Automation Question - Notification after 2 PM CST

Hi @hannah12 - can you explain more about what the notification would be doing or why it's necessary? The reason I'm asking is that there are probably a few ways to do this, but they might wind up being kind of complicated, so if a simpler solution is possible that's probably better all around. Here are some initial thoughts to do what you asked for - I can't think of a way to do this native to Zendesk because all the Zendesk automations are based on days and there is no support for time fields (only date). I'm assuming below that i. the notifications are linked to a ticket and ii. that each ticket will only have one notification. 

1. Middleware - I'm mostly using Zapier for solving these kinds of problems. Using Zapier you could have a scheduled trigger that runs each day at 2pm and pulls all the tickets that need notifications sent, and changes something on those tickets. You could then use a ZD trigger to send the notification and remove whatever field or tag indicates a notification is needed (so you don't get multiple notifications going out). 

2. API - Most things are possible with an API, using the Zendesk API you could do basically the same thing, although it's going to be more complicated via API as you'd have to write all your own code to do it. 

@mark12 absolutely! Thank you for asking for clarification.

When a requester submits a ticket for a specific topic (ex. Transfer), if it is 2 PM CST or after, the requester would immediately receive a notification email letting them know that the cutoff time for Transfers is 2 PM CST and will send out the following business day. 

It's not exactly necessary, more of a cx thought. Keeping customers informed, setting expectations of deadlines, etc.  

@hannah12 thank you for clarifying! This definitely makes sense in terms of CX. The Zapier approach would still work, but if you are not using schedules OR if you have an enterprise plan and can use multiple schedules, this could be a solution within Zendesk. It would look something like this 

1. Set your schedule to be something like 8am-2pm CST Mon-Fri or whatever makes sense for you
2. Create a trigger that sets the schedule on the right tickets
3. Create another trigger that sends the above email if 'Within Business Hours?' Is 'No'

If you are using multiple schedules and you don't want to remove the schedule from the ticket, you could (I think) still do this using the 'Tickets within schedule' rule. It's a bit more complex but you'd set up a schedule called 'Transfer OOO' or something similar that runs from 2pm until 8am (the reverse of when the transfers happen). Then you would use 'Ticket is Created' with that schedule. If it's created while the transfer team is OOO then the email would be sent, but you wouldn't lose any existing schedule on the ticket.

@mark12 this is excellent!! With multiple schedules, would I need to update any other notification trigger I have or would they be OK since the trigger is built to send only with this schedule? Does that make sense?

@hannah12 I am pretty sure that each ticket can only have one schedule applied, so if you already have a schedule applied to these tickets, I'd suggest the 'within schedule' approach, in which case you wouldn't have to change any other notifications as far as I can tell. 

Thanks for sharing all of those insights, Mark!