Second Insight - Let's talk Layouts

The Wheels of Ticketing - Desk Stories

Let's talk Layouts

What are layouts?

Layouts refer to the arrangement or design of elements in a space, whether on a physical surface, like a room or a piece of furniture, or in digital contexts, such as web pages or graphic designs. 

User interface layout: In software design, various interface elements, such as buttons, forms, and menus, are arranged to create an efficient and user-friendly experience. 

Layouts control how fields and related sections are organized on a department's module page. Each department can have its own design, which includes a combination of default and custom fields. These layouts dictate which fields are visible, read-only, and required.

 

Customer support agents need specific information to handle tickets for different products or processes effectively. As a result, help desks frequently incorporate multiple custom fields into the ticket forms that customers complete. This may lead to customers facing irrelevant fields that don't apply to their specific issues. The most effective solution to this confusion is to create and use an appropriate layout.

How can you benefit from using layouts?

Layouts are used in a wide range of software applications and platforms to enhance communication and user experience.

 

In Zoho Desk, you can use layouts to tailor the fields on module pages like Tickets and Tasks. The drag-and-drop feature enables you to add new fields easily, remove unnecessary ones, and rearrange fields to match your preferences. 

Key functions of a layout: 

• Visual hierarchy: Clarifies the significance of various elements and directs the viewer's attention to the essential information.
• Readability: Enhances the clarity and legibility of text and images, making it easier for the audience to digest the content.
• Aesthetic appeal: Creates an attractive design that engages users and encourages them to interact with the content.
• Consistency: This ensures a uniform look and feel across different pages or sections, which helps with branding and recognition.
• Navigation: Facilitates user navigation by organizing content logically and allowing users to find information quickly and intuitively.
• Functionality: Supports the intended function of the design, whether to inform, persuade, entertain, or provide a service.
  

A well-designed layout is crucial for effective communication and user engagement in any visual medium. 

A story for better interpretation of layouts

The Perfect Layout - A Tech Story

At Heaven Solutions, a bustling tech company, they proudly call their help desk software 'Heaven Desk'. It was the go-to place for agents facing tech troubles, but the overall situation was chaotic. The desks were cluttered, information was scattered, and the agent teams were overwhelmed with requests.

 

Ross, a bright and passionate senior tech support, was part of the help desk team. He loved helping others but often found himself frustrated when navigating through heaps of information to assist his team. One day, while dealing with a particularly perplexing issue, he had a revelation: the team needed structure to tame the chaos!

 

Inspired, Ross gathered his team for a brainstorming session. “What if we redesigned our help desk layout?” he suggested. The team was intrigued but skeptical. “How can a layout make a difference?” one seasoned tech support asked. 

 

Ross smiled and began to explain: “Let’s think of it this way: a well-organized layout can guide users to find solutions quickly. It can reduce confusion, streamline processes, and enhance productivity.” 

 

The team's curiosity was piqued, and they experimented with Ross's idea. They mapped out ideas on a whiteboard and discussed different elements of a successful help desk layout. 

• Categorization: They categorized issues into clear sections—hardware, software, network, and general inquiries. This way, users could quickly find the category relevant to their problem. 
  

• Search functionality: Ross proposed implementing a robust search feature on their help desk platform. Users could type in keywords or phrases, making finding solutions more manageable.
  

• Visible layout: The team agreed that a cleaner, visually appealing design would help declutter the experience. They envisioned a layout with ample white space, easy navigation buttons, and tabs representing different categories.
  

• FAQ guides: Recognizing that many questions were often repeated, they created an easily accessible FAQ section and a library of troubleshooting guides. This would empower agents to solve minor issues independently.
  

• Quick feedback: They incorporated a feedback mechanism where users could rate their experience after each interaction, allowing continuous improvement based on user input.
  

Excited about their ideas, the team presented the new layout to their manager. To their delight, he loved the vision and approved the redesign. With everyone's input, they built the new Heaven help desk. When they launched the redesigned help desk, it was like transforming a maze into a designated path.

On the first day after the launch, Ross was buzzing with anticipation. As employees began using the new layout, he watched their faces light up. Help desk requests decreased as many users could now find what they needed through the FAQs and guides. The search functionality quickly became a hit, with colleagues excited about how quickly they could resolve issues.

 

Because of their collaborative effort, the help desk now serves as a support system and empowers employees to help themselves. The structured layout improved efficiency and user satisfaction, proving that a thoughtful design could transform chaos into clarity.

 

In the end, the purpose of layouts became clear: they weren't merely about aesthetics; they were powerful tools that guided users, reduced frustration, and ensured a seamless experience. Through Ross's idea and the team's collaboration, Heaven Desk became a model help desk, demonstrating that a little structure could lead to immense success.

Takeaway

A well-designed layout organizes information and resources in a coherent way and makes the system intuitive and easy to use, which reduces frustration and improves user satisfaction. It ensures that users can find what they need quickly and efficiently, whether it involves accessing a knowledge base, submitting a ticket, or tracking the status of their request. 

Please stay tuned for more Desk Module stories.

