What's new in Instant Messaging? | Zoho Desk | Feature Releases | Sept'2024

Improve your business communications with these new and enhanced features in Instant Messaging!

Excellent communication is at the heart of every strong work relationship. These new features and enhancements for professionals will help you build better connections with Instant Messaging.

We're adding more ways to stay connected with your customers! 

We are excited to add Facebook Messenger and Instagram to Zoho Desk's list of IM integrations. You can now easily manage your Meta Business (Facebook) Page's activity alongside messages from various channels on one common platform.

Facebook Messenger

One of the most popular messaging channels, Facebook Messenger, fulfills your business communication needs and provides an easy outlet for communicating with customers and maintaining your social media branding. 

Instagram

Manage your Instagram messages directly from your instant messaging inbox and assist your customers using the same inbox automation features you already rely on, such as blueprints, business hours, and much more.

These new integrations let you link your business account with Zoho Desk and respond to customer inquiries on this popular IM platform.

Business Messaging that matches your needs

Business Messaging

Integrate Zoho Desk's native Business Messaging widget seamlessly across webpages and apps, and customize it to align with your brand's style. This allows seamless hand-offs between bots and agents with automation to facilitate personalized and engaging conversations. Whether integrated independently or through the ASAP help widget, you can manage all your interactions using the Instant Messaging module.

Now, you can personalize your messenger to align with your brand, making your conversational experience accessible on both web and mobile platforms. Engage with a broader customer base through our business messaging channel, which is easy to set up, adaptable to your needs, and scalable for future expansion!

Enhancements in WhatsApp

Multi-WABA support

Great news! We are now supporting multi-WABA for businesses on the instant messaging platform. If you've been using the WhatsApp channel to communicate with your customers, you're likely aware that every WhatsApp Business Account (WABA) needs a verified phone number specifically dedicated to that IM channel for the current WhatsApp Business Platform. Log in for more information: Facebook Business Manager Account.

Acquire in-depth insights on how you spend WhatsApp Credits

Easily identify conversation patterns and anomalies, spot trends quickly with our color-coded graph, and promptly see your actual usage with our clear and easy-to-read conversational payment statements.

Blended conversation is now available across multiple channels

Get ready to experience Bot messaging like never before

You have the option to create a complete Guided Conversations custom bot flow, which enables the development of entirely automated interactions that work in tandem with Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Line, Telegram, and other business messaging channels.

Support teams can set their status as online or offline

Set Business Hours

Now, customers can specify their business hours. This feature provides greater flexibility in managing customer expectations with instant messaging. It allows you to customize business hours for individual teams to accommodate varying time zones or differing work hours for support and sales teams. We have also included the offline message as an automated response informing customers that the support team will be unavailable for an extended period.

Now chat with your customers the way they want

Instant Messaging inbox enhancement

We've enhanced the instant messaging inbox to improve and optimize messaging to provide better tools, features, and capabilities for managing and responding to messages.

Easily configure webhooks in IM

Do more with our Instant Messaging APIs

We introduced a webhook to support all inbound and outbound messages from your applications for custom events across channels.

Promote your business with replies via WhatsApp

Send WhatsApp messages in bulk to your contacts

Agents can now select contacts from the Contacts module to send WhatsApp messages to multiple contacts. The message can be sent to the contact's phone number, mobile number, or both. WhatsApp facilitates effective marketing, engagement, and customer retention management.

 
Send a WhatsApp message to a Contact using quick action

Agents can send WhatsApp messages to single contacts directly from the quick actions list by clicking the drop-down arrow from the top panel next to the plus sign (+). Alternatively, they can use the keyboard shortcut "w+" from any location within the desk. Each time a message is sent to a new contact, a new record is automatically created in the Contacts module.

Omni-channel messaging

IM conversations thread separation

You can now manage all channel conversations in your ticketing threads. This brings all IM channels and their conversations into one easily accessible ticket thread so that you can quickly understand how communication is handled across users.

Reply to IM tickets

Allows support agents to respond to customer inquiries and interact with them seamlessly across different messaging platforms while maintaining a unified view of the conversation history.

