Automation#36: Auto-create time-entry after performing the Blueprint transition

​

Hello Everyone,

This week’s edition focuses on configuring a custom function within Zoho Desk to streamline time tracking within the Blueprint. In this case, we create a custom field, and request the agent to enter the spending time within the single line field and then move to the next status within the blueprint. This entry updates under the Time Entry tab within the ticket.

Businesses rely on automated time entry to track time, but certain workflows require manual input. For example, ZylkerTechFix, a company specializing in hardware servicing and repairs, needed a precise way to log time spent on servicing devices across departments.

After an initial assessment, the support team transfers the ticket to the Engineering team. The time taken for servicing varied based on the complexity of the issue. To ensure accurate tracking, agents were required to manually log the time spent at this stage. A custom single line field was added to capture this information, and the organization flow was integrated into a Blueprint, making it seamless for agents and transparent for customers.

Let's go through setting up a Blueprint with a custom function that allows agents to manually log the time spent in a specific status once they've completed the process. This helps track time at each stage, improving efficiency and customer communication.

Prerequisites

Create a connection

  1.1 Go to Setup(S) and choose Connections under Developer Space.
  1.2 Click Create Connection.
  1.3 Select Zoho OAuth under Default Connection.
  1.4 Set the connection name as desk_connection.

  1.5 Under Choose Scopes, choose the below scope values:

Desk.tickets.READ

Desk.tickets.UPDATE

  1.6 Click Create and Connect.
  1.7 Click Connect.
  1.8 Choose the Zoho Desk's organization to connect with Deluge, and click Submit.
  1.9 Click Accept.

Connection is created successfully.

Create a custom single line field

a. Navigate to Setup >> Customization >> Layouts and Fields.

b. Select Tickets module and the Department in which you will configure the Blueprint.

c. Click on the layout. Add single line field which has the field value length of 255. Give the Name – Spending Time.

This single line field is  for the agent to manually enter the time taken to handle this ticket. Enter the time in this format HH:MM:SS (eg: 02:15:30)  .

Configure Custom Function within the Blueprint

Create a Blueprint with the required transitions for your process.

1. To create a Blueprint, go to Setup >> Automation >> Blueprint. 
2. Choose the department (the same department where you created the custom field) and click on Create Blueprint.
3. Give a desired name under Blueprint Name and description.
4. Choose Tickets under the module and let the Field be Status.
5. Add Criteria as Specific records/All records as required.
6. Add Advanced configuration as required.
7. Click Next.
8. Drag and drop the required States for your organization flow. Connect the different states  
9. Click on the + icon between the states to add a transition. Give a Name and Description for the transition.
10. Click Add transition

Within Transitions

11. Under Before, add the Agents whom you would like to give access to the Blueprint.

12. Add Transition Owner from a Different Department, Choose Department and Criteria if required.
13. Under During, click on Add Operations >> Fields >> choose Spending Time.  This will be marked validation and Mandatory.
14. Under After, click on New next to custom functions.

15. Under Configure Custom Function, enter Name and Description.

16. In the script window, insert the Custom Function given below:

1. // ----<<<< User Inputs >>>>----
2. // --- Replace ".com" with appropriate domain extension based on customer's location/DC ---
3. deskURL = "https://desk.zoho.com";
4. customFieldAPIName = "cf_"; // Replace the custom field API Name
5. orgId = "";// Replace the org ID
6. // ----<<<< Initial Configs >>>>----
7. logs = Map();
8. logs.insert("ticketId":ticketId,"timeEntryValue":timeEntryValue);
9. //---------------------------
10. try
11. {
12. // --- Perform the time calculation tasks ---
13. executedTime = toText(now,"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'","GMT");
14. timeEntryValueList = timeEntryValue.toList(":");
15. logs.insert("timeEntryValueList":timeEntryValueList);
16. secondsSpent = timeEntryValueList.get(0).toNumber() * 3600 + timeEntryValueList.get(1).toNumber() * 60 + timeEntryValueList.get(2).toNumber();
17. logs.insert("secondsSpent":secondsSpent);
18. getHistory = invokeurl
19. [
20. url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId + "/history?operationName=Blueprints_History"
21. type :GET
22. connection:"desk_connection"
23. ];
24. agentId = getHistory.get(0).get("agentId");
25. logs.insert("getHistory":getHistory);
26. createTimeEntry = invokeurl
27. [
28. url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId + "/timeEntry"
29. type :POST
30. parameters:{"executedTime":executedTime,"secondsSpent":secondsSpent,"ownerId":agentId} + ""
31. connection:"desk_connection"
32. ];
33. logs.insert("createTimeEntryApiResponse":createTimeEntry);
34. update = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"tickets",ticketId,{"cf":{customFieldAPIName:""}});
35.     logs.insert("Update":update);
36. }
37. catch (errorInfo)
38. {
39. logs.insert("errorInfo":errorInfo);
40. }
41. info "logs: \n" + logs;
42. if(logs.containKey("errorInfo"))
43. {
44. throws "Error happen in the CF execution";
45. }

