Kaizen 232 - Building a Ticket Escalation Mechanism from Zoho CRM

Kaizen 232 - Building a Ticket Escalation Mechanism from Zoho CRM



Howdy, Tech Wizards!

Picking up the thread from last week, we will continue our Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk integration. 

In Kaizen #231 - Embedding Zoho Desk Tickets in Zoho CRM, we built a Related List widget that displays open Zoho Desk tickets within the Contact detail page. 

Now, let us take it a step further. 

We will enable sales representatives to escalate critical support tickets directly from Zoho CRM.

This controlled escalation mechanism triggers the SLA in Zoho Desk and simultaneously creates a trackable work item in Zoho CRM. The work item captures additional notes from the Sales team, enabling immediate action by the support team. It also allows Sales to monitor escalation progress anytime.

Business Problem

At Zylker, the Sales team works in Zoho CRM to manage customer relationships and track ongoing deals, while the Support team uses Zoho Desk to manage customer issues and service requests. Now the sales representatives have visibility into open support tickets using the widget built in the previous post. However, there is no structured way to escalate tickets from within Zoho CRM.

This leads to:
  1. Delayed escalations, increasing customer frustration.
  2. Lack of accountability when issues slip through the cracks.
  3. No audit trail of internal interventions for compliance and review.
Visibility alone is not enough. Sales teams need an actionable escalation mechanism within CRM.

Solution

We will extend the existing Related List widget by adding an Escalate button to each ticket row. On clicking this button, a confirmation pop-up appears. 

When the user clicks the Confirm button in the pop-up, the ticket status in Zoho Desk is updated to Escalation from Zoho CRM. This status change triggers the associated SLA configured in Zoho Desk.

As part of the SLA automation, the ticket priority can be updated to High, and the ticket owner can be notified. You can also configure additional actions based on your business requirements. If the Support team does not respond within the defined SLA time, the ticket can be automatically escalated to a manager or the escalation team.

After the ticket status is updated, the confirmation pop-up closes and an escalation form appears within the parent widget. This form allows the Sales team to capture additional details such as escalation reason, customer impact, and expected closure date. When the form is submitted, a record is created in a custom module called Escalation Work Items in Zoho CRM.

The Support team accesses only the Escalation Work Items module in Zoho CRM. This module acts as a shared escalation tracker between the Sales and Support teams. Support agents review the escalation details provided by Sales, take the required action in Zoho Desk, and update the escalation record in CRM. This allows the Sales team to track progress and stay informed before their sales call. 

Prerequisites

1. Complete the Related List Widget setup from Kaizen #231 - Embedding Zoho Desk Tickets in Zoho CRM. Ensure the following are already configured:
  1. Related List Widget in CRM
  2. Two-way sync between Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk
  3. Existing Zoho Desk connection
  4. Working widget project
2. Update the existing Zoho Desk connection to include the Desk.tickets.UPDATE scope in addition to the existing Desk.tickets.READ and Desk.contacts.READ scopes.


Refer to the Connections help doc for more information. 

3. Create a custom module named Escalation Work Items in Zoho CRM to store escalation records. 


  1. Go to Zoho CRM > Setup > Customization > Modules and Fields.
  2. Click Create New Module and enter Escalation Work Items as the module name. 
  3. Add the following custom fields:
Fields
Date Type
Contact Name
Lookup
Customer Impact
Multiline
Desk Ticket
URL
Escalation Reason
Multiline
Expected Closure Date
Date Time

Refer to the Customizing Modules help page to learn more about it. 


Make GET Modules Metadata and GET Fields Metadata API calls to retrieve the API names of the required module and its fields.

Store these API names, as they will be used later in the widget implementation.

4. Create a custom ticket status in Zoho Desk to differentiate that the particular ticket is escalated from Zoho CRM. 
  1. Log into Zoho Desk. 
  2. Go to Settings > Customization > Layouts and Fields > Ticket Status and click Add Status.
  3. Fill in the Status Name, Status Type and click Save.


