Workflow notifications for chat platforms allow Zoho Desk to push real-time alerts — such as ticket creation, status changes, or assignment updates — directly into team collaboration tools like Zoho Cliq, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat. Instead of relying solely on email alerts, agents and managers receive instant notifications in the chat channels they already use throughout the day, reducing response lag and keeping critical ticket activity visible.

For example, when a high-priority ticket is created, a workflow rule can trigger a notification that appears in a dedicated Slack channel or a Microsoft Teams team chat, ensuring the right people are alerted immediately without having to monitor the Zoho Desk dashboard.

The Send Cliq Notification action is available as a custom action in the Custom Actions Gallery. To configure it:

Once saved and the workflow rule is active, the notification will be triggered in the Zoho Cliq chat window of the user who subscribed to the bot whenever the rule's criteria are met.

For agent-level chat notifications (configured under Setup > Automation > Notify), yes — the Zoho Desk account must be integrated with Zoho Cliq. This integration enables the system to send chat alerts to agents for specific events like task assignments and ticket updates.

However, for the Send Cliq Notification custom action in workflow rules, the integration works through incoming webhooks rather than a direct integration. This means user need a bot configured in Zoho Cliq with an incoming webhook handler, but you do not necessarily need the full Zoho Cliq integration enabled in Zoho Desk's notification settings. The webhook-based approach is more flexible and allows notifications to be posted to specific channels or bots rather than individual agent direct messages.

If a placeholder used in the notification message resolves to a null (empty) value at execution time, the Send Cliq Notification action will still execute — but it will be sent with empty values in place of the null placeholder. This means the notification will be delivered to the chat window, but any fields referencing the null placeholder will appear blank.

For example, if the notification message is: "New ticket assigned: ${deskPlaceHolders.tickets.assignee.firstName}" and the ticket has no assignee at the time of execution, the message will read: "New ticket assigned: " — with the assignee name missing.

This behavior is shared with other custom actions like Send Email Reply, Add Comment, and Share Ticket. To avoid confusing or incomplete notifications, ensure that the fields referenced by placeholders in your notification message are reliably populated before the workflow rule triggers, or use conditional criteria to only fire the rule when those fields have values.

Yes. The notification message field supports placeholders enclosed in double curly brackets {}, which are replaced with actual ticket data at runtime. You can insert placeholders by clicking the Empty Double Curly Brackets {} icon in the notification message field, which opens the Select Placeholders pane on the right side of the screen.

For example, compose a notification message like:

When the workflow rule fires, each placeholder is replaced with the corresponding value from the ticket, producing a contextual, real-time alert in the chat channel. This is particularly useful for routing critical ticket information to team channels where multiple agents can see and act on it simultaneously.