Zoho Desk: 2023 Feature Release - All New Zoho Desk with accessibility controls and exciting new features and enhancements

Zoho Desk: 2023 Feature Release - All New Zoho Desk with accessibility controls and exciting new features and enhancements

Redefining customer service experiences

I. New Generation Zoho Desk
The Zoho Desk UI has been enhanced with a more engaging, intuitive, and user-friendly interface. The new design adheres to an advanced unified component library and follows standard design guidelines.

The fresh Zoho Desk interface brings changes that provide support to agents with a range of easy-to-use and convenient options that save time and effort while increasing productivity.

Take a look at some of the elements of our new UI:

The Agent Queue now displays the agent's name first in the queue. Agents can work on assigned tickets right from this window. 


Tags can be edited and deleted from the Tag view in the left panel.


Work Modes provide an organized and clutter-free view. All work modes, including status, handshake, countdown, and priority are consolidated under the list views. 


Ticket status can now be changed right from the Queue view without opening the Ticket Detail view. 


Filters applied to quick search a record are now displayed as breadcrumbs to provide better context and facilitate better understanding.


Ticket Detail view now includes more functionalities:
  • Tags can be added from the info panel.
  • CCs can be added and edited from the info panel.
  • Color distinction differentiates between public and private comments.

  • Compact info bar holds more icons and displays extensions for quick access.

This is just a glimpse of some of the key changes incorporated into the new UI design.
Resources: Help documents 

II. Providing inclusive experiences

We believe that software should be accessible to all. This was our goal in building an all-inclusive interface to cater to our world-wide customer base. With this in mind, we introduce:
  • Accessibility controls that help users adjust, enable, or disable visual and display preferences to their liking. Users now have the option to:
    • Highlight critical information, such as Ticket ID, agent name, email address, and ticket owner in striking colors for prominence and cognitive appeal.
    • Underline links for quick identification.
    • Emphasize areas that a user should focus on with highlights and colored outlines around the text.

    • Optimize animations, motion graphics, and transitions by reducing motion or by allowing Zoho Desk to auto-adjust based on the computer settings. The screen jerks, page transitions, unwanted animations, and motions that can cause distraction and increase strain on the eyes can be mitigated substantially.
    • Use a reading mask to shine a spotlight on the text as you hover over it. Blur the background for distinction, less distraction, and better comprehension. 

    • Adjust display and layout with page zoom and font size and type. 
    • Set display preferences with new themes and night/dark mode. Switch between light mode, night mode, or auto-mode based on your surroundings.




  • Multilingual support for your Knowledge Base helps customers access self-service content in their preferred language. Your KB content can be translated and published in 50+ languages.

III. Introducing enhanced privacy and transparent management

Data is the backbone of a business and it requires secure handling. This year, Zoho Desk took big strides to enhance privacy and provide better data management options by introducing:

Data subject rights: In accordance with GDPR, Zoho Desk now provides a reliable and secure system to protect and process customer data. DSR protects two different rights: Right to Access and Right to Erasure. Refer to the help doc for more details.
  • Right to Access: Data subjects can request a copy of their personal data. In Zoho Desk, you can register a request and send a copy of the data from one or more modules. Data will be exported, and you can send it securely from your official email account.
  • Right to Erasure: Data subjects can raise a request asking the organization to delete their personal data. In Zoho Desk, you can take up this request and permanently delete the data from one or more modules.
Read receipts for emails: Emails sent from tickets will bear a green double check mark when they've been read by the recipient. This helps agents manage high-priority tasks, deadlines, follow-up conversations, and more. Check marks in different colors indicate whether CC or BCC recipients have read the email, the number of recipients that replied to the email, whether the email bounced or failed, and more. Read the help doc for more details.

Data Backup: A foolproof method for preventing data loss is to periodically back up your data. Zoho Desk now facilitates instant and scheduled backups. Data from the Tickets, Products, KB, Activities, Agents, Teams, and other modules can be backed up as and when needed. Refer to the help doc for more details. 