4. Create an SLA in Zoho Desk that triggers when the ticket status changes to Escalation from Zoho CRM.
  1. Go to Settings > Automation > Service Level Agreements and click New SLA. 
  2. Provide Name and Description to the SLA. 
  3. Choose the trigger condition as Field Update and select the Status field. 
  4. Click Next and proceed configuring the target. 
  5. Configure the escalation rules, response times, and resolution targets as per your business requirements.


5. Create two new files called escalate-popup.html and escalate-popup.js in the widget project. These files will handle the confirmation dialog UI and button actions. 

This pop-up acts as a sub-widget of the parent Related List widget.

6. Validate and Pack the parent widget with the empty files and upload it to Zoho CRM to register the sub-widget. 
  1. Go to Zoho CRM > Setup > Developer Hub > Widgets and click Create New Widget. 
  2. Provide the widget details and choose the widget type as Button.
  3. Set the file path of escalate-popup.html as the Index Page and upload the package. 
  4. After saving the widget, navigate to the Widget Details page to find its API name. Store this API name, as it will be required in the parent widget to render the pop-up using the openPopup() method. 

Step-by-Step Implementation

In the existing widget project directory, we will add the escalation functionality.

Step - 1: Add the Escalate Button to the Ticket Table

In the renderTickets function, add an escalate button alongside the view link for each ticket row. On clicking, the button has to call the escalateTicket function that opens a pop-up. 

Step - 2: Create the Escalation Confirmation Pop-up

Add the HTML and CSS for the pop-up in the escalate-popup.html and the button functions in the escalate-popup.js file. 

ZOHO.embeddedApp.on("PageLoad", function(data) {
    console.log("Escalation popup loaded with data:", data);
});
ZOHO.embeddedApp.init();
// Confirm escalation - close popup and return confirmed: true
document.getElementById('confirmBtn').addEventListener('click', function() {
    $Client.close({ confirmed: true });
});
// Cancel escalation - close popup and return confirmed: false
document.getElementById('cancelBtn').addEventListener('click', function() {
    $Client.close({ confirmed: false });
});

Use the $Client.close() in pop-up to return data back to the parent widget. When the user clicks Confirm, it returns { confirmed: true }, and when they click Cancel, it returns { confirmed: false }.

Step - 3: Implement the Escalate Ticket Function

In the escalateTicket function, use the openPopup method to open the escalate-popup.html file and render the confirmation dialog. 

When the user clicks Confirm, call the Zoho Desk Update Ticket API to change the ticket status to Escalation from Zoho CRM. This status change automatically triggers the configured SLA in Zoho Desk.

// Escalate a ticket using openPopup
async function escalateTicket(ticketId, subject) {
    try {
        // Open the escalation confirmation popup widget
        var result = await ZDK.Client.openPopup({
            api_name: 'Zoho_Desk_Pop_Up',
            type: 'widget',
            animation_type: 6,
            header: 'Escalate Ticket',
            bottom: 'center',
            height: '250px',
            width: '400px'
        }, {
            ticketId: ticketId,
            subject: subject
        });
        console.log("Popup result:", result);
        // If user clicked Confirm
        if (result && result.confirmed) {
            ZDK.Client.showLoader('Escalating ticket...');
            // Update ticket status to "Escalation from Zoho CRM" using Desk Update Tickets API
            const updateResponse = await deskZrc.patch('/tickets/' + ticketId, {
                status: 'Escalation From Zoho CRM'
            });
            console.log("Update Ticket Response:", updateResponse);
            ZDK.Client.hideLoader();
            ZDK.Client.showMessage('Ticket escalated successfully');
            // Show escalation details form
            var ticketUrl = 'https://desk.zoho.com/agent/zylkerpvtltd/zylker/tickets/details/' + ticketId;
            renderEscalationForm(ticketId, ticketUrl, subject);
        }
    } catch (error) {
        ZDK.Client.hideLoader();
        console.error('Error escalating ticket:', error);
        ZDK.Client.showAlert('Failed to escalate the ticket. Please try again.', 'Error');
    }
} 

After the ticket status is successfully updated, render an escalation form within the parent widget to capture additional details.

