What-If Simulation

What-If Mode lets you simulate configuration changes before applying them to your live Zendesk instance. Make virtual edits to triggers, automations, macros, views, fields, SLA policies, routing attributes, custom roles, webhooks, and more — 24 of the 42 supported types have structured edit forms. Analyse the impact of your changes without touching production.

Enabling What-If Mode

Toggle What-If Mode from the navbar when viewing any connection:

• Click the What-If Mode button in the top navigation bar
• Or press ++cmd+shift+s++ (Mac) / ++ctrl+shift+s++ (Windows/Linux)

When active, the button turns amber and displays a badge showing how many pending changes you have.

Making Virtual Edits

With What-If Mode enabled, you can edit configuration objects using Zendesk-native form controls:

1. Navigate to any configuration item (trigger, automation, macro, etc.)
2. Click the Edit button that appears in What-If Mode
3. Make your changes using the form controls
4. Your changes are saved as virtual edits — they exist only in Configly

Supported Edit Types

Form Controls

Virtual edits use Zendesk-native form controls so the editing experience feels familiar:

• Condition builder — Add, remove, and modify conditions with field pickers and operator selectors
• Action builder — Configure actions with value controls and tag inputs
• Field picker — Search and select from your synced Zendesk fields
• Tag input — Add and remove tags with chip-style input
• Operator selector — Choose from Zendesk-standard operators (is, is not, contains, etc.)

AI Impact Analysis

After making virtual edits, use AI-powered analysis to understand the consequences of your changes.

How It Works

1. Make one or more virtual edits in What-If Mode
2. Open the Impact Panel to see analysis results
3. Configly analyses your changes using Claude Haiku and shows:
   • Risk assessment — How risky are these changes?
   • Affected items — Which other configuration objects are impacted?
   • Conflicts — Do your changes conflict with existing rules?
   • Execution order — How will rule execution order change?

Impact Panel

The Impact Panel shows:

• Impact Summary Cards — High-level metrics about your changes
• Affected Objects List — Every trigger, automation, macro, or view that could be affected
• Conflicts List — Detected conflicts between your changes and existing configuration
• Execution Order Timeline — Visual timeline showing how rules will fire

Safety Indicator

A safety indicator shows the risk level of your pending changes:

• Low risk — Changes are isolated and unlikely to cause issues
• Medium risk — Changes affect multiple objects or shared dependencies
• High risk — Changes could affect critical workflows or have wide-reaching impact

Managing Virtual Changes

Viewing Pending Changes

The What-If Mode button shows a count badge with the number of pending changes. Click any configuration item to see its virtual edits.

Discarding Changes

• Single change — Click the discard button on any individual virtual edit
• All changes — Disable What-If Mode to discard all pending changes

Persistence

Virtual changes persist across page navigation within a session. If you navigate away from a connection and come back, your pending changes are restored automatically.

Conflict Detection

Configly automatically detects potential conflicts when you make virtual changes:

• Overlapping conditions — Two triggers that would both fire on the same tickets
• Contradictory actions — Rules that set the same field to different values
• Circular dependencies — Changes that create circular references between objects
• Broken references — Edits that reference fields or groups that don't exist

Use Cases

Safe Testing

Test configuration changes in What-If Mode before applying them in Zendesk. See the impact analysis to understand consequences before you make any real changes.

Change Planning

Use What-If Mode to plan a batch of changes:

1. Enable What-If Mode
2. Make all your planned changes
3. Review the impact analysis
4. Use the results as a checklist when making real changes in Zendesk

Training

Let new admins experiment with configuration changes safely. They can make virtual edits, see the impact analysis, and learn how Zendesk configuration works without any risk to production.

What-If Scenarios

Answer questions like:

• "What would happen if I disabled this trigger?"
• "Which tickets would be affected if I changed this automation's conditions?"
• "Would adding this SLA policy conflict with existing ones?"
• "What happens if I change this webhook endpoint?"

Applying Changes to Zendesk

Once you've tested your virtual edits and reviewed the impact analysis, you can push them directly to your live Zendesk instance:

1. Click Apply Changes in the What-If Mode toolbar
2. Select which changes to push (or select all)
3. Enter a change reason — this is mandatory and creates an audit trail
4. Review any drift warnings — Configly checks whether the objects changed in Zendesk since your simulation
5. Confirm and apply

Every apply operation is logged in Apply History with full details, and you can rollback to the pre-push state with one click.

Learn more about Apply Changes →

Limitations

• AI analysis quotas — AI-powered analysis has a per-connection usage limit
• Point-in-time — Analysis is based on your last sync. Sync again for the most current data.

Next Steps

• Apply Changes — Push your tested changes to Zendesk
• Compare snapshots — See what changed between real sync versions
• View dependencies — Understand how objects are connected
• Global search — Find configuration objects across all types