Automation #6 - Prevent Re-opening of Closed Tickets

This is a monthly series where we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk.

Typically when a customer submits a support ticket, it is assigned with a status to map its journey. Zoho Desk provides you with four default statuses: Open, On hold, Escalated, Closed; along with the option to create your own statutes which can then be mapped to these default ones.  

 

Once the solution has been provided to the customer and the ticket is resolved the ticket is marked as "Closed". But the status changes from "Closed" to "Open" if the customer replies to the same ticket. While this behaviour might be useful for some businesses who prefer to continue the same thread instead of reopening a new one, some might not want to do so. To ensure the ticket stays in the closed status and start a new thread for a customer reply, you can create a Workflow Rule and map it to a custom function script to achieve the desired results.

Prerequisite:

To ensure the Closed status is maintained even if a customer replies to a ticket, perform the following steps: 

1. Go to Setup, and under Customization, click Ticket Status, uncheck the "Fall-Back To Default" checkbox against "Closed" status.

2. OrgID, to get the OrgID, navigate to "Setup >> Developer Space >> API". Note down the OrgID

To create the workflow rule, perform the following steps:

1. Go to Setup, and under Automation, click Workflows.

2. On the left panel, under Workflows, click Rules > Create Rule.

In the Basic Information section, perform the following steps:

3. In the Module drop-down menu, select Tickets.

4. Enter a name and description for the rule.

5. If you want to activate the rule right away, select the Active checkbox. Else, you can just create the rule now and activate it later on the Rules page.

6. Click Next.

In the Execute on section, perform the following steps:

7. Select the Customer Reply checkbox to execute this rule every time a customer responds to a ticket.  

8. Click Next.

9. In the Criteria section, set the criteria as "Status is Closed" and click "Next"

In the Actions section, perform the following steps:

10. Click the + icon under "Action" and select "New" next to Custom Functions

11. Enter a name and description for the custom function.

12. In the script window, input the Custom Function you find below:

1. numberOfHours = 48;
2. orgId = "Paste Org Id here";
   
3. //Please paste your OrgID
   
4. TicketInfo = zoho.desk.getRecordById(orgId,"tickets",TicketID);
5. lastModified = TicketInfo.get("closedTime").toTime("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss");
6. status = TicketInfo.get("status");
7. hoursBetween = now.hoursBetween(lastModified).abs();
8. if(hoursBetween >= numberOfHours)
9. {
10. threadResponse = zoho.desk.getRelatedRecords(orgId, "threads", "tickets", TicketID);
    
11. if(threadResponse.get("data") != null)
    
12. {
    
13. latestThreadID = threadResponse.get("data").get(0).get("id");
14. splitTicketResponse = zoho.desk.ticket.split(orgId, TicketID, latestThreadID);
    
15. info "splitTicketResponse ::::" + splitTicketResponse;
    
16. info "======================================================";
    
17. NewTicketNumber = splitTicketResponse.get("ticketNumber");
18. NewTicketID = splitTicketResponse.get("id");
19. }
20. }
21. else
22. {
23. jsonString = {"status":"Open"};
24. TicketResponse = zoho.desk.update(orgId, "tickets", TicketID, jsonString);
    
25. info TicketResponse;
26. }

NOTE:
Line 1 numberOfHours = 48, refers to the hours post which the new response received in a existing ticket should be split as new ticket. You can replace the number of hours based on your requirement.
Line 2 replace the orgId.

13. Click Edit Arguments

14. In the Name field type TicketID, and from the Value drop-down list select Ticket Id under Ticket Information. 
15. Click "Save" to save the custom function
16. Click "Save" again to save the workflow.

These steps would ensure that when a ticket is marked Closed, it stays in the Closed status, even if a customer replies after the mentioned hours. But also ensure that the new reply is added as a new ticket so you don't miss anything!

