Analyze Instant Messaging Data in Zoho Analytics
Overview
Instant Messaging is a core module in Zoho Desk that captures customer conversations from channels such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, LINE, and more.
Zoho Desk includes a built-in IM Dashboard that gives you a real-time, operational view of ongoing conversations and agent activity. When synced with Zoho Analytics, IM data can be analyzed together with Tickets, Contacts, Agents, and Accounts, enabling true cross-module reporting across your entire support workflow. The key distinction is that the IM Dashboard is designed for real-time, operational monitoring, while Zoho Analytics is intended for historical analysis, custom reporting, and cross-module insights.
In this article, "chat" and "conversation" are used interchangeably to refer to an IM interaction between a customer and your support team.
See also: Getting Started with the IM Dashboard ↗
What you can achieve with this integration
If you want to understand how your chat support is really performing over time, Zoho Analytics helps you go beyond the default IM Dashboard in Zoho Desk. By syncing IM conversations and messages into Zoho Analytics, you can:
- Track long-term chat trends.
- Measure agent performance across messaging channels.
- Combine chat data with tickets, contacts, agents, and more.
These insights are not available in the default IM Dashboard, which focuses on real-time activity.
How IM data sync works
At a high level, the flow looks like this:
- An admin enables the Zoho Analytics integration in Zoho Desk.
- IM Conversations and IM Messages are selected for sync.
- After the initial data import, Zoho Analytics performs incremental syncs based on the configured schedule. Only new and updated IM conversations and messages are synced.
- IM Conversations and IM Messages are securely pushed to Zoho Analytics.
- Data updates automatically based on the sync schedule.
- You can then build reports using this data.
Accessing reports and dashboards
After the IM data is synced, you can access pre-built reports and create custom dashboards from Zoho Analytics. Reports and dashboards are accessed from the Zoho Analytics workspace linked to your Desk portal. Access to reports depends on Analytics sharing permissions configured by the administrator.
See also: Accessing Zoho Analytics from Zoho Desk ↗
Set up IM data sync
Install the Zoho Analytics connector
When selecting modules, IM Conversations is required for conversation-level analysis, while IM Messages is required for message-level metrics such as response time and volume.
Available sync intervals depend on your Zoho Analytics plan — higher plans support more frequent syncs, while basic plans support daily synchronization. Once setup is complete, it will take some time for all the data to transfer to Zoho Analytics, and you cannot make changes to the settings until the transfer is complete. You will receive an email once the transfer is done.
Important
Only data generated after the integration is configured will be available in Zoho Analytics. Existing historical IM data prior to configuration will not be synced. It may take a few days for sufficient data to accumulate before meaningful reports can be generated.
Understanding the IM data model
Zoho Analytics creates structured tables that make reporting easy and flexible. The IM data model supports both conversation-level and message-level reporting, while also enabling seamless joins with Tickets, Agents, Contacts, and Accounts for cross-module analysis.
IM Conversations
This table contains one record per IM conversation.
| Field Name | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Conversation Id | Unique identifier for the IM conversation | Primary key |
| Contact Id | ID of the customer/contact involved in the conversation | Mandatory |
| Agent Id | Agent associated with the conversation | Lookup to Agent table |
Agent Id and Contact Id are lookup fields that link the Conversations table with the Agent and Contact tables. This lets you pull meaningful attributes such as agent first name, last name, email, and customer details into reports instead of raw ID values. Using only Agent Id or Contact Id by itself does not provide complete insight, so map these lookup fields with descriptive attributes from the related tables to make reports readable.
IM Messages
This table contains one record per message exchanged within a conversation.
| Field Name | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Desk IM Conversation Id | Links the message to its conversation | Lookup to IM Conversations |
| Display Message | Message content | Text preview |
| Message Status | Delivery status of the message (Sent, Queued, Delivered, etc.) | Mandatory |
| Message Type | Type of message (Text, Media, etc.) | Picklist |
| Direction | Message direction (Inbound or Outbound) | Mandatory |
| Attachment Count | Number of attachments in the message | Numeric |
| Message Created Time | Time when the message record was created | DateTime |
| Message Sent Time | Time when the message was sent | DateTime |
| Agent Id | Agent who sent or handled the message | Lookup to Agent |
| Thread Id | Message thread identifier | Used to group related messages |
| Bot Name | Name of the bot that sent the message | Applicable for bot messages |
| Bot Type | Bot classification (ZIA, GC, etc.) | Helps distinguish automation types |
Agent, Contact, and Channel lookups
These fields are lookup relationships that connect IM data with other Zoho Desk modules.
| Field Name | Description | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Id | Links to Agent table (name, email, role) | Agent performance reports |
| Contact Id | Links to Contact table | Customer-level insights |
| Channel Id | Identifies messaging channel | Channel comparison reports |
When building a report, selecting only Agent Id shows numeric values that are hard to interpret. Instead, use the Agent lookup table to include fields such as Agent First Name, Last Name, or Email Address — this lets you group conversations by Agent Name rather than by ID. The same approach applies to Contact lookups, where mapping Contact Id with customer name and email gives a more complete view of customer interactions.
How this data model helps in reporting
The IM data model supports both message-level and conversation-level reporting, and enables seamless cross-module analysis with other Zoho Desk data. Using these tables, you can:
- Compare message volume across channels using Channel Id.
- Track agent workload using Agent Id.
- Analyze inbound vs outbound communication using Direction.
- Separate bot messages from agent messages using Bot Type.
- Build conversation-level or message-level dashboards.
Combine IM data with other modules
One of the biggest advantages of Zoho Analytics is cross-module reporting. These joins are available automatically through predefined relationships in Zoho Analytics. You can:
- Link IM conversations to tickets.
- Analyze how many chats result in ticket creation.
- Compare agent chat workload with ticket resolution.
- Combine IM data with CRM or Accounts data.
For example, you can join IM Conversations with Tickets to see how many WhatsApp chats resulted in ticket creation and how long those tickets took to resolve. This helps you understand the full customer journey across support channels.
Common use cases
Customers typically use IM analytics to:
- Monitor agent chat workload and responsiveness.
- Identify peak chat hours across channels.
- Measure bot effectiveness before agent takeover.
- Compare performance between WhatsApp, Instagram, and other apps.
- Track long-term messaging trends for staffing decisions.
Limitations to be aware of
- Portal-level sync only: Department-level IM reporting is not yet supported.
- Admin-only configuration: Only Zoho Desk admins can enable or modify the Analytics integration.
- One Analytics setup per portal: Each Desk portal can connect to only one Zoho Analytics workspace.
- Plan requirements: Zoho Desk Standard or higher.
- Access control: Data access in Analytics follows Zoho Desk roles and permissions. By default, only the administrator who configured the integration can access the synced data; admins must explicitly share reports and dashboards.
- Business Messages (BM) support: Conversations from the Business Messages (BM) channel are currently not synced to Zoho Analytics. Only data from anonymous BM users is synced; conversations tied to identified users are currently not included.
- Contact requirement: Only IM conversations associated with a Zoho Desk contact are synced. If a contact is not created (for example, when Auto Ticket Conversation is not configured and no contact record exists), the conversation will not be available in Zoho Analytics.
- Bot messages: The message content of bot (layout/template) messages is not displayed in Zoho Analytics. Conversation- and message-level records still sync, but the actual message text for these automated messages will not appear in reports.
Warning
Administrators can delete the Zoho Analytics integration at any time. Deleting the integration permanently removes all synced data, reports, and dashboards from Zoho Analytics.