FAQs: Working on Tickets
What are Ticket Tabs?
Ticket tabs allow you to link tickets to the other standard modules in your help desk. These tabs provide contextual information about a ticket such as ticket activity, pending tasks, supportive files, resolutions and the like. Let's take a look at the different types of tabs in more detail.
History
The ticket history (or the audit trail), shows the support team the full sequence of activities associated with each ticket. The history allows you to review all actions that have been taken both by your support agents and through system automation, giving you a comprehensive picture of the support process from start to finish.
Here is how a ticket's first event is recorded in its history:
The following are registered in a ticket's history:
- Agent activities, including sending a reply, editing ticket properties, changing ownership, applying a macro, etc.
- Customer activities, including responding to their ticket, receiving an email notification, updating ticket properties, etc.
- Automated actions, such as a workflow trigger, applying an assignment rule, SLA alerts, etc.
To view ticket's history:
- Open a ticket to view its details.
- Open the History tab at the top of the page.
Approval
More often than not, agents do not have the authority to make decisions on all customer requests. For example, some businesses do not offer returns. However, a customer might have just purchased a product with a manufacturing defect and is now requesting to replace it. For this type of exceptional circumstance, the support agent may not have the authority to make a decision by themselves but will have to get approval from someone in a supervisory role. The approval feature in Zoho Desk allows you handle this with ease.
To submit a ticket for approval:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Open the Approval tab at the top of the page.
- Click Send of Approval or click the Add icon (
). - Enter the To Address (supervisor), Subject and Description for the request.
- Click Submit for Approval.
When the request is submitted, an email containing a link to the ticket will be sent to the agent's supervisor, who will be able to approve or reject the request from within the ticket's detail view. Until it is approved or rejected, the request is displayed as 'Pending.'
Resolution
Resolution
After an agent has closed a ticket, they can enter details on how the request was resolved in the Resolution tab. This documentation can help other agents who might encounter similar requests in future. When they submit a resolution, your agents can also choose to post it as an article in the KBase.
To enter a resolution:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Open the Resolution tab at the top of the page.
- Enter the resolution details for the ticket.
- Click Save or Save and Add Solution.
When you click Save and Add Solution, you will be taken to the Add Article page. After adding a resolution, you can click the More icon ( 
) to edit or delete your description. A resolution can also be shared with a customer right away. Instead of drafting an email reply, your agents can fill out the resolution field and enable the Notify Contact checkbox. Please note that you cannot add more than one resolution for a ticket.
Activity
Activity is where you can create and associate tasks, events, and calls with tickets. Such activities are both listed in the Activities module and in the ticket's detail page. Also, you can add an activity that is linked to a ticket or a stand-alone one.
To add an activity to a ticket:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Open the Activity tab at the top of the page.
- Click the Add icon (
) and then select Call, Task or Event. - In the Add Call/Task/Event page, specify the activity related details.
- Click Submit to create a new activity.
Agents will be notified by email when an activity is assigned to them.
Note:
- The person who creates an activity will be set as its owner. You can use either the drop-down menu or the search bar to assign activities to agents or teams.
- Create reminders for activities to get a notification at the time you want. You can choose to be notified by email, SMS or a browser pop-up. You can only set a reminder if you have specified a due date (tasks) or start time (calls and events).
- Only upcoming scheduled calls can be set with reminders.
Closing Activities
Activities are closed only when their status is updated as Completed.
To close an activity:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Open the Activity tab at the top of the page.
- From the Activities List view, hover your mouse over a task/call/event and click the Check-box icon (
) to the right.
The activity will be marked as completed.
Time Entry
The Time Entry module allows your agents to log the time they spend working on each ticket. Support managers can later generate a report to review and analyze the time spent during specific periods.
Time entries will come in handy for analyzing certain key help desk metrics including:
- The time spent on each ticket created in your help desk.
- The total billable hours of an agent during specific periods, e.g. in a week or a month.
- The total support cost per agent or of a customer account.
To add a Time Entry:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Click the Time Entry tab at the top of the page.
- Click Add a Time Entry link or the Add icon ( ).
- In the Add Time Entry page, specify the time spent and the associated costs.
- Click Submit to add the entry.
To edit a Time Entry:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Click the Time Entry tab at the top of the page.
- Hover your mouse over an entry and click the Edit icon (
).
- Make the necessary changes to the Time Entry and click Save.
To delete a Time Entry:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Click the Time Entry tab at the top of the page.
- Hover your mouse over an entry and click the Delete icon (
).
- Click OK to delete.
Attachments
File attachments may include customer support collateral, support quotes/invoices, SLAs, as well as other support documentation. The attachments can be associated with tickets and viewed by your customers in the Help Center.
To upload an attachment:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Click the Attachment tab at the top of the page.