The form should pre-populate the ticket subject and ticket URL as read-only fields. It should also allow the user to enter the customer impact, escalation reason, and expected closure date.

Step - 4: Create an Escalation Entry in Zoho CRM

The Save button should trigger the saveEscalationRecord function. The function validates that all fields are filled and formats the datetime with timezone offset as required by Zoho CRM. The Contact_Name field relates the escalation record to the current Contact using the entityId captured during page load.

With this payload, the function creates a record in the Escalation Work Items module using the Insert Record API via the ZRC POST method. 

// Save escalation record to Zoho CRM
async function saveEscalationRecord(ticketUrl, ticketSubject) {
    var customerImpact = document.getElementById('customerImpact').value.trim();
    var escalationReason = document.getElementById('escalationReason').value.trim();
    var expectedClosureDate = document.getElementById('expectedClosureDate').value;
    if (!customerImpact || !escalationReason || !expectedClosureDate) {
        ZDK.Client.showAlert('Please fill in all fields before saving.', 'Validation Error');
        return;
    }
    // Format datetime with timezone offset for CRM 
    var dateObj = new Date(expectedClosureDate);
    var tzOffset = -dateObj.getTimezoneOffset();
    var tzSign = tzOffset >= 0 ? '+' : '-';
    var tzHours = String(Math.floor(Math.abs(tzOffset) / 60)).padStart(2, '0');
    var tzMins = String(Math.abs(tzOffset) % 60).padStart(2, '0');
    var closureDate = dateObj.getFullYear() + '-' +
        String(dateObj.getMonth() + 1).padStart(2, '0') + '-' +
        String(dateObj.getDate()).padStart(2, '0') + 'T' +
        String(dateObj.getHours()).padStart(2, '0') + ':' +
        String(dateObj.getMinutes()).padStart(2, '0') + ':' +
        String(dateObj.getSeconds()).padStart(2, '0') +
        tzSign + tzHours + ':' + tzMins;
    var recordData = [{
        "Name": ticketSubject,
        "Customer_Impact": customerImpact,
        "Escalation_Reason": escalationReason,
        "Expected_Closure_Date": closureDate,
        "Desk_Ticket": ticketUrl,
        "Contact_Name": { "id": entityId }
    }];
    try {
        ZDK.Client.showLoader('Saving escalation record...');
        const crmResponse = await zrc.post('/crm/v8/Escalation_Work_Items', {
            data: recordData
        });
        console.log("CRM Insert Response:", crmResponse);
        ZDK.Client.hideLoader();
        ZDK.Client.showMessage('Escalation record created successfully');
        // Go back to tickets list
        await loadTickets();
    } catch (error) {
        ZDK.Client.hideLoader();
        console.error('Error creating escalation record:', error);
        ZDK.Client.showAlert('Failed to create escalation record. Please try again.', 'Error');
    }
}

Step - 5: Validate and Pack the Widget

Follow the steps given in the Widget help page to validate and pack the widget. A complete working code sample is provided as attachment at the end of this post.

Step - 6: Update the Widgets in Zoho CRM

Since we have added new functionality to the widgets, we need to update it in Zoho CRM.
  1. Go to Zoho CRM > Setup > Developer Hub > Widgets.
  2. Locate the existing Related List widget and pop-up widget. 
  3. Click the settings icon and select Edit. 
  4. Update the package in both the widgets and click Save. 

Try it Out!

Let us look at the escalation flow from the Contacts detail page in Zoho CRM.



Info
Key Points to Remember
  1. The Desk connection must include Desk.tickets.UPDATE scope in addition to Desk.tickets.READ and Desk.contacts.READ scopes.
  2. The custom module API name Escalation_Work_Items and field API names like Customer_Impact, Escalation_Reason, Expected_Closure_Date, Desk_Ticket, and Contact_Name are organization-specific. Replace them with your actual API names in the saveEscalationRecord function.
  3. The pop-up widget must be registered separately in the Widgets page, and its API name must be used in the openPopup method. Update the api_name parameter in line 229 with your pop-up widget's API name.
  4. Update the Desk URL pattern in lines 182 and 266 with your portal name and company name.
  5. Ensure the SLA in Zoho Desk is configured to trigger when the status changes to Escalation from Zoho CRM.
  6. If you have a large number of contacts or tickets, implement pagination using from and limit parameters as mentioned in the previous Kaizen.
We hope this Kaizen empowers your sales team to take immediate action on critical support issues without leaving Zoho CRM. The combination of visibility and controlled escalation ensures that no customer issue falls through the cracks.

