choose between Sidebar and Popover views
New customer information data variables sent from Zendesk: requester_name and requester_email
New Zendesk Theme to match Zendesk fonts and styling. This gives you a little more real estate for your content, especially in side-panel mode.
If you’re upgrading from version 10, these features are also new:
Toggle to share Zendesk data with Zingtree: Some customers don’t want ticket data shared with Zingtree. There’s now an option to disable data sharing.
Removed “Flash”: Some customers experienced a “flash” when moving from ticket to ticket in pop-over mode. This is now fixed with this update.
Demo Video
This two-minute video shows you how Agents interact with the Agent Scripting App:
Getting Started
Here are the basic steps to get up and running:
Build an interactive decision tree script with Zingtree (or use one of our demos to start).
If you want to have your decision tree scripts update your Zendesk tickets, you’ll need to add variables and/or tags to your Zingtree tree to match your Zendesk setup.
If you want to enable automatic script selection, you’ll need to add tags to your trees in Zingtree and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting app properly.
Installing the Agent Scripting App into Zendesk
Download and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting App version 12 like so:
In Zendesk, click the Admin icon and go to Apps > Manage.
Click Upload Private App.
The Upload App page appears.
Enter “Zingtree Agent Scripting” for the App Name.
For App File, locate the filezingtree-agent-scripting.zip you downloaded in step 1.
Click Upload, then confirm if necessary.
Configuring the App
Once you’ve uploaded the app, click App Configuration to see the configuration screen:
Here’s what each item does:
Tree ID: This is the default tree that appears when agents click “Open Script”. (You should always have a default tree.)
Show Tree in Side Panel: Select this option if you want to display the entire tree in the right-hand sidebar when a ticket is open. Uncheck this to use pop-over mode instead.
Hide Integration Setup Info: When you are setting up Agent Scripting for the first time, you may need some information about your Zendesk setup to take advantage of automatically updating ticket fields. An “Integration Setup Info” link appears by default when you first install the app, and ticking this option hides it.
Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand: If this option is checked, the subdomain of the selected brand will be matched to a Zingtree tree tag. Any matching tree or trees will appear. For example, if the brand subdomain is xyz.zendesk.com, any trees tagged as xyz (using the Zingtree Settings tool) will appear.
Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags: If checked, the values in the Zendesk ticket tags will be matched with your Zingtree tree tags (set via the Zingtree Settings tool) to show one or more matching scripts.
Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom field: If you want to use a custom field value to show matching scripts, enter the Zendesk custom field identifier here. The field name can be found using the Integration Setup Info link that first appears in the sidebar when you install the app.
Display Half-Height: In Popover mode, the popup view will cover half the height of the screen. This has no effect when using Sidebar mode.
Don’t share Zendesk Custom Fields with Zingtree: By default, the app sends custom field data from each Zendesk ticket to Zingtree so you can do more powerful automatic branching via logic nodes, as well as echoing customer information (like their name, for example). If your organization has data privacy concerns, you can check this option to disable data sharing.
Zingtree API key: Each organization in Zingtree has an API key, which is used to match scripts. If you’re using one of the tag matching options, this is required. Your API key can be found at zingtree.com under Resources, API.
Data Sent from Zendesk to Zingtree
Unless you select the Don’t share Zendesk Custom Fields with Zingtree configuration option, Zendesk will send the following variables to your Zingtree decision tree:
requester_name – The customer’s full name.
requester_email – The email of the customer.
zendesk_tags – Any tags in the ticket.
agent_tags – Any tags from the agent.
agent – The Agent’s full name.
agent_first_name – The Agent’s first name.
Any custom fields
To display one of these values, just surround the variable name with # characters. So to show the Agent’s first name in your script, enter #agent_first_name# in the content area of any node in your decision tree.
Tip: Add #ALL DATA# to the content area of any node in your own tree to see all the variables sent to your script.