• Topic Participants

• Chinmayee Mishra

  

• Mustafa Mayar

• Ash | Zoho Desk

  

• Analissa Moreno

• Natasha

• Sticky Posts

• Register for Zoho Desk Beta Community

  With the start of the year, we have decided to take a small step in making the life of our customers a little easier. We now have easy access to all our upcoming features and a faster way to request for beta access. We open betas for some of our features

• Share your Zoho Desk story with us!

  Tell us how you use Zoho Desk for your business and inspire others with your story. Be it a simple workflow rule that helps you navigate complex processes or a macro that saves your team a lot of time; share it here and help the community learn and grow with shared knowledge. 

• Tip #1: Learn to pick the right channels

  Mail, live chat, telephony, social media, web forms—there are so many support channels out there. Trying to pick the right channels to offer your customers can get pretty confusing. Emails are most useful when the customer wants to put things on record. However, escalated or complicated issues should not be resolved over email because it's slow and impersonal.  When you need immediate responses, live chat is more suitable. It's also quick and convenient, so it's the go-to channel for small issues. 

• Welcome to Zoho Desk Community - Say hello here!

  Hello everyone! Though we have been here for a while, it’s time to formally establish the Zoho Desk Community; we’re really happy to have you all here! This can be the place where you take a moment to introduce yourself to the rest of the community. We’d love to hear all about you, what you do, what company or industry you work for, how you use Zoho Desk and anything else that you will like to share! Here’s a little about me. I am Chinmayee. I have been associated with Zoho since 2014. I joined here

• Webinar 1: Blueprint for Customer Service

  With the launch of a host of new features in Zoho Desk, we thought it’ll be great to have a few webinars to help our customers make the most of them. We’re starting off with our most talked about feature, Blueprint in Zoho Desk. You can register for the Blueprint webinar here: The webinar will be delivered by our in-house product experts. This is a good opportunity to ask questions to our experts and understand how Blueprint can help you automate your service processes. We look forward to seeing

• Recent Topics

• 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.

• Payment Vouchers

  Is there any Payment Vouchers in Zoho? How can we create payment for non-trade vendors, i.e. professional fees, rent, and payment to commissioner income tax?

• API in E-Invoice/GST portal

  Hi, Do I have to change the api in gst/e-invoice portal as I use zoho e books for my e-invoicing. If yes, please confirm the process.

• When I click on PDF/PRINT it makes the invoice half size

  When I click PDF / Print for my invoice in Zoho Books, the generated PDF appears at half size — everything is scaled down, including the logo, text, and layout. The content does not fill the page as it should. Could someone advise what causes Zoho Books

• Search by contain letter in a column

  Hello, everyone I need a filter function that searches by letter in a cell, and it should be a macro. To clarify further, if I have a column with several names and I chose a search cell and what I want is search by a single letter, for example, "a" then

• Archiving Contacts

  How do I archive a list of contacts, or individual contacts?

• Enrich your contact and company details automatically using the Data Enrichment topping

  Greetings, I hope you're all doing well. We're happy to announce the latest topping we've added to Bigin: The Data Enrichment topping, powered by WebAmigo. This topping helps you automatically enhance your contact and company records in Bigin. By leveraging

• Easier onboarding for new users with stage descriptions

  Greetings, I hope all of you are doing well. We're happy to announce a recent enhancement we've made to Bigin. You can now add descriptions to the stages in your pipeline. Previously, when creating a pipeline, you could only add stages. With this update,

• Zoho Books Invoices Templates

  It would be really helpful to have more advanced features to customise the invoice templates in Zoho Books. Especially I´m thinking of the spacing of the different parts of the invoice (Address line etc.). If you have a sender and receiver address in

• Can add a colum to the left of the item in Zoho Books?

  I would need to add a column to the left of the item column in Books. When i create custom fields, i can only display them to the right of the item.

