The moment it happens

Summarise and prioritise new Zendesk tickets with AI

Each new ticket gets a short summary, a sentiment and a priority, and the urgent ones are flagged in Slack.

Runs: The moment it happens
Apps: Slack, Zendesk
AI: Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access: Zendesk write; chat:write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: when a new Zendesk ticket arrives, have AI summarise it, rate the sentiment and set the priority. Tag the ticket, and post anything urgent to #escalations.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A growing online shop gets tickets of every kind: where is my parcel, a broken item, a furious customer threatening a chargeback. They all arrive with the same normal priority, and agents work through them in order. The ticket that really needed an answer in ten minutes waits behind forty delivery questions.

Reading each ticket as it arrives and setting a sensible priority means agents start with the right ones, and the team lead hears about the angry ones straight away.

What you get out of it

Urgent tickets jump the queue
Priority is set from what the customer actually wrote, so the chargeback threat is handled before the routine question.
Summaries save reading time
Agents see the gist in one line before opening a long email thread with screenshots and forwarded history.
Sentiment tags for reporting
Tagging each ticket as positive, neutral or negative lets you track how customers feel over time, not just how many wrote in.
Leads hear about trouble early
Only the urgent tickets reach Slack, so the escalation channel is a short list worth reading.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Zendesk tells ClickRuntime the moment a new ticket is created.
It reads the ticket's subject and first message.
AI writes a one-line summary, rates the customer's mood and picks a priority based on the rules you described.
The ticket is updated with the priority, a sentiment tag and the summary as a private note.
If the ticket is urgent, a message with the summary and link goes to your #escalations Slack channel.

Before it runs live

Connect Slack, then invite the app to the channel (type /invite @ClickRuntime there)
Connect Zendesk
Paste your automation's link into the other app's webhook settings

What you get

RunsThe moment it happens

Summarise and prioritise new Zendesk tickets with AIjust nowSucceeded

Slack · #escalations🚨 #6012 Acme Retail says their checkout has been down for an hour and they'll cancel if it isn't fixed today.

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
Add another app, for example also send it to Google Sheets
Combine it with other Slack and Zendesk steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

ai_summary_sentiment_and_priority_for_new_tickets.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_event, http, credentials, ai, notify

ZD, AGENT = "https://yourcompany.zendesk.com/api/v2", "you@yourcompany.com"

def zd(method, path, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, ZD + path, auth=(f"{AGENT}/token", credentials.secret("ZENDESK_API_TOKEN")), **kw)
    return r.raise_for_status() or (r.json() if r.content else None)

SCHEMA = {"type": "object", "properties": {"summary": {"type": "string"},
          "sentiment": {"enum": ["positive", "neutral", "negative"]},
          "priority": {"enum": ["low", "normal", "high", "urgent"]}}, "required": ["summary", "sentiment", "priority"]}

@on_event
def handle(event):
    tid = (event.json or {})["ticket"]["id"]
    t = zd("GET", f"/tickets/{tid}")["ticket"]
    res = ai.generate(f"Subject: {t['subject']}\n\n{t['description'][:3000]}",
                      system="Summarise this support ticket in one line, rate sentiment, and set priority. Urgent = threats to cancel, payment failures, outages.",
                      json_schema=SCHEMA, max_output_tokens=150).json
    zd("PUT", f"/tickets/{tid}", json={"ticket": {"priority": res["priority"], "additional_tags": [f"sentiment_{res['sentiment']}"],
                                                 "comment": {"body": f"AI summary: {res['summary']}", "public": False}}})
    if res["priority"] == "urgent":
        notify.slack(f"🚨 #{tid} {res['summary']}\nhttps://yourcompany.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/{tid}", channel="#escalations")
    return {"ticket": tid, "priority": res["priority"]}

FAQ

Common questions

Where does the summary appear?

As a private note on the ticket, visible to agents but never to the customer.

Can agents change the priority it sets?

Yes. It sets the priority once when the ticket arrives; anything an agent changes afterwards is left alone.

What counts as urgent?

You describe it in the prompt, for example threats to cancel, payment failures or anything about safety. The AI applies that description to each ticket.

What permissions does it need?

Zendesk write; chat:write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run for each event the app sends.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

The moment it happens