Automation#22 Track Ticket Duration at Specific Status

Hello Everyone!

Welcome back to the Community Learning Series! Today, we explore how Zylker Techfix, a gadget servicing firm, boosted productivity by tracking the time spent at a particular ticket status in Zoho Desk. 

Zylker Techfix customized Zoho Desk’s ticket statuses to align with their servicing process. Here’s their workflow: when a gadget was submitted for service, the ticket entered “Open” status. After an initial examination, it moved to “Service” status, mapped to the “Hold” type while repairs were underway. Once repairs were complete, the ticket progressed to “Billing” and then to “Closed” after payment and delivery. To improve operations, Zylker Techfix wanted to know how long tickets stayed in “Service” status, giving them insights into potential delays and resource use. With a custom function, they tracked this time in a custom field, then used it to generate reports that highlighted areas for process improvement.

With this custom function, you can gain a clear view of your support timeline, identify bottlenecks, and serve clients more efficiently. Let’s dive into how you can implement this custom function to refine your own operations and drive productivity forward.

Prerequisites

1. Create a Custom Field

To track ticket duration at a StatusName (call it In progress) mapped to the Status Type On Hold, 

     

      1.1 Go to Setup (S) >> Customization >> Layouts and Fields.

             Select Tickets under Layouts and the Department in which you would like to track the ticket duration. 

      1.2 Create a custom single-line field in the Tickets layout of the respective department. 

            1.2.1 Click on the layout, add a single-line field with a label StatusTime. 

                      You can label the field with your preferred name. 

      1.3 Note the API names for the single-line field to insert into the custom function.     

            To find the API name, click the Gear wheel icon in the single-line field.

            Click on Edit Properties, and you will find the API Name under the Edit Field. Refer to Create Custom Fields. 

2. Create a connection

      2.1 Go to Setup(S) and choose Connections under Developer Space.

      2.2 Click Create Connection.

      2.3 Select Zoho Desk under Default Connection.

      2.4 Set the connection name as deskconnection.

      2.5 Under Scope, choose the below scope values:

             Desk.tickets.READ

             Desk.tickets.UPDATE

      2.6 Click Create and Connect.

      2.7 Click Connect and click Accept.

Connection is created successfully.

Create a Workflow Rule

1. Go to Setup, choose Workflows under Automation. 

2. Under Workflows, click Rules >> Create Rule.

In the Basic Information section,

3. Select Tickets from the drop-down menu under Module.

4. Enter a Rule Name and Description for the rule.

5. If you want to activate the rule right away, select the Active checkbox. Else, create the rule and activate it later.

6. Click Next.

 

In the Execute on section, follow these steps:

7. Select Field Update, Choose Status.  

8. Click Next.

 

9. Leave the Criteria section blank and click Next. (Add a criteria if you require it.) 

10. In the Actions section, click the + icon and select New next to Custom Functions.

11. Enter a Name and Description for the custom function.

12. Under Argument Mapping, give a desired Method Name. Map the arguments as below: 

      12.1 In the Argument Name field, type ticketId and from the Value drop-down list, select Ticket Id under the Tickets Section.                                         