- Click the Add an Attachment link or the Add icon ( ).
- Select the file you wish to upload.
When a file is attached, it will be set as 'Private' and cannot be viewed by your end users. You can click the More icon ( 
) to set the attachment as 'Public.'
To delete an attachment:
- Open the ticket to view its details.
- Click the Attachment tab at the top of the page.
- Click the More icon (
) next to the attachment and then click Delete from the drop menu.
You can upload either a single file or multiple files for each ticket. The size of each file cannot exceed 20MB.
Can I monitor my agent's log in and log out time?
No. It is not possible to monitor the log in or log out time of your agents in Zoho Desk. However, you will be able to view the logged-in agents by their current status:
- Online
- Offline
To view the current status of your agents:
- Click the Tickets module.
- Click The Headquarters from the top of the left pane.
The Online Agents and Offline Agents widget will display the list of agents who are currently online and offline respectively.
How to set agent's availability status?
You can set your availability status for Zoho Desk to control when you are available to receive new emails or chats. For example, you can set your status to Offline if you're going to stay away from your computer.
To set your availability status:
- Click your Account Photo in the top-right corner of your Zoho Desk.
- Toggle the Agent Status option to ON or OFF as per your needs.
If you are enabled only for specific channels, set your status as either Online or Offline from the drop-down menu corresponding to it. - Your setting will be saved instantaneously.
Note:
- Automation like the round robin rules may not assign tickets if your status is set to offline.
What are the standard ticket fields?
Most often a ticket will contain the customer's name, email, subject and a description of the request. Apart from these, there are also a bunch of standard fields which your customers can choose to fill when they submit a ticket. For example, they can enter a product version, set priority, and specify a category. There are other fields which can only be filled by agents or a through an automation rule. For example, fields like ticket owner, due date, status, etc.
Here are the standard fields that are available in your Zoho Desk:
- Department: This field is used to differentiate a ticket based on its relevance to a business unit or a division. While you can have multiple departments, the field will be listed only when you have more than one department. Both your end-users and agents can specify a department. You can also route a ticket to its department using business rules like workflows and macros.
- Contact Name: This is the name of the end-user (or requestor) who had raised a support request. This is a mandatory field, and hence, every ticket received in your helpdesk will have this pre-filled. For a ticket that is received through email, the display name associated with the customer's email will be its Contact Name. Also, agents can manually fill the contact name when they log a new ticket.
- Account Name: Accounts are the companies or departments within a company with which you have business dealings. Single or multiple contacts can be associated with an account. When you specify an account name while adding a ticket, the contact and the account will be mapped subsequently. End users have the convenience of viewing tickets that were raised by their colleagues in the Help Center.
- Email: The email address for communicating with your end users. This field will auto-fill for tickets that are received through email and that of your Help Center (for logged-in customers).
- Phone: The contact's phone number will come in handy when your agent is required to address a high priority ticket. While speaking with a customer, you can open the ticket and fill this field.
- Subject: The subject of a ticket should be a summary of its content. For a ticket that is received through email, the subject of the email will typically be the subject of the ticket. A well-construed subject line will help you set up intelligent automation using Workflows and Assignment Rules.
- Description: Description is the detailed information about a ticket. For a ticket received through email, the description field will be empty.
- Status: The status will signify the life cycle of a ticket from open to close. Zoho Desk offers you four different statuses: Open, On Hold, Escalated, Closed. The status can be defined manually by an agent or through the different automation options. Let's get through each of these statuses in detail.
- Open refers to the ticket that has just been received and indicates that someone is working on it when assigned to an agent. An open ticket can either be assigned to an agent or stay unassigned. All the new tickets that are created in your helpdesk will default to Open.
- On Hold refers to the ticket that an agent has ceased to work on, but awaiting input or solution from a third party. Typically tickets that are On Hold will be considered and visible to your customers as Open.
- Escalated refers to the ticket that wasn't closed within a pre-defined due period. Usually, a ticket will be escalated when it violates an SLA and triggers its related events. By default, escalated tickets will be considered as Open.
- Closed refers to the ticket that was solved. A ticket can be manually closed by an agent or after a certain number of days using a time-based rule. A closed ticket will be re-opened when there is a new response from the customer.
In addition to these, you can create custom statuses and map them to Open or Closed state as demanded by your support process. - Product Name: You can list the company-wide products that are sold to your customers. An agent can specify the product name or chosen by your customers while they submit a ticket in the Help Center. The product information is ideal when you assign tickets based on products or simply to add more context to your agents.
- Ticket Owner: Ticket Owner is the agent who is designated to solve the support requests. A new ticket received in your helpdesk will stay Unassigned. You can choose to assign ownership manually or by using one of the intelligent automation systems. A ticket's owner can be changed any number of times.