 

Cheers,

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team

Also read: 

•  First Insight - Find your Fields
  

• Topic Participants

• Kavya Rao Addepalli

  

• Recent Topics

• Allow Regular Users to Directly Transfer Ownership of Files & Folders

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement related to file and folder ownership management in Zoho WorkDrive. At the moment, a regular user cannot directly transfer ownership of their files or folders

• STOCK history in zohosheets

  is it possible to get historical stock value using stock function in zoho sheets? i could not see from and to period in the helper document.

• Customised Funnel

  We are running the standard plan for our ZOHO CRM. I have been asked if there is a way to combine data from the Calls module, Deals module and Contact Module into 1 funnel, similar to the view you can get when viewing Deals By Stages, you can see the

• Trigger Zapier on Deluge Insert Into Function?

  Hello, To get around the limitation of not being able to trigger a Zapier Zap on Record Update(this would be extremely useful to be able to do btw), I have created a Deluge script to copy the data from Form A to a Trigger Form B using the Insert Into expression from a Custom Action button on a Report from Form A.  This action does not trigger the Zapier Zap whereas manually adding a record or duplicating an existing record does trigger the Zap. Is Insert Into not the same as a manual Add in the context

• Can you inject JS in an HML+CSS+Deluge Page?

  I have an HTML + CSS + Deluge page and need just a little vanilla JS functionality. However, it seems like Zoho Creator does not allow that. I'm required to create a JS widget. Is this correct? If so: 1. Won't this quickly consume my API limit if there

• Display Client Name in Zoho Creator Client Portal Dashboard

  Hello Zoho Creator Team, We hope you are doing well. Zoho Creator recently introduced the option to set a client’s display name in the Client Portal settings, which is very helpful for providing a personalized portal experience. However, there is currently

• Creator HTML page refresh

  Hi, I have added around 5 different html snippets in single creator page. I understand, I can refresh the entire page from page script using Navigational URLs https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/creator/developer-guide/others/url-patterns/articles/navigational-urls

• Unified Inbox for all, including fetched mails

  I fetch mails from different third-parties mailboxes. But I need to switch mailbox too see fetched mails. It's strange. All mailboxes have one shared disk space for own mail and fetched mail, but why do we need to switch mailbox (on the left bottom) to

• Introducing the all-new email parser!

  Greetings, We are pleased to introduce to you, a brand-new, upgraded version of the Zoho CRM Email Parser, which is packed with fresh features and has been completely redesigned to meet latest customers needs and their business requirements. On that note,

• Samsung Keyboard Issues with Notebook

  Dear Users, We're sorry to inform you that some of our users are experiencing certain issues like scrolling, delay/lag, cursor placement especially within the text notes. This occurs mainly due to Samsung Keyboard compatibility with Android 13 and some

• Marketer’s Space - Multi-Channel Campaigns for the Biggest Shopping Week with Zoho Marketing Automation

  Hello marketers, Welcome back to another post in Marketers Space! The biggest shopping week of the year is almost here, and it’s your moment to shine without the stress. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday just around the corner, being present across email,

• Is there a problem with sharing workdrive files with links since last night?

  As per title, we can't access folders/files through share links since last night. I created ticket but we need quick solution and didn't hear back from the support yet. The files are still accessible by the main account but all zoho files that we are

• Enable Screen Recording in Zoho WorkDrive Mobile Apps (Android & iOS)

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, How are you? We are enthusiastic Zoho One users and rely heavily on Zoho WorkDrive for internal collaboration and content sharing. The screen-recording feature in the WorkDrive web app (similar to Loom) is extremely useful- however,

• Flow - Fetch info from drop down in another module

  I am running into a road block which I thought would be a simple task. My goal - The account is assigned to a "route" which can be selected from a drop down menu and adds a tag to the account accordingly (easy enough). Now when I create a task for this

• Production Management Tool (MRP / BOM)

  Hi Guys, is there any recommended App available that works with zoho and covers the needed applications for a production? What we need is a system that covers the BOM (bill of materials), MRP (material ressources planning), MRP II (manufacturing ressources

• Function #53: Transaction Level Profitability for Invoices

  Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series! We have previously provided custom functions for calculating the profitability of a quote and a sales order. There may be instances where the invoice may differ from its corresponding quote or sales order.

• Bug in Zoho Cliq Signup Flow – "%s" Placeholder Visible Instead of Product Name

  Hi Zoho Team, I would like to report a UI bug in the Zoho Cliq signup/enable flow. During the step where Cliq asks to enable the product for the company, the following text appears: Great! Your company is already available in Zoho, so you just have to

• Zoho Invoice Customer Login Portal

  Are there any plans for a customer portal to Zoho Invoice, ala Freshbooks?  I would like customers that I invoice to be able to login to review invoices and invoice history.  I have not switched from Freshbooks for this very reason.

• Exporting tickets

  I went to Setup -> Organization -> Import/Export in order to export tickets but found 2 issues: 1. The email body never gets exported. 2. There are some large numbers (like 5.57E+16) under certain columns of the exported CSV file. I could not find any export options. Please can you help with this?