17. Click on the Edit Arguments in the script editer window, give a desired Method Name. Map the arguments as below:
       17.1 In the Argument Name field, type ticketId and select Ticket Id in the Tickets Section.

       17.2 In the Argument Name field, type timeEntryValue and select Spending Time in the Tickets Section. Click Done.

NOTE

a. In Line 3, replace .com in the address with .in/.eu/.ca based on your DC.

b. In Line 4, enter the API name of the custom field.
To fetch the API name, go to Setup (S) → Customization → Layouts and Fields. Select the department for which you've configured this blueprint under Tickets module. Select the layout, click on the gear icon(Field settings) of the custom field and select Edit properties. Copy the API name under Edit field and paste it in line 4 of the code.   

​

​

c. In Line 5, enter the Org ID. Go to Setup >> Developer Space >> APIs. Under API Plan Details, you will fine the metric Org ID and its Values. Copy the value and paste it in line 3.  

18. Click on Save & Complete Blueprint.

19. Click Yes, Proceed. 
Your configuration is complete.

In the ticket, when the agent chooses to move to the next transition, the spending time values has to be entered by the agent in the format HH:MM:SS. Once the value is entered, the ticket proceeds to the next transition.

You can utilize the custom field "Spending Time" across multiple transitions too. Each time a transition occurs, the field resets, allowing users to input the time spent during subsequent transitions.

Please share your thoughts and understanding of how the Blueprint feature has helped your business. If you need help with Blueprints, our mailbox is open to hear you: support@zohodesk.com. 

Until the next post,

Lydia | Zoho Desk 

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• Mark

• Shivani | Zoho Desk

  

• 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

• Onboard new users easily with native screen recording in Zoho Projects Plus

  Communication involving both visual and audio elements tends to capture more interest among the audience. Whenever we onboard new employees to the organization, the task of engaging them in the induction sessions, and keeping the spark going in their

• Request to Add Support for PDF Templates and More Flexibility in Email Editor

  Hi Zoho Campaigns Team, I hope you're doing well. I wanted to share some feedback and request a few improvements in the Email Template feature of Zoho Campaigns. Right now, we can create email templates using the HTML editor, which is helpful. But we’re

• Can you stop Custom View Cadences from un-enrolling leads?

  I'm testing Cadences for lead nurture. I have set un-enroll properties to trigger on email bounce/unsubscribe, and do NOT have a view criteria un-enroll trigger. However, help documents say that emails are automatically un-enrolled from a Cadence when

• Zoho Desk Android and iOS app update: Agent detail overview

  Hello everyone! We’ve introduced agent detail overview on the Zoho Desk Android and iOS app update. With this feature, you can get a complete view of agent’s tickets, response times, logged hours (for both tickets and activities), customer happiness ratings

• Blog Widget: Show recent blog posts on my homepage

  Hey there I am using the Zoho Sites Blog feature. On my homepage, on the bottom I'd like to have a featured content section where I show some of my blog posts (selected, most recent, filtered by category and so on...). It would be nice to have a blog

