Zendesk, Inc.
Facilitating quick evaluation of trigger conditions for business rules that modify customer support tickets

Abstract:

When a customer-support ticket is created or updated in an online customer-support system, the system applies a set of triggers, which modify the ticket based on business rules, to the ticket, wherein each trigger performs actions that modify the ticket when conditions for parameters associated with the ticket are satisfied. During this process, the system evaluates condition nodes in condition graphs for the set of triggers, wherein a condition graph for a trigger is a directed graph comprised of condition nodes that specify conditions on one or more parameters associated with the ticket. During this evaluation, if a valid path through a condition graph comprising satisfied condition nodes is discovered, the system fires a trigger associated with the condition graph. Also, while evaluating the condition nodes, the system performs one or more range-searching operations to quickly evaluate conditions for frequently occurring parameters in the condition graphs.