The Scenario
The quarterly automation review is on the calendar for next Wednesday. The ops analyst running it needs every automation in the Zendesk account listed in a spreadsheet — what it's called, when it fires, and what it does — before she can start assessing which ones are still needed.
The last automation audit was two years ago. Nobody has a current list. The account has grown since then and automations were added without documentation.
The bad version:
- Open Zendesk Admin, navigate to Automations.
- Click through each automation one by one, read the conditions and actions, and manually transcribe them into a sheet.
- At automation 22, realize you wrote "Notify assignee of open ticket after 72 hours" for two different automations because you didn't differentiate the timing conditions, and now you have to go back and re-read both.
Automation documentation is inherently boring and inherently important. The only thing worse than the documentation debt is the process of paying it back manually.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Google Sheet. It uses the Zendesk integration to pull every automation with its conditions and actions in one pull.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar in your automation review sheet and paste:
Export all Zendesk automations into this sheet with automation ID, title, active status, conditions summary, and actions performed
What You Get
- One row per automation.
- Automation ID, title, and active status in columns A through C.
- Time-based conditions (the "when" logic) in column D.
- Action list (the "what happens") in column E.
Complete inventory in one pass. No clicking through individual automation pages.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
You need to separate active and inactive automations for review
Export all Zendesk automations into this sheet — put active automations in the 'Active' tab and inactive ones in the 'Inactive' tab. Include automation ID, title, conditions summary, and actions in each tab
Two-tab structure for the review meeting — active ones to evaluate, inactive ones to consider archiving.
You need the timing conditions spelled out more explicitly
Export all Zendesk automations into this sheet — automation ID, title, active status, the exact time condition (e.g., 'ticket is open for more than 48 hours'), and the action list
More granular condition description in the ask.
You want to flag duplicates where two automations appear to do the same thing
Export all Zendesk automations to the 'All Automations' tab with ID, title, status, conditions, and actions. On the 'Possible Duplicates' tab, list any two automations whose conditions and actions appear to overlap
Duplicate detection alongside the main inventory.
Full quarterly review package
Export all Zendesk automations to the 'All Automations' tab — ID, title, active status, conditions, actions. Write a count of active vs. inactive to cell B2 and B3 of the 'Summary' tab. On the 'Action Required' tab, list any automation that has not been modified in more than 12 months
Inventory, status counts, and stale-automation list — one prompt, review-ready output.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your automation review sheet, then export the full automation list. Related: export triggers to document the complementary rule set, or return to the Zendesk integration guide.