Associating agents made easy

Edit channel form

After successfully adding the instant messaging channel, you will be alerted: You have successfully linked your Zoho Desk account with a messaging channel. You can update your preferences for each messaging channel created in your help desk anytime. The preferences allow you to assign different agents for each channel within the channel form.

IM Automation

Triggering Blueprint is designed as a process management tool for IM conversations

Automating ticket actions via Blueprint transitions helps your team save time and streamline ticketing processes for instant messaging conversations. This allows agents to connect with customers and ensures the proper process is followed.

Monitor customer happiness ratings

Measure Customer Satisfaction across IM channels

By enabling the happiness rating, you can ask the customer to rate their experience in a survey that appears after the conversation ends—supported channels are WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and LINE.

With these improvements to your business communications, you can resolve issues faster, boost customer satisfaction, and grow your business successfully.

For more details, refer to the Instant Messaging help docs.

Cheers,

Kavya Rao
The Zoho Desk Team

• Topic Participants

• Kavya Rao Addepalli

  

• Sticky Posts

• Zoho Desk Partners with Microsoft's M365 Copilot for seamless customer service experiences

  Hello Zoho Desk users, We are happy to announce that Zoho Desk has partnered with Microsoft's M365 to empower customer service teams with enhanced capabilities and seamless experiences for agents. Microsoft announced their partnership during their keynote

• WhatsApp pricing changes: Pay per message starting July 1, 2025

  Starting July 1, 2025, WhatsApp is shifting from conversation-based pricing to per-message billing. That means every business-initiated message you send will count. Not just the first one in a 24-hour window. Pricing updates on the WhatsApp Business Platform

• Live Webinar - Work smarter with Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace integration

  Hello customers! Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace are coming together for a webinar on 14th May, 2024. Zoho Workplace is a suite of productivity apps for email, chat, docs, calls, and more at one single place. Zoho Desk is closely integrated with a few tools

• Apple iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 updates for Zoho Desk users

  Hello Zoho Desk users! Apple recently announced the release of iOS 17 and iPad OS 17. These latest OS updates will help you stay productive and efficient, through interactive and seamless user experiences. Zoho Desk has incorporated the updates to help

• Zoho Desk Cheat Sheet For The Year-End

  Check out these Zoho Desk best practices to end this year on a high and have a great one ahead! #1 Set Business (Holiday) Hours - If you have limited working hours, please make sure you restrict your business hours or set them as holidays for the coming days. Let your customers know when you will, and won't, be available. #2 Update the Annual Holiday List - Check the holidays for the new year and update the holiday schedule. Usually, holidays from the current year will be carried over for the next

• Recent Topics

• Zoho Projects - Task Owner filter at Project level

  Hi Projects Team, The feature requests I would like to raise is the ability to create a custom view at the project level for projects with tasks owned by a user or users. For example "Ashley's Projects" custom view might contain a list of project in which

• Zoho inbuilt Telephony made a lot of issues!

  Hi there, I am a user that I am working with zoho inbuilt telephony around 1 month. Non of my colleagues are happy with this app! most of the time customer cannot hear my customer service team, customers say our voice is breaking. whenever Telephony support

• Sending workflow notifications using popular chat services

  Hello everyone, We have introduced instant and scheduled notifications on some of the most popular chat platforms to facilitate easy collaboration, quick action, and wider reach. Workflow notifications can be sent to the following chat platforms: Zoho

• Webhook not firing.

  I created a webhook using the Web UI, it looks very nice and the testing worked without an issue, but when i save/ update a ticket, the webhook is not firing. Here are the details of the web-hook i get from using the API "modifiedTime": "2019-10-22T09:23:37.380Z",

• Adding Images to a Quote in Zoho CRM

  We are currently preparing to use Quotes in Zoho CRM and we are building out our Quote templates.  We came across an issue of not being to add Images of the products to the Quote - specifically in the body of the Quote templates.   This is a problem,

• Applications built with Zoho Creator

  Hi, I’m really interested in seeing how others have built their application using Zoho Creator, especially those designed for external users (clients, vendors, or the public). If you’ve developed something along those lines and don’t mind sharing, I’d

• In arattai received message can't be deleted

  The issue has been noticed in following: arattai app (Android) arattai app (Window) arattai web While the message posted by me may be deleted, the ones received from others can't be. The item <Delete> change to <Report> when the message is a received

• Is it posssible to add Asap Widget on Wordpress?