Other new features and enhancements

Aside from these updates, we have some exciting new features:

Auto-translation of your help center
To support your multilingual knowledge base further, Zoho Desk now offers auto-translation of your KB articles to multiple languages. The article, title, tags, SEO title, meta descriptions, and meta keywords will be auto-translated using tools such as Google Translate, Unbable, or Zia, based on their configuration. Refer to the help doc for more details.

Custom actions gallery for Workflow automations
Introducing custom actions to improve workflow automations. The new set of available actions includes: Assign Ticket, Add Comment, Send Email Reply, Share Ticket, Send Cliq Notification, Reply and Notify via Instant Messaging, and more. Refer to the help doc for more details. 

Idle timeout to improve agent productivity and optimize ticket assignment
Desk provides the option to set the maximum duration for which an agent can remain idle.  After that time, their status will automatically change from online to offline. Increase productivity and maintain better control over ticket assignment by choosing agents based on status. Refer to the help doc for more details.  

More functionalities added to Blueprints
Advanced configurations we've added to Blueprint include:
  • Strict mode: Agents can be restricted from performing certain actions, like editing fields, sending replies, leaving comments, and asking for approvals during a transition. These functions will be hidden from the ticket interface.
  • Dynamic transition owner: Users can assign transition owners for records as and when needed. The transition owners need not be necessarily from the same department that the record belongs to.
  • Save draft: Blueprints that are in progress can be saved as drafts so you can resume work at another time.
  • Additional fields provided during transition: During transition, "tags" is included as a field that can be updated by the agent.  Ticket sharing is also an available action. If the agents want, they can share a ticket with team members during the transition.
  • Transition draft: Save a transition until its finalized as a partial draft. During this stage, multiple transition owners can be involved in its completion. The draft will display the name of the person who drafted the transition and when it was drafted.
New set of marketplace extensions
Earlier this year, we introduced a set of new extensions aimed at enhancing Zoho Desk's performance. The new extensions are:

Zoho Campaigns integration
Experience the benefits of Campaigns within your help desk. Create mailing lists, add or remove customers from mailing lists, find out how many campaigns customers are part of, and more. Refer to the help doc for more details.

Broadcast email template
Create email templates for multiple departments at once, insert an agent's signature and default happiness rating within the template, provide profile-based access to the template, and more. Refer to the help doc for more details.

Related tickets by custom fields
Improve ticket resolutions by adding custom fields. Using these fields, agents can look up tickets with similar field values to identify similar problems, and provide quicker and more personalized solutions. Up to five custom fields can be added to a layout, and can display information such as ticket ID, ticket owner, status, and date/time created from related tickets. Refer to the help doc for more details.   

That's a wrap.
We're excited to share the new version of Zoho Desk with its inclusive functionality, improved automation, comprehensive privacy options, helpful extensions, and more.

The new features are now available for all users. Give them a try and share your feedback.

Regards,
Anumita Gupta

Book the date!
We will be hosting an exclusive webinar for the 2023 Release Features on 22nd December (Thursday) at 9pm IST. 
Kindly register using the link below. 













 











    • 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

    • Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

      Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

    • COQL API in JS Widget only pulling 200 records

      Hello! We've been building a custom homepage widget using the Zoho JS SDK, and it seems that this https://help.zwidgets.com/help/latest/ZOHO.CRM.API.html#.coql only allows 200 records. I thought the limit was 2000 for COQL queries, but am I mistaken?

    • 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

    • Paid Support Plans with Automated Billing

      We (like many others, I'm sure) are designing or have paid support plans. Our design involves a given number of support hours in each plan. Here are my questions: 1) Are there any plans to add time-based plans in the Zoho Desk Support Plans feature? The

    • Different form submission results for submitter and internal users

      I'm looking for suggestions on how to show an external submitter a few results while sending internal users all the results from the answers provided by the external user. The final page of our form has a section with detailed results and a section with

    • Help Desk Services Solution

      I am here looking for Help Desk services solution for organization. I also searched this on many different website and found many solutions. We are bit confused to which one to choose. One of my friend suggest me this platform, and i am hoping i will

    • Facing Issues with Sites Mobile font sizes

      my page renediaz.com is facing issues mobile view, when i try to lower font sizes in home page, instead of changing the size, it changes the line space

    • Remove 'This is an automated mail from Zoho Sign' in footer

      Hi there, Is it possible to remove or change the text under the e-mail templates? I can't figure out how to do that: Would love to hear from you. Kind regards, Tristan

    • Formatting and slow

      Creating campaigns are difficult.  I'm fairly computer literate but some of the way Zoho Campaigns formatting works is painful.  Images fail to upload or are very slow. To top it off, syncing the contacts is a pain as well as temperamental links to create Segments. At this rate I'm afraid we might need to migrate back to Mailchimp.