• Verifying Zoho Mail Functionality After Switching DNS from Cloudflare to Hosting Provider

  I initially configured my domain's (https://roblaxmod.com/) email with Zoho Mail while using Cloudflare to manage my DNS records (MX, SPF, etc.). All services were working correctly. Recently, I have removed my site from Cloudflare and switched my domain's

• AI Bot and Advanced Automation for WhatsApp

  Most small businesses "live" on WhatsApp, and while Bigin’s current integration is helpful, users need more automation to keep up with volume. We are requesting features based on our customer Feedbacks AI Bot: For auto-replying to FAQs. Keyword Triggers:

• Improved Contact Sync flow in Google Integration with Zoho CRM

  Hello Everyone, Your contact sync in Google integration just got revamped! We have redesigned the sync process to give users more control over what data flows into Google and ensure that this data flows effortlessly between Zoho CRM and Google. With this

• 2025 Ask the Experts sessions wrap-up : Key highlights from the experts

  Here is a rewind journey of our Ask the Experts (ATE) Sessions, where we brought you expert insights and practical best practices together in one place. This recap highlights the key takeaways, learnings, and best practices from all these sessions so

• How to disable the edit option in subform

  How to disable the edit option in subform

• Adding non-Indian billing address for my Zoho subscription

  Hey Need help with adding a non-Indian billing address for my Zoho subscription, trying to edit the address to my Singapore registered company. Won't let me change the country. Would appreciate the help. Regards, Rishabh

• Move record from one custom module to another custom module

  Is it possible to create a button or custom field that will transfer a record from one custom module to another? I already have the 'Leads' module used for the Sr. Sales department, once the deal is closed they convert it to the 'Accounts' module. I would like to create a 'Convert' button for a custom module ('Locations') for the department that finds locations for each account. Once the location is secured, I want to move the record to another custom module called 'Secured Locations'. It's basically

• Convert Lead Automation Trigger

  Currently, there is only a convert lead action available in workflow rules and blueprints. Also, there is a Convert Lead button available but it doesn't trigger any automations. Once the lead is converted to a Contact/Account the dataset that can be fetched

• Notes Not Saving

  Hello,  My notes are continuously not saving.  I make sure to save them, I know the process to save them.  It is not operator error.  I go back into a Leads profile a while later and do not see the previous notes that I have made.  I then have to go back and do unnecessary research that would have been in the notes in the first place.  Not a good experience and it is frustrating.  Slows me down and makes me do unnecessary work.  Please resolve.   As a quick heads up, deleting cookies is not a fix

• Integration between "Zoho Sprints Stories" and "Zoho Projects Tasks/Subtasks"

  We have two separate teams in our organization using Zoho for project management: The Development team uses Zoho Sprints and follows Agile/Scrum methodology. The Infrastructure team uses Zoho Projects for traditional task-based project management. In

• Prefill form with CRM/Campaigns

  I created a form in zForms and created prefill fields. I added this to the CRM and selected the fields so when sending from the CRM, the form works great. However, I want to use the same form in Campaigns and I want it to pull the data from CRM (which

• Notes badge as a quick action in the list view

  Hello all, We are introducing the Notes badge in the list view of all modules as a quick action you can perform for each record, in addition to the existing Activity badge. With this enhancement, users will have quick visibility into the notes associated

• Triggering a campaign automation from a Form

  I used Forms to create a lead form that is accessed by a button on my website. The field information flows into the CRM. However, I am trying to figure out how to use Campaign automations to start a workflow (series of campaign emails) that is triggered

• Name changed in settings for mailbox but still not changed when typed in To field

  In the email account secretary@ i have updaetd the new staff members details but the old members name still appears when I type secretary@ in the To field. I cant work out where Zoho is finding the old name from. I have deleted the browser cache. If I

• Employee Appraisal Applicability - Why is Date of Joining Hard-Coded?