- Due Date: Ticket due date will help you to maintain service commitments with your customers. It is often set by one of the default SLAs built into the system or by a custom SLA associated with an account. An agent can as well set the due date using the date and time picker widget.
- Priority: When you have to handle hundreds of tickets every day, it is impossible to decide which ticket you should pick first. And, this is why tickets are assigned with priorities. Four kinds of priorities can be assigned to a ticket: High, Medium, Low, None. Priorities can be manually set by agents or by using one of the automation systems. Additionally, you can set the priority using the default priority-based SLAs.
- Channel: These are the means through which you receive the tickets in your helpdesk. There are seven channels: Phone, Email, Web, Chat, Forums, Twitter, Facebook. The channel will be set to Phone when an agent logs a new ticket, and it will be auto-filled for most other occasions. It will be quite useful when you have set up business rules around the origin of tickets.
- Category and Sub Category: These are additional fields that will help you in the process of assigning the right tickets to the right agent at the right time. You can add custom values to the Category field and have it mapped to Sub Category in a parent-child relationship. For example, when an end user selects 'Defect' under Category, you can display associated Sub Category values like Under Warranty, Out-of-Warranty, Extended Warranty, etc., This can be used to deflect a ticket to the best agent, department or a user group.
- Attachment: Add files that are relevant to a ticket. Your customers can send in emails with attachments, which will be added to the tickets that are created in Zoho Desk. Files can also be uploaded while submitting a ticket in the Help Center.
In addition to these standards ticket fields, you can create custom fields as mandated by your customer support process.
How to merge tickets that happen to be on two different pages?
Right now, two or more tickets can be merged only when they belong to the same department and are on the same page. But, there is a nifty trick that can help you bring tickets together on a single page - the Advanced Search.
With the Advanced Search, you can specify the filter criteria to search tickets. Just make sure that you build criteria queries that bring the tickets to be merged, on the same page. Once there, simply select the tickets you want to merge into and then click Merge.
How to bulk update a field value in tickets?
You can use the mass update function for updating a field value in multiple tickets at once. It will help save you a lot of time that you would have spent editing tickets individually.
To perform a bulk update, follow the steps mentioned below:
- Go to the Tickets module.
- Click Views in the sidebar, then select a ticket view from the list.
- Select the tickets you would like to update from the tickets list view.
- Click the Update option displayed at the top of the page.
- In the pop-up that appears, choose the field that you would like to update in bulk and specify the new field value.
- Click Save.
How to mark tickets as spam in bulk?
Spam emails or junk emails are unsolicited messages received at your support email address. Although Zoho Desk has built-in spam filters, spam emails can still sneak into your Zoho Desk account as tickets. In such cases, you can mark them as spam manually. Once marked, tickets are moved into a Spam Tickets view, where you can unmark them if required.
To mark multiple tickets in a view as spam, follow the steps mentioned below:
- Go to the Tickets module.
- Click Views in the sidebar, then select a ticket view from the list.
- Select the tickets you want to mark as spam from the tickets list view.
- Click the Mark Spam option displayed at the top of the page.
- Click OK.
If you want the subsequent tickets from the contact to be marked as a spam automatically, you can check the box to "Mark the associated contact also as spam."
How can I bulk assign an owner to multiple tickets?
You can bulk assign tickets to an agent using a ticket view in Zoho Desk. For example, you can open a ticket view, and choose the tickets you want to assign to an agent, in just a couple of clicks.
To assign tickets in a bulk update, follow the steps mentioned below:
- Go to the Tickets module.
- Click Views in the sidebar, then select a ticket view from the list.
- Select the tickets you would like to assign to a new owner.
- Click the Assign to option displayed at the top of the page.
- From the drop-down that appears, select an agent as the new owner.
The tickets will be assigned to the new owner instantaneously.
Why can't I locate a ticket in Zoho Desk?
There can be many different reasons why a ticket could not be located in your Zoho Desk account.
The most common causes are as follows:
- Marked as spam: Zoho Desk automatically helps identify spam and suspicious emails to save you from having to delete them manually. There are chances that the ticket you are looking for was marked as spam. Please switch to the Spam Tickets View and see if it exists or not. If existing, open the ticket and click on Not Spam bottom. The ticket is put back into the appropriate View. Also, keep in mind that spam tickets older than 30 days get deleted periodically.
- Filter set to less than <All days>: There are chances that you are looking for a ticket that is older than 30 days from today. But you've set the filter to display only those tickets received in the last 15 or 30 days. If so, set the Ticket received in filter to All days and see if you can locate the ticket you need.
- Moved to other departments: You may be looking for the ticket in the wrong place. It is likely that the ticket was moved to a different department by an agent or through an automation rule. So have a look at other departments, if there are any.