  I have tried to add the ASAP widget so users could iniciate chats and see the KB information but nothings seems to work. I have tried to add the script using a php snippet that adds the to the footers and also tried one for the header in the functio

• Require ticket resolution

  Hi Zoho team, Is there a way to require resolution even if an agent did not use a blueprint? for example, our blueprint has a "resolve" transition but what if agent revoked blueprint and manually set the status of ticket to closed? Is there a way where

• Tables from ZohoSheets remove images when updated from source

  I have a few tables from a ZohoSheet in a ZohoWriter document that will remove the images in the cells when I refresh from the source. The source still has the images in the table when I go to refresh. After updating from the source, as you can see the

• Unable to Receive Emails on Zoho Mail After Office 365 Coexistence Setup – Error: 553 Relaying Disallowed

  Hello, My domain name is bigniter.com, and I’ve been using Zoho Mail as my email service provider without any issues. Recently, I followed the steps outlined in the Zoho documentation to enable Coexistence with Office 365: 🔗 https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/coexistence-with-office365.html#multi-server

• API Pagination Error: 'from' Parameter Limit

  Hello, I am encountering an error while paging through the Zoho Desk API results: Status code: 422 - {"errorCode":"UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY","message":"The value passed for field 'from' exceeds the range of '0-4999'."} Is 5000 the maximum number of records

• How to go to the next open ticket in the queue when agents closes ticket

  Zoho Desk When agent closes a ticket - eg when they choose 'Send and Close" - where is the setting that automatically redirects them to the next open ticket in the queue?

• External download link limit

  Can You please help us to understand this For Zoho WorkDrive external users, the download limit is a maximum of 5 GB total download size and a maximum of 50 first-level files and folders What is the meaning of first level? We are using these files in

• CRM verify details pop-up

  Was there a UI change recently that involves the Verify Details pop-up when changing the Stage of a Deal to certain things? I can't for the life of me find a workflow or function, blueprint, validation rule, layout rule ect that would randomly make it

• Automatically Add Recurring Zoho Meeting Events to Zoho Calendar / Zoho Meeting Calendar

  Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement regarding recurring meetings created inside Zoho Meeting. At the moment, when we schedule a recurring meeting in Zoho Meeting, it does not appear in Zoho Calendar

• The difference between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns

  Greetings Marketers! This post aims to differentiate between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns. By the time you get to the end of the post, you will be able to choose a product that objectively suits you. What is Zoho Marketing Automation?

• Custom templates for calendar report

  What about being able to design custom templates for the calendar report, as well as for other types of reports? I think more users are waiting for this.

• Print a price list or price book

  Hi Community. Am I right in concluding that Zoho has no functionality to print a price list from either Zoho CRM, Zoho Inventory or Zoho Books? I won't get stuck on the fact that Zoho doesn't sync price books between Zoho CRM and Books/Inventory (more

• Disable payment thank-you emails

  Hello, can someone please tell me how to disable sending of the "Payment Thank-You" emails? 

• Maximum tags possible in Contacts Records

  I read in some documentation that Zoho allows a total of 200 tags across all records. Is this correct? So is it not possible to have one tag per record for 500 records?

• Integrate your Outlook/ Office 365 inbox with Zoho CRM via Graph API

  Hello folks, In addition to the existing IMAP and POP options, you can now integrate your Outlook/Office 365 inbox with Zoho CRM via Graph API. Why did we add this option? Microsoft Graph API offers a single endpoint to access data from across Microsoft’s

• Any way to "Pay with Check" or "Refund with Check" for Credit Notes?

  When we have a Bill in Zoho Books, we can select the "Pay with Check" option which then allows us to print/cut the check directly out of Zoho Books. When we created a Credit Note and want to refund the customer, is there any way to Refund with Check,

• CRM Mobile reports

  When our engineers finish a job they like to email the customer a job report. This is best done todate as an email template but we can find no way to include an image field from that module. Is there any other options?