  In the new (to me, at least) Performance Appraisal Cycle wizard, it's possible to set criteria to determine for whom the appraisal process should apply. This makes sense on its face. However, one MUST use the Date of Joining criterion as a filter. Why

• Formula fields

  Zoho People now supports formula fields. This post illustrates it. Formula fields are fields whose value is calculated instead of being entered by the user. Using this, number, decimal and date manipulations can be done. The value of this field could be numeric or date depending on the output of the formula. In date manipulations, the result will be given in milliseconds, which you can format as per you need. The operators we support are +, - , *, /. Formula fields get recalculated automatically

• Copy paste from word document deletes random spaces

  Hello Dear Zoho Team, When copying from a word document into Notebook, often I face a problem of the program deleting random spaces between words, the document become terribly faulty, eventhough it is perfect in its original source document (and without

• Is it possible to use module field filters via URL parameters?

  It would be really convenient if I could quickly link to a filter. For reference, this is the filter functionality I'm referring to: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/crm/customize-crm-account/advanced-filters/articles/advanced-filters For example: My

• Transitioning FESCO Bill Project to Zoho Sheets and Integration Options

  Hello Zoho Support, I'm considering transitioning my FESCO bill project from Google Sheets to Zoho Sheets and wanted to know if there are integration options to seamlessly migrate our existing work. You can view our platform here, any guidance would be

• Support for Custom Fonts in Zoho Recruit Career Site and Candidate Portal

  Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you're doing well. We would like to request the ability to use custom fonts in the Zoho Recruit Career Site and Candidate Portal. Currently only the default fonts (Roboto, Lato, and Montserrat) are available. While these

• Lightbox Pop-up form

  I would like to embed my form using the lightbox pop up. I don't want it to load automatically. I want it to load when some clicks the button. I can see this option, however when I use the "show pop-up launch button" on the website, the button automatically

• Unable to remove the “Automatically Assigned” territory from existing records

  Hello Zoho Community Team, We are currently using Territory Management in Zoho CRM and have encountered an issue with automatically assigned territories on Account records. Once any account is created the territory is assigned automatically, the Automatically

• Data Processing Basis

  Hi, Is there a way to automate the data processing for a candidate every time an application arrives from job boards, without requiring manual intervention? That is, to automatically acquire consent for data processing. I've seen a workflow that allows

• Lightbox Pop-up form

  I would like to embed my form using the lightbox pop up. I don't want it to load automatically. I want it to load when some clicks the button. I can see this option, however when I use the "show pop-up launch button" on the website, the button automatically

• Zoho CRM for Everyone's NextGen UI Gets an Upgrade

  Hello Everyone We've made improvements to Zoho CRM for Everyone's Nextgen UI. These changes are the result of valuable feedback from you where we’ve focused on improving usability, providing wider screen space, and making navigation smoother so everything

• Customer Management: #5 Never Let the Customer Slip

  When Rahul started Knight's Watch Consulting, his focus was simple: deliver good work and keep clients happy. He offered one-time consulting projects, monthly advisory retainers and usage-based support for growing clients. Business was steady, and customers

• 10GB Email Storage Limits in Zoho CRM

  We’ve had Zoho One for almost 5 years and have always synced our emails from Gmail via IMAP… As of late, we’ve run into issues with our emails not syncing, due to being over the 10GB storage cap… What’s very odd is that we haven’t changed a thing? I know

• Zoho Projects Android and iOS app update: Mobile device permission based on user profiles

  Hello everyone! We have brought in support for mobile device permissions based on the user profiles which are configured in organization level. Administrators can now configure the permissions on the web app(projects.zoho.com) by following the steps mentioned

• Good news! Calendar in Zoho CRM gets a face lift

  Dear Customers, We are delighted to unveil the revamped calendar UI in Zoho CRM. With a complete visual overhaul aligned with CRM for Everyone, the calendar now offers a more intuitive and flexible scheduling experience. What’s new? Distinguish activities

• How to import data from PDF into Zoho Sheet

  I am looking to import Consolidated Account Statement (https://www.camsonline.com/Investors/Statements/Consolidated-Account-Statement) into zoho sheet. Any help is appreciated. The pdf is received as attachment in the email, this document is password

• Next Page