    • Default Ticket View - Table?

      Guys, We mostly use the table view to queue tickets. Maybe I am missing it - but how can I set that view as 'default" for all our agents? Thanks JV

    • Boost your Zoho Desk's performance by archiving tickets!

      The longer your help desk operations are, the more likely it is to accumulate tickets that are no longer relevant. For example, ticket records from a year ago are typically less relevant than currently open tickets. Such old tickets may eventually lead

    • Paste emails to create segment

      We are moving over from Mailchimp to ZOHO. However Mailchimp allows me to create a segment by pasting in emails from excel (or importing a .csv) can I do the same in Mailchimp?

    • Getting the Record ID of a form once it is submitted - so that form can be edited later

      In Zoho Forms, where can I access the record ID of a form once the form is submitted? - Record ID is not available in webhook payloads - It is not available to form fields, including in formulas - It is not available as a parameter in a thankyou page

    • Auto-Generate Line Numbers in Item Table Using HTML & CSS Counters (Zoho Books & Zoho Inventory Custom Templates)

      <div> <style> /* Start counter from 0 inside tbody */ tbody#lineitem { counter-reset: rowNumber; } /* Increment counter for each row */ tbody#lineitem tr { counter-increment: rowNumber; } /* Show counter value in first column */ tbody#lineitem tr td:first-child::before

    • Possible to define default font and size in Zoho Campaigns?

      Is it possible to define a default font (font, size and colour) for the text, H1 and H2 in Zoho Campaigns? For example: In a campaign, I add a text block, and the text is automatically century gothic, size 11, grey (6f6f6e) by default? Thank you!

    • Zoho Sites - General Feedback

      Hi Everyone-- Quick question for discussion: is it me or is working with Zoho Sites like entering the Twilight Zone? I've built many sites over the years, but this platform seems impossible. I've spent an entire day and a half trying to get a simple one-color

    • File Upload field not showing in workflow

      Hi, I have added a field on Zoho CRM. I want to use it in a workflow where that particular field is updated based on another field, however it is not showing up in the field list to select it in the workflow. Why is this please?

    • You cannot send this email campaign as it doesn't have any eligible contacts in the selected mailing list. You can try adding contacts or choose other mailing lists.

      please help

    • Strengthening the capabilities of CommandCenter in Zoho CRM Plus

      When you look at the prospect-to-customer journey in most businesses 10 to 15 years ago, it was relatively straightforward. Many of us remember walking into a store, sharing our requirements with a sales associate, reviewing a few options, and making

    • World date & time format

      Hello, Is there a timeline to get the worldwide used date and time format ? I mean not the american one... I mean day month year, and 24 hours clock. Regards

    • How can Data Enrichment be automatically triggered when a new Lead is created in Zoho CRM?

      Hi, I have a pipeline where a Lead is created automatically through the Zoho API and I've been trying to look for a way to automatically apply Data Enrichment on this created lead. 1) I did not find any way to do this through the Zoho API; it seems like

    • Announcing Kiosk 1.1 - Customize screen titles, configure new fields & actions, use values from your Kiosk to update fields, and more.

      Hello all We are back again with more enhancements to Kiosk. So what's new? Enhancements made to the Components Add titles for your Kiosk screens and adjust its width to suit your viewing preferences. Three new fields can be added to your screen: Percentage,

    • Any recommendations for Australian Telephony Integration providers?