Have questions or suggestions? Drop them in the comments or write to us at support@zohocrm.com.

On to Better Building!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Related Reading 

2. Connections - An Overview
3. CRM Customizations - Related Lists
4. CRM APIs - Insert Records API

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Idea
Previous Kaizen: Embedding Zoho Desk Tickets in Zoho CRM | Kaizen Collection: Directory


    • Sticky Posts

    • Kaizen #198: Using Client Script for Custom Validation in Blueprint

      Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – 1 More to the Big Two-Oh-Oh! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

    • Kaizen #226: Using ZRC in Client Script

      Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. In today's post, lets see what is ZRC (Zoho Request Client) and how we can use ZRC methods in Client Script to get inputs from a Salesperson and update the Lead status with a single button click. In this

    • Kaizen #222 - Client Script Support for Notes Related List

      Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. The final Kaizen post of the year 2025 is here! With the new Client Script support for the Notes Related List, you can validate, enrich, and manage notes across modules. In this post, we’ll explore how

    • Kaizen #217 - Actions APIs : Tasks

      Welcome to another week of Kaizen! In last week's post we discussed Email Notifications APIs which act as the link between your Workflow automations and you. We have discussed how Zylker Cloud Services uses Email Notifications API in their custom dashboard.

    • Kaizen #216 - Actions APIs : Email Notifications

      Welcome to another week of Kaizen! For the last three weeks, we have been discussing Zylker's workflows. We successfully updated a dormant workflow, built a new one from the ground up and more. But our work is not finished—these automated processes are

    • Recent Topics

    • kanban view for client portal

      Are kanban views an option for client portals? Access to Kanban views in the client portals would solve some mobile-compliant issues I have with the UI. Kanban functions very nicely on mobile and would be a super asset for my clients and vendors as they

    • Credit Card Pre-Authorization with later Capture/Settlement

      We really enjoy the convenience of being able to pay off a customer's invoice using our Auth.Net integration with Zoho Books. Unfortunately, we can only take advantage of this feature with a small percentage of our customers as it leaves a gaping hole

    • Zoho Cliq not working on airplanes

      Hi, My team and I have been having this constant issue of cliq not working when connected to an airplane's wifi. Is there a reason for this? We have tried on different Airlines and it doesn't work on any of them. We need assistance here since we are constantly

    • Zoho Sign 2025–2026: What's new and what's next

      Hello! Every year at Zoho Sign, we work hard to make document signing and agreement execution easy for all users. This year we sat down with our head of product, Mr. Subramanian Thayumanasamy, to discuss what we delivered in 2025 and our goals for 2026.

    • Work Orders / Bundle Requests

      Zoho Inventory needs a work order / bundle request system. This record would be analogous to a purchase order in the purchasing workflow or a sales order in the sales cycle. It would be non-journaling, but it would reserve the appropriate inventory of

    • Izettle or Sumup Integration for Zoho Books.

      The Stripe & Square clearing works great in Zoho Books. Any further integrations planned in the future for Izettle or Sumup? These card processors are very common for taking payments with a card reader.

    • Train Zoho Answer Bot Based on Customer

      Hi all, Is it currently possible to mark Help Centre articles to a specific customer, and restrict the answer bot to only use relevant information if it is either marked as "General", or tagged for the specific customer in question? We currently have

    • Detailed list of scoring rules in Zoho CRM

      Good morning Zoho community, warm greetings The reason for my message today is that I have a problem with my CRM, which I will explain below: Our organization has scoring rules designed to rate our potential customers or leads in the application based

    • Trying to access records in a custom module in Zoho Desk and not having luck

      I've built a custom module in Zoho Desk and am using a custom function to query the records in the module and I'm not having any luck. The only way I have found to retreive a record is by getting it by its recordID (the long zoho assigned one). The function