• How to iterate through excel data using zoho rpa

  I wanted to iterate or loop through excel data ( datatable). How can i do that

• Zoho Commerce

  Hi, I have zoho one and use Zoho Books. I am very interested in Zoho Commerce , especially with how all is integrated but have a question. I do not want my store to show prices for customers that are not log in. Is there a way to hide the prices if not

• Mass (Pull back) (Close WOs) (Close APs)

  Hi develop team. Just idea because Zoho FSM is great but its too manual. we have a lot of task to do every day and the system needs to have more features to automatic our tasks. I need to close several WOs, APs and Pull Back per day. Please we need mass

• Customising Zohidesk portal default widgets

  Hello, I'm wondering how could I customise the default widgets such as "popular topics", "popular articles" using CSS or to make the tiles at the bottom match the ones that I made in the picture attached. I have made some custom widgets and edited them

• If there’s a batch at the end, the ‘mark as inactive’ function doesn’t work.

  when my batch has a date to batch end and I "mark as inactive" he batch does not obey the status and reactivates the batch.

• Seamless multilingual messaging and tone control in Zia IM Composer

  Hello everyone! Managing customer conversations across multiple languages can be time-consuming. Using Zia in the Instant Messaging (IM) Composer helps you overcome this by providing tools to translate content, adjust your tone, and refine your messages

• Advanced Deluge help needed with custom function and COQL limits

  I have a scheduled function that takes a snapshot of specific metrics and saves them to a custom module. However I'm struggling with the limits of COQL. I attach my full code, but an example of the issues I'm having is that it's erroring with a 'Limit

• Tip of the Week - Conditional Formatting Chart

  Conditional formatting allows you to highlight your data series based on a pattern or a trend in your data. This makes it easy for you to identify when your data reaches certain values or when it deviates from the trend.  Zoho Analytics allows you to

• Zoho Learn - AI Translate

  Hi Learn team, I had a situation today where I was providing training to a client team and I had written articles into their Zoho Learn to support their learning. I realised that one of the team members was a non-native English speaker and they were struggling

• Power of Automation :: Auto-Sync Custom Date Field Between Related Tasks via Blueprint Transition

  Hello Everyone, A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate

• Introducing auto-upgrade in Zoho LandingPage

  Hi everyone, We’re excited to share an upcoming update to help you get the most out of your landing pages — the auto-upgrade option, launching on October 22, 2025. Your landing pages are designed to bring in leads, and we want to make sure you never miss

• Workdrive comment links stopped working.

  I have marked a PDF file with 95 comments, they have worked for a while. When i clicked on them they brought me to the correct page and showed me the outline that i had drew on the plans. The comments included the page number of the outline, but now it

• How to Bulk-Update Sales Orders in CRM

  Hi - I need to bulk update existing sales orders with dates from our ERP of when the sales orders were created. I made a date field on the Sales Order module where I want to insert that data. I can't Mass Update because I am not updating the fields to

• Zoho ToDo in Cliq

  Our organization utilizes Zoho ToDo in the Zoho Mail Desktop app. Is there a way for these to show up in Cliq Desktop app as well?

• 【Zoho CRM】サンドボックス機能のアップデート：カスタムビューが利用可能になりました。

  ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、サンドボックス機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 目次 1. カスタムビューとは 2. 今回の機能アップデートについて 1. カスタムビューとは カスタムビューは、ユーザーが設定した条件に基づいてデータをフィルタリング・整理し、 重要な情報へ効率的にアクセスできるようにする機能です。 「過去15日間の見込み客」や「受注間近の商談」、「特定の優先度レベルが設定された案件」など 条件を指定してわずか数クリックで設定できます。

• Changing an agents email address

  How do you change an agent's email address? I keep getting a red circle even though I am an admin. And on one of my agents he has two email addresses? How is that possible?

• Zoho CRM - Potentials Tab

  Hi! When I create a Deal (Potentials tab) the header looks like this: After a refresh on the page it looks like this: What should I do so that it is displayed like in the second pic without refresh? Also I have a user that as of recently, cannot see this

• Is there a way to automatically add Secondary Contacts (CCs) when creating a new ticket for specific customers?

