Automation overview

Automation lets Tenvara do routine work for you. A rule says: when something happens (an alert, a ticket change, a device event, a form sent from the portal, a quote, contract, invoice or sales event, mail to a sign-up address, a time of day, or another system calling the rule's own webhook address), for these customers, if these conditions hold, do these things in order. Rules can open, update, close and merge tickets, log time, book visits, run scripts, deploy software, patch, back up or isolate a device, create, change and remove Microsoft 365 users, groups, teams and shared mailboxes, run a leaver's whole Microsoft 365 checklist in one step, email or text a contact, notify people on Teams, Slack, email or text, page whoever is on call, put a message, alarm or camera on your TV screens, wait until something happens, ask someone to approve the next step, and call other systems with a webhook.

Every time a rule matches, Tenvara records a run in the run log: what it was about, how each condition came out and what each action did. Around the rules sit the notification channels, each person's notification settings, and on-call rotas with escalation. Pages can ring people's phones, arrive as push notifications and be answered by text, and alerts from other monitoring tools arrive by webhook or email. See Webhook triggers and inbound alerts.

Where automation lives#

Automation is part of Settings, in the group Automation and AI:

• Settings > Automation rules: every rule, in the order they run. The number beside it is how many rules you have.
• Settings > Run log: every run of every rule. See The run log.
• Settings > Channels: the Teams, Slack, text and phone channels on the Channels tab, how rules run and who may make them on General, rotas and escalation policies on On-call, and third parties who cover queues out of hours on Out-of-hours providers. See Notifications and channels.

Who is on call now, every page, the on-call calendar and on-call hours are in Team > On-call. See On-call rotas and paging.

The quick views are in the Views picker above each list: On, In dry run and Off for rules, and Failed, Loop protection, Dry runs and Waiting (parked on a Wait action or a webhook retry) for the run log.

More (...) above the rules list has Import rules... and Export every rule. See Templates, import and export.

The rules list#

Each row shows the Rule name (with a Dry run badge when it only logs), When (its trigger in words, such as "A device is offline for 30 minutes" or "Weekdays at 08:30"), For (which customers), the Last run outcome and time, how many Runs and Failures it has had, and an On switch.

• Click a rule to open it in the builder.
• Flip On to switch a rule on or off without opening it.
• The ... menu on each row has Take out of dry run (for a rule in dry run), Duplicate and Delete.
• Tick rules to Turn on, Turn off or Export several at once.
• Filter by For and On, or type to match a name or trigger.

Starting a rule#

Click New rule. You can start From scratch or from a gallery of templates in groups for alerts, on-call, devices, tickets, customers, projects, TV screens, forms, sales and sign-up mail, for example:

• Resolved tickets with no reply for 5 days: close them
• Server offline: wait 2 hours for it to come back, else page on-call
• Ransomware alert: isolate the device and page on-call
• Contract ends in 60 days: open a renewal ticket
• Contact marked as a leaver: block their Microsoft 365 sign-in
• Shared mailbox request form: give Full Access
• A vendor says a payment failed: raise an alert

See Templates, import and export.

See also Form triggers and the ready-made starter and leaver rules and Microsoft 365 steps and the leaver bundle.

Rules made from a template start in dry run, so you can watch what they would have done before letting them act. See Building a rule.

Rule order#

Rules for the same event run top to bottom. Click Order to put them in a different order, then Save the order. Order matters when a rule ends with a Stop action, which keeps later rules from running for that event, and when one rule relies on something an earlier one did (for example assigning a ticket before another rule notifies the assignee).

Whose permissions a rule uses#

A rule has an owner, and it acts with the owner's permissions, checked every time it runs rather than when it was saved. If the owner loses a permission or is deactivated, the steps that need it are skipped with the reason, and the owner is told.

• Ticket actions (create, update, assign, note, reply) need the owner to manage tickets.
• Raising or resolving an alert, and adding a device to a group, need the owner to manage devices.
• Running a script and deploying software need the owner to have those modules' permissions.
• Rules that run scripts, deploy software or send webhooks are for administrators, unless the General tab of Settings > Channels allows anyone who manages automation. This is also checked at every run.
• With Ask for approval before risky steps on in the same place, rules owned by someone who is not an administrator must ask for approval before running a script, deploying software or changing Microsoft 365.

Changes to rules themselves can also go through approval, so a new or changed rule waits in the Approvals inbox before it takes effect. See Approvals.

Permissions#

Automation has its own area in Roles and permissions:

Everyone can change their own Settings > Notifications.

Automation comes with the service desk on a new install, and is listed as Automation in Settings > Modules. If it is switched off in Modules, no rule runs and the inbox in the top bar is the only notification channel.

Where else automation shows up#

• Customer page: an Automation tab lists the rules scoped to that customer and every run that concerned them, with a New rule button.
• Tickets: a ticket opened or changed by a rule says so in its activity, for example 'Automation "Server offline for 30 minutes: raise a ticket" opened the ticket'. Such tickets have the source automation.
• Home: who is on call now, any open pages, and for administrators the Failing rules, last 7 days, critical ones first.
• Devices: the device page has an Automation block with the recent runs about that device.
• Policies: a rule can cover chosen sites or device groups as well as customers, and the Policies tab of a customer, site or group shows the rules that reach it. See Policies and where settings come from.
• Search (Cmd+K or Ctrl+K): jump to rules, the run log and on-call, start a new rule, or find rules by name.
• TV screens: a rule can put a message, an alarm, a caller card, a camera, a dashboard or a picture over chosen screens. See TV screens, doorbells and phone calls.
• Other systems: Zapier, Make, forms and scripts start rules through a webhook trigger, and Tenvara's own events go out to them through webhook subscriptions. See Integrations and the API.