    • Composite items inside of composite items; bill of materials needed

      Hi Zoho and Everyone, I am evaluating whether Zoho Inventory will work for my small business. I grow and harvest herbs and spices but also get from wholesalers. I use all these items to make herbal teas, but also sell them as individual items on my Shopify store and Etsy. I discovered the composite item bundling and am wondering if I could get some assistance since there is no bill of materials: Our herbal company's best selling tea is a sleepytime tea. Sleepytime Tea can be purchased in three weights

    • ZOHO Books Smart Accounting Software for Travel Agency

      Dear Travel partner, Contact for Travel Agency Accounting Setup & Training Vansh Travel (ZOHO Books Authorised partner) Email: info@vanshtravel.com Mo: +91 98984 95155 Please find PDF   

    • 452 Mailbox delivery restricted by policy error

      We have been testing Zoho desk for about a week now and have been forwarding emails in via an Exchange Online Mail flow rule without issue until yesterday. Suddenly yesterday morning we started getting the vast majority of the emails stuck in Pending

    • Send Email reply on behalf of Agent

      Hi, When using the send email reply via the API I can set the reply on behalf of the customer by using impersonatedUserId in the header of the API call. Is there a way to do this for Agents too? I need to be able to send an email reply on behalf of an

    • Sharing Tickets to a team within a department

      Hi there, We have a need for one department to be able to share tickets to a specific team within a department, I'm wondering if this is possible? All the shared tickets are going into the 'Shared Tickets' view for the whole department but is there a

    • Removing To or CC Addresses from Desk Ticket

      I was hoping i could find a way to remove unnecessary email addresses from tickets submitted via email. For example, a customer may email the support address AND others who are in the helpdesk notification group, in either the TO or CC address. This results

    • Do not use isnull()

      Does not always return booleans. Can also return null. Never use this function. Just use var==null instead.

    • Organization wide Account and Contacts Visibility/Sharing Capabilities?

      Has anyone figured out a way to make visibility or sharing of Accounts and Contacts to be available across the entire organization without having to have every individual user edit their Sharing permissions? For our sales folks they need to be able to

    • Is there a way to configure dark mode for Campaigns emails that go out to customers?

      I've found a lot of information on how to configure dark mode for my (The user) personal Zoho workspace and email, but is there any way to edit dark mode settings on emails that we send out to customers via campaigns?  We sent out a test email the other

    • When Does WorkDrive integrate with Books?

      When Does WorkDrive integrate with Books?

    • How do I import Connected Records for a Deal?

      Can you point me to an example of the CSV file that would add related records to an existing CRM Deal? I imported a Deal, then tried importing a connected record using a unique ID that references the Deal ID, but it doesn't attach it to the Deal rec

    • FSM integration with Books

      Hi, I have spent a few months working with FSM and have come across a critical gap in the functionality, which I find almost shocking....either that, or I am an idiot. The lack of bi-directional sync between Books and FSM on Sales Orders/ Work Orders

    • How to close an estimate ?

      Hello, I have created estimates, and converted them to invoices to get 50% payment. Now I have 2 cases where the estimate stills shows status partially invoiced, however: 1. for one of them, project stopped half way, so the remaining part will never be

    • Power up your Kiosk Studio with Real-Time Data Capture, Client Scripts & More!

      Hello Everyone, We’re thrilled to announce a powerful set of enhancements to Kiosk Studio in Zoho CRM. These new updates give you more flexibility, faster record handling, and real-time data capture, making your Kiosk flows smarter and more efficient

    • How do you print out the invoices comments

      I have some invoices where i need to print out the comments that show when reminders and etc were sent how do we print those out in Zoho Books.

    • Unable to load a specific image

      Hi I am trying to upload an svg file, which reports that there is "a problem with the file", but does not say what sort of problem. I can't find anything which says which files are supported, so it may be it does not support svg. (which would be a real shame) The file itself will open in either Firefox or Chrome without problem. For the moment I am using a png file, which does not zoom well of course. David

    • Why does the Address field show the wrong map location even with a correct Pincode?