13. In the script window, insert the Custom Function given below:

1. ///----<<<< User Inputs >>>>----
2. deskURL = "https://desk.zoho.com";
3. //Replace with your custom domain
4. //Replace your Custom Field API Name to Update Desired Type Status Duration Ex: Open 
5. durationApiName = "cf_status_name";
6. // ex: "cf_open_time"
7. //Replace your Desired Status Type Name Ex: Open
8. statusType = "On Hold";
9. // Open or On Hold or Closed
10. //Replace the Status Name 
11. statusName = "In Progress";
12. // Ex: In Progress, Waiting for Reply, etc
13. // ----<<<< Initial Configs >>>>----
14. logs = Map();
15. logs.insert("ticketId":ticketId);
16. openHoursToUpdate = 0;
17. openMinutesToUpdate = 0;
18. onHoldHoursToUpdate = 0;
19. onHoldMinutesToUpdate = 0;
20. //---------------------------
21. try 
22. {
23. // ---- start your logic from here ----
24. ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo = invokeurl
25. [
26.   url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId + "/statusLifeCycle"
27.   type :GET
28.   connection:"deskconnection"
29. ];
30. logs.insert("ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo":ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo);
31. if(ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo != null && ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo.containsKey("statusLifeCycle") && ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo.get("statusLifeCycle").size() > 0)
32. {
33.   for each  statusInfo in ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo.get("statusLifeCycle")
34.   {
35.   statusType = statusInfo.get("statusType");
36.   statusName = statusInfo.get("status");
37.   if(statusType == statusType && statusName == statusName)
38.   {
39.     statusDuration = statusInfo.get("duration");
40.     if(statusDuration != null && statusDuration != "")
41.     {
42.     statusDuration = statusDuration.replaceAll(" hrs","");
43.     durationCollection = statusDuration.toCollection(":");
44.     hourDuration = durationCollection.get(0);
45.     minuteDuration = durationCollection.get(1);
46.     openHoursToUpdate = openHoursToUpdate + hourDuration.toNumber();
47.     openMinutesToUpdate = openMinutesToUpdate + minuteDuration.toNumber();
48.     }
49.   }
50.   }
51.   openHoursToUpdate = (openMinutesToUpdate / 60).toNumber() + openHoursToUpdate;
52.   openMinutesToUpdate = openMinutesToUpdate % 60;
53.   logs.insert("openHoursToUpdate":openHoursToUpdate);
54.   logs.insert("openMinutesToUpdate":openMinutesToUpdate);
55.   ticketUpdateParams = Map();
56.   ticketUpdateParams.insert("cf":{durationApiName:openHoursToUpdate + ":" + openMinutesToUpdate});
57.   logs.insert("ticketUpdateParams":ticketUpdateParams);
58.   ticketUpdate = invokeurl
59.   [
60.   url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId
61.   type :PUT
62.   parameters:ticketUpdateParams + ""
63.   connection:"deskconnection"
64.   ];
65.   logs.insert("ticketUpdate":ticketUpdate);
66. }
67. }
68. catch (errorInfo)
69. {
70. logs.insert("errorInfo":errorInfo);
71. }
72. info "logs: \n" + logs; 
    
73. logs.insert("errorInfo":errorInfo);
    
74. info "logs: \n" + logs;

NOTE

a. In Line 2, Replace ".com" with the domain extension based on your Data Center.

b. In Line 5, add the API name of the custom field created within the Tickets layout. 

c. In Line 8 and line 11, enter the status type and status name. 

14. Click Save to save the custom function.

15. Click Save again to save the workflow.

Creating Ticket Tracking Reports

You can generate Reports under Analytics to view the time duration of your tickets in one go. 

Go to the Analytics module >> Choose Reports >> Add Report >> Select Tickets module and Time Entry under Related modules. Refer to Create Custom Report 

Let us know how this custom helps improve your ticketing process.

Until next week,

Warm regards,

Lydia | Zoho Desk 

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• Mohd Hayzee

• Shivani | Zoho Desk

  

• admin

• Sticky Posts

• Register for Zoho Desk Beta Community

  With the start of the year, we have decided to take a small step in making the life of our customers a little easier. We now have easy access to all our upcoming features and a faster way to request for beta access. We open betas for some of our features

• Share your Zoho Desk story with us!

  Tell us how you use Zoho Desk for your business and inspire others with your story. Be it a simple workflow rule that helps you navigate complex processes or a macro that saves your team a lot of time; share it here and help the community learn and grow with shared knowledge. 

• Tip #1: Learn to pick the right channels

  Mail, live chat, telephony, social media, web forms—there are so many support channels out there. Trying to pick the right channels to offer your customers can get pretty confusing. Emails are most useful when the customer wants to put things on record. However, escalated or complicated issues should not be resolved over email because it's slow and impersonal.  When you need immediate responses, live chat is more suitable. It's also quick and convenient, so it's the go-to channel for small issues. 

• Welcome to Zoho Desk Community - Say hello here!

  Hello everyone! Though we have been here for a while, it’s time to formally establish the Zoho Desk Community; we’re really happy to have you all here! This can be the place where you take a moment to introduce yourself to the rest of the community. We’d love to hear all about you, what you do, what company or industry you work for, how you use Zoho Desk and anything else that you will like to share! Here’s a little about me. I am Chinmayee. I have been associated with Zoho since 2014. I joined here

• Webinar 1: Blueprint for Customer Service

  With the launch of a host of new features in Zoho Desk, we thought it’ll be great to have a few webinars to help our customers make the most of them. We’re starting off with our most talked about feature, Blueprint in Zoho Desk. You can register for the Blueprint webinar here: The webinar will be delivered by our in-house product experts. This is a good opportunity to ask questions to our experts and understand how Blueprint can help you automate your service processes. We look forward to seeing

