The Scenario
The operations analyst inherited the Zendesk automation review as part of a new quarterly governance initiative. The first review is in two weeks. She has an Excel workbook set up with a tab for automation documentation — but the only person who knew what all the automations did left the company in January.
The account has automations ranging from "notify assignee of idle ticket after 48 hours" to configurations that fire under conditions nobody currently on the team remembers setting up. There are 35 of them.
The bad version:
- Open Zendesk Admin, navigate to Automations.
- Click automation 1. Read the time condition. Read the actions. Switch to Excel. Enter the data.
- At automation 12, realize you've been writing the time condition in hours for some and in minutes for others, which is going to confuse the team reviewing the documentation.
Thirty-five automations. Two weeks to document them. One analyst who didn't build any of them. Manual documentation through the UI is how governance documentation becomes inaccurate before it's even finished.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook. It uses the Zendesk integration to pull every automation's conditions and actions in one consistent pull.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar in the governance workbook and paste:
List all active Zendesk automations and populate this Excel sheet with automation ID, name, when the automation fires, and what actions it takes
What You Get
- One row per automation.
- Automation ID, name, firing condition (the "when"), and action summary in consistent format across all 35 rows.
- Active and inactive automations both captured if you want the complete inventory.
Consistent documentation. No interpretation differences between rows 1 and 35.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
You want active and inactive automations separated
List all Zendesk automations — put active ones in the 'Active' worksheet and inactive ones in the 'Inactive' worksheet. Include automation ID, name, time condition, and actions in each
Two-worksheet split for the review committee.
You need the time conditions expressed in hours consistently
List all Zendesk automations — automation ID, name, active status, time condition expressed in hours (convert any minute-based conditions to hours), and actions
Consistent unit expression in the documentation.
You want to flag automations that fire after very short intervals for review
List all Zendesk automations — automation ID, name, active status, time condition, actions. Flag any automation that fires after less than 4 hours with 'short interval - review' in column F
Short-interval flag for the governance review.
Full quarterly automation governance package
List all Zendesk automations to the 'All Automations' worksheet — ID, name, active status, time condition, actions. Write active and inactive counts to the 'Summary' worksheet. On the 'Stale' worksheet, list any automation not modified in the past 12 months — ID, name, and date last updated
Complete inventory, status counts, and stale-automation candidates — one prompt, governance review ready.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your governance workbook, then export the full automation list. Related: export triggers to complete the business-rules documentation, or return to the Zendesk integration guide.