Why Intents Matter for Modern MSPs
If you're running an MSP today, you're probably seeing it too: ticket volume is growing, complexity is rising, and your best techs are being dragged into repetitive tasks. AI promises scale—but without the right structure, that scale quickly turns into spaghetti.
That’s where Magic Intents come in.
These aren’t just smart prompts. They’re AI-powered micro-processes designed to reason like a technician and act like an assistant. Built into Thread’s triage agent, Magic Intents help MSPs collect better data, standardize automation, and drive faster resolution paths—all without overwhelming your service team.
If you want your AI to act like part of your team (not just a bot in the corner), Intents are how you do it.
What Is a Magic Intent (And Why Should MSPs Care)?
A Magic Intent is a structured AI workflow. Think of it like a digital checklist for your AI agent—with logic, rules, and form fields built in.
Unlike a raw prompt ("Summarize this ticket"), an intent includes:
- Trigger conditions: When and where it should run
- Prompt: What the AI should do
- Form fields: What data it must collect
- Actions: What happens next (e.g. update a ticket, reply to a user, send a webhook)
In short, intents are how you:
- Standardize what your AI does
- Ensure consistency across clients
- Create outputs that humans and machines can act on
As one Thread partner put it during AI Service Unleashed: “Intents are the difference between hoping the AI does the right thing—and knowing it will."
How Magic Intents Work in Practice
Let’s say an unstructured voicemail or email comes into your service desk. Normally, it would land in the catchall queue. A technician would have to listen, parse the message, identify the client, and reassign the ticket manually.
With Magic Intents, your AI:
- Detects the ticket is from the catchall address
- Parses the transcript or email body
- Extracts the contact name, company, phone number, and issue summary
- Sends that data to your PSA—or even to an RPA tool like Rewst
- Assigns the ticket to the right client, contact, and team
Now, what used to take 10 minutes of human effort happens in seconds. And it's consistent every time.
Real-World Use Cases from the AI Service Unleashed Series
During a recent three-part series on Magic Intents featured in Thread’s weekly AI Service Unleashed partner call, partners shared how they’re using intents to turn repetitive workflows into smart automations.
Parsing Unstructured Tickets
In Part 3, Brian Chapman, Customer Success Manager at Thread, demoed a catchall parsing intent that identifies contact info from voicemail transcripts and email bodies. It extracts the right metadata and updates the ticket—fully automated.
"Just judging by the sheer amount of tickets that come into your service desk right now that are catchall... we can extract that with Magic Intents and push it to RPA."
Smart Escalation for Urgent Issues
In Part 2, we saw how you can design intents that skip AI entirely when urgency is detected (e.g. "locked out of PCC").
Summarization and Documentation
In Part 1, partners shared how they use intents to generate time entries and resolution summaries. It saves time and improves quality of documentation.
Onboarding and Access Requests
Several partners are now building intents that collect user onboarding info or access request details, then pass that to Rewst or Power Automate—reducing the number of tech touches required.
Why Structure Beats Spaghetti in AI Service Delivery
It’s tempting to start your AI journey by playing with prompts and hoping for magic. But when consistency, scale, and efficiency matter, structured workflows win every time.
Magic Intents offer guardrails. They allow you to test, refine, and repeat outcomes across your client base. That means your AI delivers results that are not only accurate, but also auditable and teachable. Whether you're onboarding a new tech or deploying your 50th automation, structure keeps your operations sane.
Without structure, even the best AI can create chaos. With it, you create a library of trusted automations that compound in value over time.
From Intent to Full Automation with RPA
Once you've captured structured data with Magic Intents, you're in a position to drive real automation. Tools like Rewst, Power Automate, and Zapier become natural extensions of your AI workflows.
For example, an intent might extract user onboarding data from a ticket. That data can be passed via webhook to Rewst, which handles account creation, permissioning, and notifications. The result? A task that used to involve three techs and multiple emails now happens in one seamless flow.
One partner showed how a single intent plus Rewst workflow could resolve a ticket from email to documentation—without a technician ever touching it.
These aren’t science fiction examples. They’re live in production today, saving time and boosting customer satisfaction.
What MSPs Are Asking For Next
The partner community around Thread is actively shaping what Magic Intents can do next. Based on real-world feedback from Thread partners during the live AI Service Unleashed sessions, here are some of the most requested enhancements:
- The ability to make multiple webhook calls per intent, allowing more complex workflows
- Support for dynamic form inputs, such as lists of SharePoint sites or distribution groups
- More granular opt-out controls, so users who dislike bots can bypass them
- The ability to reengage an intent, allowing multi-step or conversational workflows over time
Thread has confirmed many of these features are already on the roadmap. This is one of the key benefits of working with a partner-focused platform—the innovation doesn’t just happen for you, it happens with you.
Getting Started with Intents
The best part about Magic Intents? You don’t need a developer or an AI engineer to start. You just need a clear use case and a willingness to iterate.
Start by identifying a high-volume or high-friction workflow—like categorizing catchall tickets or collecting access request info. From there, you can use one of Thread’s pre-built templates as your foundation. Customize the form fields, test with one client, and observe the results.
Most partners see impact in a matter of days. You don’t have to automate everything. Just pick the 20% of tasks that create 80% of the drag on your team.
Where Magic Intents Are Headed
Magic Intents began as a triage tool. But they’re quickly becoming the foundation for a new kind of AI-powered service desk—one that doesn’t just react faster, but works smarter.
Today, intents collect structured data and feed that into tickets. Tomorrow, they will drive multi-step decision-making, adaptive workflows, and even direct resolution.
That’s the future of agentic service. A system where AI acts with context, intention, and accountability.
Build Smarter Workflows with Thread
If you're looking to:
- Get better data from your service desk
- Reduce technician time on repetitive tasks
- Deliver faster, more consistent support
...then it’s time to explore what Magic Intents can do for your team.
Reach out to the Thread team to see how quickly you can get started.
Let’s build the future of service—one intent at a time.