• Recent Topics

• RouteIQ for Zoho FSM

  Beste, Zou wel top zijn dat we een RouteIQ hebben voor FSM aangezien we constant moeten zien wat de beste route is voor onze monteurs. Nu moeten we een speciale aparte programma hebben om de beste route te berrekenen voor onze monteurs aangezien de planning

• Let us view and export the full price books data from CRM

  I quote out of CRM, some of my clients have specialised pricing for specific products - therefore we use Price Books to manage these special prices. I can only see the breakdown of the products listed in the price book and the specialised pricing for

• Changes to the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone, At Zoho, we continuously enhance our security measures to ensure a safer experience for all users. As part of our ongoing security enhancements, we're making an important update on using the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM. What's changing?

• How to Invoice Based on Timesheet Hours Logged on a Zoho FSM Work Order

  Hi everyone, We’re working on optimizing our invoicing process in Zoho FSM, and we’ve run into a bit of a roadblock. Here’s our goal: We want to invoice based on the actual number of hours logged by our technicians on a job, specifically using the timesheets

• Inclusion is the new engagement

  When in a very challenging situation, you may have peers or friends around you saying, “Everything will be okay.” They speak to you in a way that they are connected or in a language or tone that feels close. But your inner voice comes to you in a truly

• DKIM verification for Squarespace website - Corrections to instructions

  Zoho Campaigns DKIM TXT record instructions for Squarespace show that Host field should show: 22111._domainkey.[domain name, e.g. mywebsite.com] However, after 72hrs, I had to reach out to Squarespace tech support, and they confirmed that the domain name

• 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

• My client requires me to have custom pdf file names to except payment for invoices, how can I customize this before emailing.

  Hello! I love the program so far but there are a few things that are standing in the way. I hope you guys can code them in so I can keep the program for years to come. My client requires I customize the pdf file names I send in for billing. Can you please

• Disable All

  I want to disable all the fields on the form when it loads.  I know there is a way to do this by listing all the fields as follows: disable Name; disable Address; disable City;  ... I have over 50 fields on my form and i am wondering if there is a single command or way to just disable all fields on load.   On load = disable All Thank you for any help.  

• Migrating my email from GMAIL to ZOHO MAIL..........

  I am a long time GMAIL user and I really only understand how they operate, but after reviewing your tutorials and forums online, it is quite unbelievable how much more and how much more streamlined ZOHO mail is, not to mention ZOHO's wonderful, more advanced capabilities. I do have several questions about transitioning over to ZOHO.  Primarily, where is the best place to start, what do I do first? And how hard is it actually to move all my business and personal accounts over here?  When I sign up

• iOS Zoho Mail App Crashesruni

  Whenever I trying to search emails via the Zoho Mail app on my iPhone the app crashes, I am running the latest version of the app and the latest iOS version. I have all set reset the app and deleted the app and still have the same issue. Thank you in

• Assessment Answered - Automation (Related List)

  Hello everyone, We have linked a candidate assessment to our job posting. When someone applies, they are required to answer all the assessment questions. However, some candidates submit their applications without completing the questions. In such cases,

• 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

• Can't change form's original name in URL

  Hi all, I have been duplicating + editing forms for jobs regarding the same department to maintain formatting + styling. The issue I've not run into is because I've duplicated it from an existing form, the URL doesn't seem to want to update with the new

• Calendar report with order options and more quick view templates

  I think many of us regularly work with calendar-style reports. It would be great to be able to customize the quick view with new templates and have options to sort the entries for each day of the calendar by different criteria. I think this is an interesting

• Shared Views

  Hello, is there a way to prevent an agent from changing a shared table view? I have no issues with agents being able to create and customize their own view, but when I create a view and share it to my team -- the expectation is that they are viewing it

• Using Zoho answer bot across departments (help center articles from another department)

  Hi Zoho Community, I’ve run into a major issue and hope someone here has experience with this setup. We currently have a Help Center in the department A where all of our knowledge base articles are maintained. However, we would like to use a Zoho Answer

• 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

• The Social Wall: January 2026

  Hello everyone, We’re back with the first edition of The Social Wall of 2026. There’s a lot planned for the year ahead, and we’re starting with a few useful features and improvements released in January to help you get started. Create a GBP in Social

• Pipeline: Copying rulesets from one data source to another

  When creating and editing data pipelines, it would be really helpful to be able to copy the ruleset from one data source and 'paste' it to another. This would save time and reduce manual mistakes.

