Webinar with our partner Gravity CX: expanding Zendesk with SweetHawk

We recently teamed up with our partners at Gravity CX, a Zendesk Premier Partner based in Australia, to run a live webinar showing how the SweetHawk apps can extend Zendesk into areas it was never designed to cover natively: multi-step approvals, phased employee onboarding, sub-ticketing, dynamic approver routing, notifications inside Zendesk, and more.

Hugo and Jess from Gravity CX hosted, and SweetHawk cofounder Peter Godden drove two live demos from start to finish. Here's a recap of what was covered, plus a link to the full recording.

Use case 1: Employee onboarding

Every new hire triggers dozens of small tasks: account creation, building access, laptop provisioning, security training, policy signoffs. Those tasks usually sit across too many systems. Peter showed how a single Zendesk ticket, opened when a new hire is announced, can orchestrate the whole process.

What got demonstrated:

• A hiring manager submits a "new hire" web form, which creates a Zendesk ticket.
• Power Actions automatically swaps the ticket requester from the hiring manager to the new hire, then sends a welcome email from a named person on the team.
• Reminders sends a sequence of messages to the new hire in the days before they start: 10 days out, 5 days out, the night before.
• On start day, a Tasks checklist automatically applies to the ticket. Smaller items get ticked off in place; bigger ones spin up as subtickets assigned to IT, Facilities, HR, and so on, each with its own form, requester, assignee, and nested task list.
• A Timer measures how long 2FA setup takes, and when it completes, writes the duration into a numeric ticket field that flows straight into Zendesk Explore.
• The Kanban app mirrors the onboarding phase field to a board, so the whole team can watch tickets move visually from Before start, to Week one, to Fully ramped.

The real leverage isn't any one app. It's that they trigger each other. Finishing a task list updates a field, which stops a timer, which writes a metric, which fires the next approval. That interconnected workflow is the part you can't easily build natively in Zendesk.

Use case 2: Refund approval workflow

The second demo moved into approvals, a classic area where Zendesk alone hits its limits.

What got demonstrated:

• A large refund ticket arrives and the Notify app pops a sticky notification inside Zendesk, with an optional sound, so no one has to chase through Slack or email to know it's there.
• A phased task list (a recent Tasks app feature) enforces an order: initial verification has to complete before the approval phase unlocks, and subtickets in a later phase aren't created until that phase is active. Agents still see the whole plan up front.
• The Approve app routes the approval through two stages: first the customer's manager, then the finance team. The approver is resolved dynamically from a field on the organisation, not hardcoded per template. Combine this with an Azure AD or Okta sync and you get fully dynamic routing from a single approval definition.
• The approver can action the request in email, in a branded approval portal, or in Slack, whichever they prefer. Approvers don't need to be Zendesk agents and don't count against your agent licences.
• Once approved, the workflow continues: comments post back on the parent ticket, fields update, and a Survey goes out with the refund confirmation. Multiple questions, branded, with every answer feeding into Zendesk Explore.

Q&A highlights

The audience drove the conversation to some useful places.

Can individual tasks be assigned automatically to different teams?

Individual checklist items can't be assigned, but any task can spin up as a subticket, which does carry an assignee, SLA, and its own workflow. That distinction matters: "assign" usually implies expectations and accountability, and subtickets are where those live.

How long does it take to set up a workflow like this?

Peter's honest answer: anywhere from five minutes to five days, depending on complexity. The sweet spot is having a champion inside the business who knows the process and is willing to learn a little about SweetHawk, or pulling in a partner like Gravity CX when the workflow gets gnarly.

Can a ticket be blocked from solving until all tasks are done?

Yes, and it's the default. The Tasks app can enforce that a ticket can't be marked solved while any task is outstanding, with a clear error shown to the agent.

Can a workflow branch based on a field value, e.g. skip approval under $500?

Yes. The cleanest pattern is a dropdown field for the refund amount tier, then different Zendesk triggers per tier. Under $500 skips straight to refund; over $500 starts the manager approval; over $2,000 adds finance.

How does the timer get a number into a number field?

Via Power Actions, which handles the things triggers can't natively, like writing to numeric or multiline text fields, or posting a public comment with a chosen author. No webhooks or Liquid gymnastics.

Thanks again to Hugo, Jess, and the team at Gravity CX for hosting.