      HI,  I am looking for some advice on phone providers as we are looking to upgrade our phone system, does anybody have experience with any of the Australian providers that integrate with CRM Telephony? So far we are looking at RingCentral and Amazon Connect, and would love to hear feedback on any of the other providers you might have tried.  Thank you

    • CRM Cadences recognise auto-responses

      I have leads in a Cadence. I get an auto-responder reply "I'm out of the office..." Normally Cadences seems to know that isn't a real reply and keeps the lead enrolled in the cadence. However, today, Cadences has UNENROLLED a Lead who sent an auto-reponse

    • Zoho Campaigns Workspaces

      Hi, I’m currently working on a Zoho CRM + Zoho Campaigns setup for a franchisee-based organization, where each franchise must only see and use its own contacts. At the moment, franchisees cannot properly access their contact lists in Zoho Campaigns unless

    • Limited System because of Limited Number of Fields for Car Dealership

      Dear Zoho Support, we want to have all the information about a car inside of a car record. We want to have Zoho CRM as our single source of truth for our data, but the limited number of fields are not allowing that. The data consist of: technical data

    • Automatically Update Form Attachment Service with Newly added Fields

      Hi, When I have a Form Setup and connected to a 3rd Party Service such as OneDrive for Form Attachments, when I later add a new Upload Field I have to remove and redo the entire 3rd Party Setup from scratch. This needs to be improved, such as when new

    • 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

    • Newsletter in multiple languages

      Hi We are planning on starting to use Zoho Campaigns for our newsletters. Since we send our newsletters in three languages, I would need the "unsubscribe page" and other pages related to the NL (Thank you page and so on) to be available in different languages

    • Fixed assets in Zoho One?

      Hi, We use Zoho Books and have the fixed asset option in it. I started a trial for Zoho One and I do not see that as an option. Is the books that is part of zoho one equivalent to Zoho Books Elite subscription or is it a lesser version? Thanks, Matt

    • Set Default Status of Assembly to "Assembled" When Entered in UI

      I've just discovered the new "confirmed" status of Assemblies within Inventory. While I understand the intent of this (allowing for manufacturing planning and raw material stock allocation), it was initially confusing to me when manually entering some

    • I need to Record Vatable amount and non vatable amount separately in zoho books in a single line

      I need to Record Vatable amount and non vatable amount separately in zoho books in a single line give me the customisation option and in invoice copy to customer the total amount should be inclusive 5%vat and no need to show the vatable and non vatable

    • Sort Legend & stacked bar chart by value

      I'd love to see an option added to sort the legend of graphs by the value that is being represented. This way the items with the largest value in the graph are displayed top down in the legend. For example, let's say I have a large sales team and I create

    • Scanned Doc - selecting Item overwrites Rate

      I have a Vendor Invoice which was uploaded to Documents. I select Add To > New Bill. The OCR is actually quite good, but it is reading an Item Description instead of an Item Number. I remove the description and select the correct Item Number... and it

    • Timesheet invalid data error

      Getting the "Invalid Date" error when trying to add a time sheet to an appointment in a work order. I initially though the work order was corrupt or something so I deleted the work order and recreated it. I added the first time sheet to the AP and saved

    • Convert invoice from zoho to xml with all details

      How to convert an Invoice to XML format with all details

    • Any update on adding New Customer Payment Providers who support in store terminal devices?

      Currently there is only one Customer payment provider listed for terminal devices in USA- Everyware. They charge a monthly fee of almost $149 minimum. Will you add other providers - like Zoho Payments or Stripe or Worldpay that would allow integrated

    • Dealing With One-Time Customers on Zoho Books

      Hello there! I am trying to figure out a way to handle One-Time customers without having to create multiple accounts for every single one on Zoho Books. I understand that I can create a placeholder account called "Walk-In Customer", for example, but I

    • Customizing Helpcenter texts

      I’m customizing the Zoho Desk Help Center and I’d like to change the wording of the standard widgets – for example, the text in the “Submit Ticket” banner that appears in the footer, or other built-in widget labels and messages. So far, I haven’t found

    • Passing the image/file uploaded in form to openai api

      I'm trying to use the OpenAI's new vision feature where we can send image through Api. What I want is the user to upload an image in the form and send this image to OpenAI. But I can't access this image properly in deluge script. There are also some constraints

    • Next Page