Fitting Anomaly Detection into your workflow

Fitting Anomaly Detection into your workflow

The time to action when an anomalous data point is discovered, can make or break the investment in having anomaly detection.

If alerts are triggered and not actioned, the result is often the same as not sending an alert in the first place. So how do you create a culture of acting on anomaly alerts without introducing process overhead and a suite of new tools? Automation.

Through the use of APIs and no/low code integration platforms you can easily connect your existing tools and processes. Anomaly detection is great to get peace of mind, that when an issue (positive or negative) arises, you become aware of it in a timely manner. Often though, adding an anomaly detection system into your daily processes means an investment in staff training, which can provide a real barrier for agencies to take it on.

This post will show you how to use the no-code integration platform Zapier to connect Jepto and Asana (a popular task management tool used by Marketing Agencies). Asana can be easily substituted for many of the other supported Project Management Tools in Zapier.

Why Anomaly Detection?

Let's start with a quick overview of what we are trying to achieve. In Marketing Agencies there are a lot of competing priorities; from rush campaigns, ad performance analysis, performance prediction and clients request for insights. So tasks like logging in and checking Google Analytics for possible jumps in data is just not feasible. This is however a great fit for automation and will ensure that we get the visibility we need.

Integration

Automation is a growing trend, but sometimes the implementation can be quite technical and requires scripts and code editors. You are a marketer, not a developer, which is why this solution doesn't involve anything complex or need the ability to write code.

Requirements

1. Project Management Tool - For this example we will use Asana
2. Zapier - Starter subscription or above (For multi-step Zaps)
3. Jepto Account - Any account level (Business or Agency)

Task Synchronisation

As mentioned in the outline, our aim is to synchronise an action of acknowledging or resolving a detected anomalies in one app to all other connected apps. To do this we need to look at the different ways in which you can be notified of an Anomaly and the associated actions.

Actions

Notification - Awareness of the issue

Acknowledge - Communicate to other team members you are aware of the anomaly and looking into it.

Resolve - Anomaly has been investigated and appropriate action taken.

Methods

1. Email notification - Notification only, links open the App
2. Slack notification - Notification, Acknowledge, Resolve
3. Jepto App (Insight Card) - Notification, Acknowledge, Resolve
4. Project Management Tool - Task Created, Task Closed

Building the automation workflows

1. Create task in Asana

The first Zap (Zapier's term for automations) creates a task in Asana when an anomaly is detected.

To achieve this we use the Instantaneous Trigger of an Anomaly being detected in your Jepto account. You can choose to select a particular client and/or anomaly if you want fine grained control of which Project or task list you want to create the task in Asana.

Creating the task is very straight forward and if you chose a particular client in the first step you can choose the matching Project here. Place the Insight ID into the Notes section of the task (or any other particular field you like) so that we can reference this when this task is closed to resolve the Jepto Anomaly.

The last step will complete the two-way binding of the Jepto Anomaly to the task in Asana. In the Customize Insight section use the Client ID and Insight ID that are part of the Anomaly Insight data in Step 1. Now for a little automation magic. When Zapier tells Asana to create a task in Step 2, Asana outputs the task ID of the task it just created, so that we can use it in subsequent steps. By placing this ID in the External ID field we can complete the link between Asana and Jepto.

Now Jepto and Asana both have an ID that can be used to look up the association to the other App.

2. Close task in Asana

The second Zap closes the task in Asana when you resolve an Anomaly Insight within Jepto (Via the App or Slack).

Like the trigger above this the resolved Insight Trigger is instantaneous and will fire each time you resolve an Insight.

Note: Insights are the created from Anomaly Detection and Automations. As this workflow is specific to Anomalies we can set the Insight Type to Anomaly.

In the previous Zap we saved the Asana task ID into the External ID field of the Insight. We can now use this ID to reference the exact Asana task ID without doing a Search (which saves you money as Zapier is priced on the amount of steps).

Change the Tak completed to yes, and we have now closed the task in Asana. Magic! 🎉

3. Resolve Insight

The third Zap resolves an Insight in Jepto when you close a task in Asana that is linked to a Jepto Insight. Jepto has a native 2-way sync with Slack, so if you have Slack notifications for Anomalies then they will also be updated when this Zap runs.

Use the Completed Task Trigger for your Asana account or Client Project in which the tasks are being created.

Optional: Depending on your use case, you might want to add a filter step that looks for the presence of a Jepto Insight ID before proceeding. In our example we are using the Notes field and are not using that for any other purpose and therefore checking for its existence (Zapier define this as presence of any value in the field specified). If you already use this field then you can modify the step that creates the task and insert text to identify that this is a Jepto Insight ID and then in your filter use the text contains option to look for your identifier text.

The filter will ensure that you do not pay for Zapier task usage when the Asana task is not linked to an Anomaly.

To resolve an Insight in Jepto you need to specify the Client ID and Insight ID. If you only have one Client for this Zap then you can manually enter that value in the resolve step and skip this step, otherwise we will need to search Jepto for the details of an Insight based upon the external ID.

The step above will provide us all of the information we need to resolve the Insight. Just select the search results from the step above and the Insight will be resolved.

Note: If you have Slack notifications setup these will also be automatically updated.

That's all that you need. Simple and effective synchronisation of Apps to keep your current workflow, but with added anomaly super powers.