  Some of our customers want multiple contacts to receive all notifications from our support team. Is there a way to automatically add secondary contacts to a ticket when our support team opens a new ticket and associates it with an account? This would

• Unable to create embed code for resource of workdrive using API

  Hello Team, I am trying to create embed code for a resource using workdrive api in powershell, however facing some issues with injecting data in body. Followed Doc: https://workdrive.zoho.com/apidocs/v1/filefoldersharing/shareeveryone Please help, below

• Feature Request - Insert URL Links in Folders

  I would love to see the ability to create simple URL links with titles in WorkDrive. or perhaps a WorkDrive extension to allow it. Example use case: A team is working on a project and there is project folder in WordDrive. The team uses LucidChart to create

• not able to convert pdf to jpg and other forms and vice versa.

  i want to change my pdf to jpg, word, etc and some times jpg to pdf. i don't know how to do in this.

• Enable / show scroll bar when Mega Menu is opened

  Hey there I am using the mega menu add-on and experience a "flicker" whenever the mega menu opens. The reason is, that the scrollbar, which has a width of a few pixels, stops showing when the mega menu opens. As the scrollbar disappears the whole page

• Reports: Custom Search Function Fields

  Hi Zoho, Hope you'll add this into your roadmap. Issue: For the past 2yrs our global team been complaining and was brought to our attention recently that it's a time consuming process looking/scrolling down. Use-case: This form is a service report with

• Zoho Inventory - Composite Items - Assembly - Single Line Item Quantity of One

  Hi Zoho Inventory Team, Please consider relaxing the system rules which prevent an assembly items from consisting of a single line item and outputting a quantity of 1. A client I'm currently working with sells cosmetics and offers testers of their products

• How can I transfer data from Production to Development environment?

  Hi, I am using Creator V6 and would like to bring all the data in production to the Development and Testing environments? Is there an easy way of doing that or I have to export and import each table?

• Add "Reset MFA" Option for Zoho Creator Client Portal Users

  Hello Zoho Creator Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement related to Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for client portal users in Zoho Creator. Currently, Creator allows us to enforce MFA for portal users,

• New portal SAML authentication error: User not found

  Dears, Has anyone else been experiencing this lately? I am creating a new portal authenticated by SAML (Entra ID). I followed the same process as I did with other portals, but any new portal created after this always encounters this error. I’ve been reporting

• Devis et facture multi page

  Bonjour, je suis sur Zoho invoice et je rencontre un problème sur mes devis et factures lorsqu'ils dépassent 1 page. je me retrouve souvent avec des lignes coupées ou le sous total page 1 et le total page 2. j'aimerai savoir s'il existe une possibilité

• Help with Filtering Records, HTML Pages, and Automatic File Uploads in Zoho Creator

  Hi Zoho Creator Community, I’m building a Zoho Creator application and need guidance on a few features I’ve been struggling with. I want to implement them safely and efficiently, and I’d appreciate any examples, tips, or best practices. I want users to

• Convert invoice from zoho to xml with all details

  How to convert an Invoice to XML format with all details

• Feature Suggestion for Zoho Websites – Inspired by Squarespace Systems

  Dear Zoho Team, I’m a Zoho user and also a Squarespace Platinum Circle member, and I recently noticed the launch of Zoho Websites in India. I wanted to share some ideas for features that could enhance the platform for professional users and agencies.

• Custom View - Sort by Custom Field

  I created a custom field for our Engineering team to know which tickets to work first by numbering them.  I created a custom view to general data which includes the Engineering Priority.  However, I cannot sort the Engineering Priority column ascending

• Zoho Indeed Intergation not pulling candidate details

  We have recently integrated zoho with indeed. Prior to this our candidates came into the candidates tab via the zoho.resumes email address from indeed and it pulled through the candidates mobile number, and majority of the time a postcode. However since

• Custom View of tickets created today

  How can I create a custom view that list all my ticked created in the current date? Currently, if I select the "Created Time" criteria, the "Current Time" option does not work as today. Actually, I don't know how it works this "Current Time".

• Lifecycle Reports

  From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports A lifecycle report captures and visualises the sequential states that a ticket undergoes across its lifespan. For instance, when a customer submits a support ticket for a faulty product,

• Next Page