Best Practices for Automated Actions
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An Automated Action is two things joined together: an intent you describe in a prompt, and the actions Pia takes when that intent matches.
What you can solve with them
The actions listed under each are what turn a good answer into a resolved request.
Answer the questions you keep answering.
Where the modem lives and how to power cycle it. Your office hours. The KB article for MFA on a new phone. Printer hardware faults sent to a dedicated print line rather than the service desk queue.
Actions: Configure your automated action to: Send Link/Message on its own. Add Log a Ticket and Set Value on Ticket if you want to report on how often it comes up for your client.
Get escalations right without a human triaging them.
A VIP path that lifts the priority, sets the status to Escalated, moves the board and assigns a named engineer in one go. Or separate P1 and P2 actions that fire on the severity of the wording.
Actions: Configure your automated action to: Log a Ticket, then Set Value on Ticket for Priority, Status, Board and Assignee. For a ticket that already exists, swap Log a Ticket for Add a Note.
Make tickets arrive ready to work.
Anyone mentioning VPN or Citrix gets stamped Incident, Remote Access, VPN on the way in. Same for account lockouts or drive mapping. Nobody spends time categorizing it later. You can also list the questions in the prompt you want answered for certain Ticket Classifications.
Actions: Configure your automated action to: Log a Ticket, then Set Value on Ticket for Ticket Classification, Board and Team.
Act on tickets that already exist.
Add a note to an open ticket, cancel one the client no longer needs, or tell them it's been marked complete.
Actions: Configure your automated action to: Add a Note plus Set Value on Ticket for Status. Add a Note and Log a Ticket can't go in the same action.
Actually fix the thing.
Restart the print spooler. Return a user their Outlook calendar permissions. Run a mailbox audit. The client gets the result back in the conversation.
Actions: Start Teams Automation to resolve it in chat with no ticket then Set Value on Ticket to route it.
Set expectations.
After-hours messaging with the emergency line and a note that after-hours rates may apply. Or a message covering what your service desk does and doesn't handle.
Actions: Configure your automated action to: Send Link/Message. Add Log a Ticket and Set Value on Ticket for Board if it still needs to reach someone.
Where to start
If you've got one Automated Action or none, build these three first.
- Your most repeated answer. Whatever your service desk types out five times a week.
- Your escalation path. VIP or P1, chained properly: log the ticket, set the status, lift the priority, assign it.
- "Where's my ticket up to." Answer it with a portal link instead of it becoming a new ticket.
That's an afternoon and it's where the return is. After that, the ones worth building next:
- Internet down or slow, with your site-specific first-line steps before a ticket is raised
- New hardware or peripheral requests routed to your procurement or sales board
- VPN and remote access, stamped with the right classification
- Slow or crashing machine, with the qualifying questions asked up front
- Printer and scanning faults, deflected or routed depending on how you handle them
- Suspicious or phishing email, with a do-not-click reply first and a security board
- Speak to a human, so an impatient client gets a ticket logged straight away
- A catch-all, so anything that doesn't match still gets captured
Two things to know before you build
Pia Chat already handles a lot on its own. It checks open tickets, serves available SmartForms, runs your Automated Actions, then triages and logs a ticket if nothing else fits. If a request maps to a SmartForm you've published, you don't need an Automated Action for it. Onboarding, offboarding and password resets usually fall into this bucket.
You can run Automations as part of Automated Actions. Start Teams Automation will run a Teams automation that the Teams Chat Action condition on the package.
Six things that separate a good build from a broken one
1. Write the prompt for matching, not for documenting. The prompt is what Pia matches a client's message against, and that's its only job. Boards, priorities and escalation rules written into the prompt do nothing, because nothing in the prompt can change a ticket. What does belong there: what the request looks like, what it definitely isn't, and real example phrases including the scruffy ones people actually type.
2. Rewrite the template, don't just rename it. Change only the label and the action keeps matching whatever the template was written for, not what you called it. Same when you duplicate an action you've already built.
3. One action is rarely the whole job. A ticket logged from the conversation is already a win, but every field you set on the way in is more value again. Click the plus and add more. Note that Log a Ticket and Add a Note are mutually exclusive: one is for new requests, the other for something already open.
4. Set your Ticketing Defaults first. Board, Source and Status under Workflow apply to every ticket Pia Chat creates, so every action inherits them and you only need Set Value on Ticket to override. SmartForms tickets follow SmartForms defaults even when served in Teams.
5. Use the preview before you save. Type a message the way a client would and Pia shows you what they'd get back. Test the obvious phrasing, then the sloppy phrasing, then something close but different that you don't want firing. That last one catches the most problems.
6. Build globally, override per client. A client with no custom workflow inherits everything global. Build your standard set once and go client-specific only where there's a genuine site difference, like where a modem lives or which number to call after hours.
Questions or something not behaving? Talk to your PSM or drop us a line at partner-support@pia.ai.