- Deleted and moved to Recycle Bin: It's possible that the ticket was simply deleted from your account. Nevertheless, you can restore it from the Recycle Bin. To restore the ticket, got to Setup > Recycle Bin. Select the ticket that you want to put back and then click Restore.
Why are customers not receiving my ticket replies?
There can be many different reasons why your customers are not receiving ticket replies sent from Zoho Desk. The most common causes are as follows:
- The first step is to determine if Zoho Desk attempted to send a reply and was not able to. You can check this on the in-app Email Failure Alerts section under the Notifications panel. You can quickly resend a failed reply from here.
- Your ticket replies are getting classified as spam in your customer email boxes. Unfortunately, this is not a server or hosting issue. It is just that the receiving host or email spam program is little aggressive. All you can do here is to send your customers a personal email message requesting them check their spam folder.
- Another most common causes of failure are emails getting bounced. In the case of an email getting bounced, you'll receive a bounce message from the recipient’s mail server. This message gets added to the existing ticket.
If you need further assistance, please write to us at support@zohodesk.com. Our team can share message-tracking information for failed emails if your customers would need the message-ID and timestamp.
How do I create a read-only ticket view?
List views are used to group tickets based on a defined set of criteria so that you don't have to go through all the tickets in the application. For example, you can view a list of unassigned tickets or tickets that fall overdue in the next 24 hours. Moreover, you can share custom views that you create with specific agents or roles so that they can access the tickets within that view. However, this will allow shared users to view and edit the tickets that are existing in the List View.
Right now, it is not possible to create a read-only view that restricts the level of access that an agent has.
How can I force agents to fill mandatory fields before closing tickets?
Zoho Desk enables you to set fields as required so that your agents are forced to enter their values before submitting a ticket. This applies to tickets that are manually created by your agents. But how can you enforce filling required fields when a ticket gets created through email or social channels? For such tickets will continue to have their required fields empty resulting in significant loss of data.
This is where Blueprint comes handy. You can create a blueprint rule to make your agents fill the required fields as part of the 'during' transition. This way your agents cannot move on the next state without filling in the required fields.
How can I track missed chats?
Zoho Desk will automatically convert missed chats into tickets. It comes in handy when all your agents are busy or when visitors try to connect outside your support hours. You can easily track such tickets under an exclusive view called "Missed chats". This view helps you keep track of all the missed chats in a department so that you can follow-up with a resolution.
To access this view:
- Click the Tickets tab from the top bar.
- On the Tickets Home page, under the Views section on the left panel, click Missed Chats.
The tickets created for missed chats will be listed.
We hope that this list of frequently asked questions about Working on Tickets is informative. If you still have questions that haven't been addressed, please let us know. We will be happy to discuss them with our subject matter experts and add them in the future. And please don't forget to share your rating below!Zoho CRM Training Programs
Learn how to use the best tools for sales force automation and better customer engagement from Zoho's implementation specialists.
Zoho DataPrep Personalized Demo
If you'd like a personalized walk-through of our data preparation tool, please request a demo and we'll be happy to show you how to get the best out of Zoho DataPrep.
- Zoho Workerly Home
- Forums
- Connect With Us:
- Zoho Recruit Home
- Forums
- Connect With Us:
Still can't find what you're looking for?
Write to us: support@zohoforms.com
Zoho Sheet Resources
Zoho Forms Resources
New to Zoho Sign?
Zoho Sign Resources
Sign, Paperless!
New to Zoho TeamInbox?
Zoho TeamInbox Resources
New to Zoho ZeptoMail?
Zoho DataPrep Resources
Design. Discuss. Deliver.
New to Zoho Workerly?
New to Zoho Recruit?
New to Bigin?
New to Zoho CRM?
New to Zoho Projects?
New to Zoho Sprints?
New to Zoho Assist?
Related Articles
FAQs: Ticket Management
What is a ticket and where does it originate from? Tickets are support requests that are submitted by your customers. They contain the support conversations, as well as other properties, such as priority, category, and status. Tickets can be ...FAQs: Assignment Rules
What is an assignment rule and why do I need it? Assignment rule is an automation tool that lets the support administrator automate the process of assigning tickets to agents. Customer support is a crucial job, and timely and effective resolution of ...Creating Ticket Assignment Rules
Assignment rules help you automatically assign the tickets that are received in your Zoho Desk. The rule based on certain specified conditions can route tickets to the appropriate department and further assign ownership to it. While this makes sense ...Ticket Assignment for Zoho Desk
Assigning tickets to the correct agent results in a faster response from the right person. To accomplish this, you need to know which agents are available, so you can assign tickets to agents who can provide the right response immediately. You also ...Working with Tickets in the Android App
The Zoho Desk software enables users and agents to efficiently resolve customer issues. Each issue or complaint that an agent receives from customers is called a ticket. The ticket management system automates the resolution process. Now that we are ...