      I am noticing an issue with the Address field map in Zoho Creator. When I enter a city name that exists in multiple locations within the same state, the map sometimes points to the wrong area even if I have entered the correct Pincode. Currently, it seems

    • Uploaded files are not included when using "Include user submitted data" in Email Notification

      In Send Email notification workflow in Zoho Creator, there is an option called "Include user submitted data" which allows the email to contain all the form submission details. However, when this option is enabled, files or images uploaded through File

    • Books <-> CRM synchronisation with custom Fields

      Hello, We are synchronising Books Customers with CRM Accounts. In CRM Accounts I set up last year a "segments" multiselect field shown below In Books, I set up a custom multi-select field with the same value as in the CRM And set up the synchronisation inside Books. Want to synchronise the Books Segments with the CRM Segments, but the later doesn't exist, and another non-existing is there ?! First, I don't understand where the field Segmentation is coming from. Second, I set CRM Segmentation to sync

    • CRM x WorkDrive: We're rolling out the WorkDrive-powered file storage experience for existing users

      Release plan: Gradual rollout to customers without file storage add-ons, in this order: 1. Standalone CRM 2. CRM Plus and Zoho One DCs: All | Editions: All Available now for: - Standalone CRM accounts in Free and Standard editions without file storage

    • Archive Option in Conversation View

      Hello, I have a suggestion\request to add an "Archive Thread" button in conversation view of Zoho Mail. The best suggestion I have is to put an "Archive Thread" button next to the "Label Entire Thread" button in conversation view. Most users don't just

    • Outlook/Hotmail Blocking Zoho SMTP IPs (S3150)

      We are currently facing a serious deliverability issue with Zoho SMTP while sending transactional OTP emails for our production application. Emails sent to Outlook / Hotmail addresses are being rejected with the following error: 550 - 5.7.1 Unfortunately,

    • Outlook is blocking incoming mail

      Outlook is blocking all emails sent from the Zoho server. ERROR CODE :550 - 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [136.143.169.51] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3150). It looks

    • Track Marketing Automation Campaigns in Zoho CRM

      Hello, I've been searching but haven't found the exact answer to this question. I am looking to track Marketing Automation email campaigns and activities inside of Zoho CRM. Use Case: Action: Prospect Submits A Lead Form Outcomes: Prospect created in

    • Zoho Social API for generating draft posts from a third-party app ?

      Hello everyone, I hope you are all well. I have a question regarding Zoho Social. I am developing an application that generates social media posts, and I would like to be able to incorporate a feature that allows saving these posts as drafts in Zoho Social.

    • Temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation.

      We have suddenly started receiving the following Mail Delivery Status Notification: Diagnostic-Code: 4.7.650 The mail server [136.143.184.12] has been temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation. For e-mail delivery information, see https://aka.ms/postmaster

    • Incorrect Functioning of Time Logs API (Version 3)

      We need to fetch the list of time logs for each task for our company internal usage. We are trying to achieve it by using the next endpoint: https://projects.zoho.com/api-docs#bulk-time-logs#get-all-project-time-logs Firstly, in the documentation the

    • IMPORTANT: It doesn´t search for letters with portuguese characters.

      Some of my articles have for example the word "vídeo". But if I search for "vídeo" it doesn´t find them. If I search for "video" it does find them. Idealy, it should find the articles either way. But if I have to choose, it would be better to find the

    • IMPORTANT: It doens´t show full article name on search - Should add line break

      When we search for articles, it doesn´t show the full name. There should be a line break so the user can see the full article name, otherwise the user can´t know if that´s the article he/she is looking for. This is very important, otherwise the user has

    • Zoho Books - Payment Gateway - Revolut

      Hi Books Team, My feature request if to include the popular platform Revolut as a payment collection option on invoices in Zoho Books. Please upvote if you are also looking for this option.

    • Zoho Books | Product updates | January 2026

      Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From e-filing Form 1099 directly with the IRS to corporation tax support, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. E-File Form 1099 Directly With the

    • Next Page