Enabling Automatic Script Selection
Automatic Script Selection works by matching tree tags you set in Zingtree to values in the Brand, Tags, or a custom field in a Zendesk ticket. For example, if a tree is tagged with “astrology”, and the ticket tags include “astrology”, then that tree appears. If several trees match, then they will all appear, and the agent can choose one.
To open a script based on Brand:
Add tags to your trees for each brand you want to match. So if one of your brands is xyz.zendesk.com, use xyz as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand is checked in the App Configuration.
To open a script based upon Zendesk ticket tags:
Add tags to your trees for each tag you want to match. So if one of your ticket tag possibilities is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked in the App Configuration.
To open a script based upon a custom field:
Add tags to your trees for each possible custom field value you want to match. So if one of your custom field values is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
Make sure the proper Zendesk field variable name is entered for Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom Field in the App Configuration.
Adding tags to a tree in Zingtree is done like this:
Select a tree from My Trees.
Go to the Settings tool.
Click the Tags tab.
Enter or select a tag from the Tree Tags field.
Click Update All Settings.
How to Configure to Update Ticket Fields
As agents navigate through your trees, their use of the decision tree scripts you create can automatically update any custom fields in that ticket. This can be done in two ways:
By clicking a button in a script
By entering data into Zingtree data entry fields.
The key is to use variable names in your Zingtree that match the ones used in Zendesk.
First of all, determine the names of the variables in Zendesk by clicking the Integration Setup Info link in the Agent Scripting app. You’ll see something like this:
You’ll see the label for the field as it appears in Zendesk’s ticket form and the Zendesk variable next to it. In the above example, the Product custom field variable is custom_field_22899289. This is a drop-down selector, and the Zendesk values for the field options are astrology and insurance.
For the rest of this example, we’ll use custom_field_22899289as the custom field variable.
To make a button selection update a custom field, you’ll set it up in your Zingtree as follows:
Go to the Overview tool, and edit the node whose button selections will update the ticket.
Click Edit Buttons (or Add Buttons if you don’t have any buttons defined). The button editor appears:
Make sure Assign Button Click Variable is checked. This makes the other options appear.
For the Button Click Variable, enter your custom field variable from Zendesk (custom_field_22899289 in the example).
For each button option, enter the value of the variable under Score/Value. If this is a drop-down list in your Zendesk ticket, you’ll need to make sure the Score/Value entered matches one of the drop-down option values as shown in the Integration Setup Info.
Click Save Changes when you’re done configuring buttons.
Bonus: Adding Tags via button clicks:
Button clicks can also add tags to a ticket. In the above example, clicking Something Else adds the tag other_tag to the ticket. Just include the tag name with two colons after the button text. So entering a button like Something Else::other_tag will add the tag other_tag to the ticket if this is clicked, but agents will only see Something Else as an option.
Using Zingtree Data Entry Fields to Update Tickets
Just like the above example, you can also use Zingtree for data entry and have that data automatically transferred to your ticket. The key is to use the same variable name in Zingtree as you used in Zendesk. The Integration Setup Info link in the sidebar will give you those Zendesk variable names.
Example: If you have a text entry field in Zingtree you want to update into the Zendesk field custom_field_1234, you would set up the variable name as follows:
Using Zingtree’s Zendesk CSS Theme
For the best user experience, we recommend using the Zendesk Apps theme in your trees that display inside of Zendesk. This will give you more room for your content (since the fonts are smaller), and also match the look and feel of the rest of the Zendesk experience.
Here’s how the theme looks in the two style options:
Buttons style:
Panels style:
To include the Zendesk Agent Scripting App theme in your trees, do the following:
In Zingtree, open the Settings tool for your tree.
Click the Display tab.
Choose either Buttons or Panels as the Default Display Style.
Click Pick a Color Theme.
Choose Zendesk Agent Scripting as the theme.
Click Save Theme and Colors.
Click Update Settings.
Try It with Example Data
You can use trees from the Zingtree Gallery to see how the Agent Scripting app works.