• When Zoho Tables Beta will be open to EU data center

  Hello all, We in EU are looking at you all using and testing and are getting jealous :) When we will be able to get into the beta also? We don't mind testing and playing with beta software. Thank you!

• Start Form on a different page (i.e., hide form pages)?

  I have a Zoho form that uses the `Field Alias - Prefill URL` feature. My goal is to have a pre-filled field that directs the user to a specific starting page in the form. For example: The URL will have a field alias that will auto-populate a field with

• Microsoft Teams now available as an online meeting provider

  Hello everyone, We're pleased to announce that Zoho CRM now supports Microsoft Teams as an online meeting provider—alongside the other providers already available. Admins can enable Microsoft Teams directly from the Preferences tab under the Meetings

• Standard Payment Term is not pulled from account to quotation

  Hey Team There seems to be something off. I do have "Net 30" as my default payment term in Zoho Books for my customers. If, from the customer overview or quote section, I create a new Quotation, the payment terms field stays blank and doesn't get the

• Passing the CRM

  Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

• How can we disable "My Requests"?

  We are not using this functionality in our system at all and our users get confused.

• PayPal payment received recording problem

  Hi, A little while back one of our customers used the PayPal payment option to pay an invoice For some reason though the payment is showing up twice within the Payments section of the invoice! Instead of setting the invoice value to ZERO, it now shows a negative value Anyone else face this problem? I've checked PayPal and there is only 1 payment in reality... A bug? Actonia ps: for anyone from Zoho Customer Service or tech team,  its Invoice 785 in our account

• string(87) "{"code":"INVALID_TOKEN","details":{},"message":"invalid oauth token","status":"error"} " grtting this error

  Using access token i am trying to add sales orders through api but it is throwing errors like the above i have mentioned. Please help me for that

• How to mute chat notification sound by default in Zoho SalesIQ?

  We’ve recently embedded the Zoho SalesIQ chatbot on our website, and we’ve noticed that notification sounds sometimes play even when the visitor hasn’t interacted with the chat widget yet. We’re trying to understand two things: Why do these sounds occur

• Kanban View for Projects.

  At our organization, we describe active projects with various statuses like "In Proofing" or "Printing" or "Mailing". In the Projects view, one can set these project statuses by selecting from the appropriate drop-down. While this works, it's difficult to view and comprehend the progress of all of your projects relative to each other in a table. Creating a Kanban view for projects where I can move them from one status to another allows me to see where each project is in the order of our workflow.

• How to Hide Article Links in SalesIQ Answer Bot Responses

  I have published an article in SalesIQ, and the Answer Bot is fetching the data and responding correctly. However, it is also displaying the article link, which I don’t want. How can I remove the link so that only the message is shown?

• Add RECURRING option when adding email to calendar events

  When you add an email to a calendar event, there is no option to make that new calendar event into a recurring event.  It is counterproductive to make an event from your email to then have to go to your calendar, find the event, and make it recurring. 

• Using Contains as a filter

  We are using Zoho Reports, ServiceDesk Plus analytics. I do not see how to create a report filter using Contains comparison of a string values, is one string contained in another. For example, Task Title contains the word Monitor. Is this possible in Zoho Reports?  This reporting feature is available in SDP reporting. Thanks in advance, Craig Rice

• LINE Auto Message Connect to Zoho

  When I integrated LINE into the CRM, I was prompted to disable “Chat,” “Auto Response,” and “Greeting Messages,” and to enable the webhook. However, since I have already set up some auto-reply features in LINE, including Rich Messages and greeting automation,

• Option to block bookings from specific email address or ip adresss in zoho booking

  Sometime few of our client keep booking irrelevant booking service just to resolve their queries and they keep booking it again and again whenever they have queries. Currently its disturbing our current communication process and hierarchy which we have

• Threaded conversations for emails sent via automation

  Hi Guys, I hope you are doing well. Don't you guys think we should have an option in a workflow to notify users either as a new email or the previous email thread. For example, if you have one deal in the process and there are 10 different stages during

• Next Page