Workflow Conditions and Actions
Workflows are composed of conditions (what you’re looking for) and actions (what you want to happen). This article lists all available conditions and actions.
Workflow conditions
| Condition | Description |
| Customer Name | Contains*, does not contain*, is or is not equal to, starts with, ends with, or matches a regex pattern* for the Customer Name field |
| Customer Email | Contains*, does not contain*, is or is not equal to, starts with, ends with a specific email address, or matches a regex pattern* for the Customer Email field |
| Help Scout User | Look for conversations where a specific User replied or added a note |
| Type | Is equal to or not equal to email, chat, or phone |
| Status | Is equal to or not equal to Active, Pending, Closed, or Spam |
| Assigned | Is equal to or not equal to a specific Help Scout assignee, or unassigned |
| To | Contains*, does not contain*, is or is not equal to, starts or ends with, or matches a regex pattern* in the To: field, for an email address that is not the Mailbox address |
| Cc | Contains*, does not contain*, is or is not equal to, starts or ends with, or matches a regex pattern* in the Cc: field |
| Subject | Contains, does not contain, is or is not equal to, starts or ends with, or matches a regex pattern* in the Subject field |
| Body | Customer message or User note contains specific words or phrases within the body |
| Attachment(s) | Does or does not include an attachment |
| Tag(s) | Is, Is not, or matches a regex pattern* |
| Rating | Satisfaction rating is equal to Great, Okay, or Not Good |
| Rating Comments | Satisfaction rating does or does not include comments |
| Date Created | In the last or is not in the last X days or hours |
| Waiting Since | Longer or not longer than X days or hours |
| Last User Reply | In the last or not in the last X days or hours |
| Last Customer Reply | In the last or not in the last X days or hours |
| Exact Date Created | Before or after a specific calendar date |
*Note: All regex operators and the Contains / does not contain operators indicated with an asterisk (*) above will be deprecated by the end of 2021. Please reach out to our support team if you have any questions about the options that are being retired.
Workflow Operators
These are the operators you will find along with text search based conditions.
| Operator | Description |
| Is equal to | The field matches the text entered exactly, including spaces and special characters |
| Contains | The field contains the words entered anywhere in the field |
| Does not contain | The field does not contain the words entered anywhere in the field Note: Using OR with Does not contain creates a double negative and will not give any results. Use AND with Does not contain instead |
| Is not equal to | The field does not match text entered exactly, including spaces and special characters |
| Starts with | The field starts with the words entered exactly |
| Ends with | The field ends with the words entered exactly |
| Matches regex pattern | Use a regular expression to create your own operator Note: All regex operators will be deprecated by the end of 2021. Reach out to support if you have questions about this retirement. |
Notes on changes coming to text search operators
Changes are coming to the Contains / Does not contain and Starts with / Ends with text search operators. You should use whole words as your terms and define multiple conditions or Workflows to account for all variations that you want to find, rather than using single conditions looking for partial matches. We will stop matching on partial words as we make changes to improve Workflows.
Example:
Currently if your condition is set to If Subject contains end, that condition will match on any word that includes end, like friend, send, weekend, trend, etc.
That condition will only match when the word "end" is present in the subject after Workflows stop matching on partial words. It will no longer match on friend, send, weekend, trend, etc.
You'll still be able to catch those variations — you'll just need to define OR conditions (or AND conditions with Does not contain) that define all the words you want to catch in whole. Your conditions would be If Subject contains end OR Subject contains friend OR Subject contains weekend, etc.
Workflow actions
| Action | Description |
| Copy to Folder | Copies conversations to a custom folder |
| Send an Email | Notify a Help Scout User or send a custom email to the customer |
| Forward | Forward conversation with a custom message to a third party |
| Add a Note | Add a private note to a conversation |
| Change Status | Change the status to Active, Pending, Closed, or Spam |
| Assign to User | Assign a conversation to a specific Help Scout User |
| Assign to Team | Assign a conversation to a specific Help Scout Team (requires Teams) |
| Add Tag(s) | Add one or more tags to a conversation |
| Remove Tag(s) | Remove one or more tags from a conversation |
| Move to Mailbox | Move conversations to another mailbox |
| Delete | Delete the conversation Note: Conversations deleted by a Workflow will not appear in Recently Deleted and are not recoverable |
| Set Custom Field | Set a Custom Field (requires Custom Fields) |