This Zendesk Agent Scripting Demo shows how to implement some of the basic integration features. You can install it into your own Zendesk configuration by entering tree ID 350546744 in the App Configuration.
For multiple trees, see how a tree can be selected by tag by doing the following:
In the App Configuration, enter 6a103737e44e4aa6e1e4b6b0bcb46f83 as the API key. Also make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tagsis checked.
Try entering one or more of these tags into a ticket: “zingtree”, “astrology”, “pet_rock”.
Our Zapier app makes it easy to send data collected during each Zingtree session to 1000+ applications supported by Zapier. In case you haven’t heard of it, Zapier is a tool that simplifies data exchange between various web applications. We’re big fans.
Here are some cool things you can do with Zingtree and Zapier:
Send data collected in a Zingtree session to Salesforce, Zoho, Highrise, or any other CRM.
Add an email address entered into a tree into Mailchimp.
Send yourself an email or SMS message when a customer reaches a critical node in a tree.
Save new customer information in a Google Sheets row.
Create Trello cards from trees, and include customer notes and session data.
And tons more!
When using Zapier, you create “Zaps.” A Zap has a “trigger,” which is the source of the data, and an “action,” which is where the data gets sent. Most of our customers want to send data from Zingtree to another app, so we’ll demonstrate how this is done here.
Before starting, you may want to examine a demo tree from our Gallery that gathers data and sends it to Zapier, or copy it to your account.
How to Set up Zapier for Zingtree
The Zingtree Zapier app is currently invite-only. But if you’re reading this article, you’re invited!
You’ll be prompted to make a new Zap:
Click Make a new Zap.
You’ll be asked to choose a Trigger App, which is the source of the data exchange.
Search for Zingtree, and select Zingtree (Beta).
You’ll be asked to choose a single trigger.
Click Save + Continue.
Next, you’ll need to connect your Zingtree account and a tree to Zapier.
Click Connect a New Account.
You’ll be asked for your Zingtree API Key, which you can find here. Also, enter the Tree ID that will be sending data to Zapier.
Click Continue when finished.
Change the name of the account, then click Test.
You should see “success.” Click Save + Continue.
Next, Zapier will attempt to retrieve any variables or sample data from your tree. If this is a new tree, you may want to run through it once and gather some data.
Click Fetch & Continue.
You’ll see some of the stock data that Zingtree always provides, as well as any custom data for your tree. Again, if you don’t see all the data you expect, do a test run through your tree, and enter some data at least once. This will make the rest of the process easier.
Click Continue.
Set up the Action App – Email Example
So now you’re done with the Zingtree part. Congratulations! Next, you need to set up an Action App, which will receive data from Zingtree. Let’s set up email delivery as an action, as follows:
Search for email, and choose Email by Zapier as an action app.
Select Email by Zapier.
This app has just one action.
Click Save + Continue.
Fill in details for the outbound email. You can insert fields from Zingtree in the body of the email as well.Click Continue when the email is set up correctly.
You’ll see a preview of what to expect.
Click Create & Continue to save the action and send a test email.
You should see another “success” screen.
Click Finish when the email appears as you like.
Name your Zap Zingtree to Email, and turn it on!
Your Zapier Zap is all set.
Making Zingtree Send Data
The final step is to tell Zingtree when to send all the data collected in a session to Zapier. This can be triggered from one or more nodes, when they are seen by the end-user of your tree.
From Overview, Edit Node, edit the node that you want to trigger sending data to Zapier.
Go to Send Message to, and pick Zapier: Zingtree to Email. This is the new Zap you created.
Click Save.
Now try a test from Zingtree. Using Preview or the Publish tool, navigate your tree, and when you reach the node that triggers the send, you should see something in your inbox. IMPORTANT: Make sure to use https in your published Zingtree URL when using Zapier.
Once you get your first Zap done, it becomes easy and addictive to hook Zingtree to the other applications that your business depends upon. So keep going!
Email notifications like this:
Slack notifications let you select a channel to post to, like this:
Click Continue when the email is set up correctly.