• Editing the Ticket Properties column

  This is going to sound like a dumb question, but I cannot figure out how to configure/edit the sections (and their fields) in this column: For example, we have a custom "Resolution" field, which parked itself in the "Ticket Information" section of this

• Copy field information to clipboard

  I need to be able to transfer some field information in to the clipboard, so that I can then paste it in to our helpdesk system. Is there a way I could add a button to a detail report that does this?

• Issuing reconciling a bank statement

  HELP! I'm trying to reconcile a bank statement. The prior month reconciled perfectly. Beginning balance is correct yet I'm off by the same amount each time. Both myself and my office manager, separately and together, have tried to complete this reconciliation

• Correlated subqueries not supported in Zoho Analytics. This creates huge limitations

  Running into a major limitation in Zoho Analytics: correlated subqueries simply don’t work, even in completely standard SQL patterns inside a JOIN. Example: LEFT JOIN "Bills" b ON d."Id" = b."Deal ID" AND EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM "Bill

• Unknown table or alias 'A1'

  I would like to create a subquery but i am getting the following error: Unknown table or alias 'A1' used in select query. This is the sql statement:  SELECT A1.active_paying_customers, A1.active_trial_customers, A1.new_paying_signup, date(A1.date_active_customers), 

• Detect and ignore bots in visitors

  The SalesIQ visitor numbers are basically useless to us because there is no bot detection. We get the same bots coming in from the same countries looking at the same pages every day. It can't be that difficult to tell the difference between an actual

• Add Real-Time Microphone Audio-Level Indicator During Screen Recording

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement to the Zoho WorkDrive screen-recording experience. Current Limitation: During a recording session, there is no visual indication that the microphone is

• Properly Capture Dropdowns & Hover Elements When Recording a Window/Tab

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing great. We encountered a limitation when recording a selected window or browser tab: Certain UI elements, such as dropdown lists, hover menus, and overlays, are not captured unless we record the entire screen.

• Allow Recording Only a Selected Portion of the Screen

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request a more flexible recording option in Zoho WorkDrive. At the moment, we can record either the entire screen or a specific window/tab — but not a custom selected portion of the screen

• Add Camera Background Blur During Recording

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope everything is well. We would like to request an enhancement to the video recording feature in Zoho WorkDrive. Currently, the camera preview displayed during a recording does not support background blur. This is an essential

• Make Camera Overlay & Recording Controls Visible in All Screen-Sharing Options

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an improvement to the screen-recording experience in Zoho WorkDrive. Current Limitation: At the moment the recording controls are visible only inside the Zoho WorkDrive tab. When

• Allow Admins to Transfer Ownership of Their Own Files & Folders

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement to the ownership-transfer functionality in Zoho WorkDrive, specifically regarding administrator capabilities. As administrators, we have the ability to

• How to update custom multi-user field in Zoho Projects?

  I'm trying to update custom multi-user fields in Zoho Projects via a Deluge function in CRM. The code I have so far is below. It works for updating standard project fields and single-line custom fields, but it does not work to update multi-user fields.

• Has Anyone successfully integrated Zoho and Sage Intact?

  Hey all, We’re evaluating Zoho One + Sage Intacct and I’m trying to connect with anyone who has actually implemented the two together.Specifically, I’d love to know: -- Which functions you kept in Zoho vs. Intacct (e.g., Product Catalog, AR/AP, invoicing,

• Kaizen #57 - Mass Update API in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to yet another post in the Kaizen series. This week, we will discuss the Mass Update API in Zoho CRM. In this post, we will cover the following: 1. Introduction 2. Mass Update Records API  3. Schedule Update and Get Status

• Zero Personalization of the File Sharing Experience

  By now (2025) this is the maximum level of personalization available for a Zoho sharing link. We gently asked Zoho if we could modify at least the background, and they replied that it cannot be customized. We're truly disappointed – and surprised every

• Create static subforms in Zoho CRM: streamline data entry with pre-defined values

  Last modified on (9 July, 2025): This feature was available in early access and is currently being rolled out to customers in phases. Currently available for users in the the AU, CA, and SA DCs. It will be enabled for the remaining DCs in the next couple

• Canvas Flex Box containers should not require a width/height.

  Flexbox containers are often used as organizational concepts, to ease re-flow on mobile etc. - I cannot use % for flexbox W or H - I cannot omit W or H This means that the content cannot dictate, and a Flexbox container cannot be used merely as an organizational

• Zoho / Outlook Calendar sync

  The current Marketplace -> Microsoft -> Meetings integration needs 2 changes. 1. The current language for the Two-Way sync option should be changed. It currently states, "Sync both your Zoho CRM Calendar and Office 365 Calendar meetings with each other."

• External Share > Edit: Cannot Create Zoho Files

  Hi Zoho, When we create an external share link with Edit permission, our external users are unable to create a Zoho file (Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet and Zoho Show). They can only upload files. They can edit the Zoho files if we create them internally and

• Two factor authentication for helpdesk users

  The company i work for wants use the helpdesk site in Zoho desk, as a place for their distribution partners to ask question and look for information about our product. The things there is suppose to go up there is somewhat confidential between my company

• Next Page