• Doubt about maximum email reach

  Good morning, greetings. This is Bramdon García from EDULABS S.A.S ESP, located in Colombia. I'm writing to inquire about the possibility of sending an email to 35,000 people simultaneously. Our company has a Zoho account, but we'd like to know if there's

• Zoho calendar not working in browser

  Hello, I am new to Zoho. I have two accounts for two separate businesses. In one of them, calendar loads in a browser no problem. However, if I use this account (sairfeetmusic.co.uk) calendar does not load. I also cannot add it to my Thunderbird Lightening

• Authentication Failure when adding POP3 accounts

  Hi everyone, I am a new user currently migrating from Gmail to Zoho Mail. I decided to make the switch following Google's decision to discontinue POP3 fetching. I previously used Gmail as my primary mail hub, and Zoho seems like the perfect alternative

• Trident Application Folder

  Hi, How to choose installation folder for Trident, by default it gets installed in C drive. How to change drive?

• Email disappeared to specific contact

  Good afternoon, this morning I emailed somebody. This email isn’t showing up in my sent folder. They sent me a response which I clicked on and it disappeared immediately. Why could this be?

• Create an Eye-Catching Announcement Widget for Your Help Center

  Hello Everyone! In this week’s edition, let’s explore how to keep your customers updated with exciting news in the Help Center. See how ZylkerMobile wowed their customers by bringing updates right to their portal. ZylkerMobile, the renowned brand for

• Enable Free External Collaboration on Notecards in Zoho Notebook

  Hi Zoho Notebook Team, I would like to suggest a feature enhancement regarding external collaboration in Zoho Notebook. Currently, we can share notes with external users, and they are able to view the content without any issue. However, when these external

• Updating records through Zoho Sheets View doesn't update timeline or trigger workflow rules

  I have noticed that when i update a series of record with the zoho sheets view (see here http://d.pr/i/ahnR) it doesn't update timeline history or trigger workflow rules. I am using it in the Deals module. Looking forward for some more info. Denis

• How do I change the account bank charges are charged to?

  I want bank charges charged to my Credit Card Fees account. Is there a way to do this?

• Mail Search should allow grouping by conversation like Gmail.

  Having switched from gmail I have found the search function hard to use. Mostly because mail is not grouped by conversation in search. If I search for a word when looking for a conversation had with someone then sometimes 10 emails will come up from the

• Ability to CC on a mass email

  Ability to CC someone on a mass email.

• Updation of Old Browsers Versions for Zoho CRM

  We have upgraded the default browser version for CRM to facilitate features like widgets and scripts that are often implemented aside from advanced functionalities for various business requirements. The latest version is aimed to provide better performance

• Project-Based Inventory Consumption and Proforma Invoice in Zoho ERP

  While working with customers across different industries, we have identified a few functional questions and gaps that commonly arise—especially for project-based and service-oriented businesses. Many organizations, such as those in shipping, construction,

• Zoho Desk domain Mapping not Working Showing CNAME Error

  I have created the subdomain and created the Cname as well as its instracted on the Zoho website  but when i try add the domain on help desk its showing error msg : Make sure you've mapped the CNAME entry and linked it to desk.cs.zohohost.com.au on your

• Founders using Zoho — are you leveraging Zoho Campaigns + Zoho Social for thought leadership… or just sending emails?

  I’ve noticed something interesting in the Zoho ecosystem. Many founders use Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Social for basic marketing—newsletters, scheduled posts, and announcements. But very few are using these tools strategically to: • Position themselves

• IMAP stopped working after enabling 2 factor authentication

  IMAP stopped working after enabling 2 factor authentication. Is there any solution for this?

• Rename Service Report

  Some of our customers are requesting the name of the service report PDF to be in a specific format, for example, instead of REP-001.PDF some are requesting to include their name like customername.pdf. is that possible?

• Outgoing emails rejected due to SpamCop RBL listing (IP 136.143.188.12)

  Hi All, I am writing to report a deliverability issue affecting outgoing emails from my Zoho Mail account. Recently, several messages sent from my domain (example.com) to external recipients have been rejected with the following error message (redacted

• Share Record Ownership in Zoho Recruit

  We’re introducing User Fields in Zoho Recruit designed to make collaboration easier when multiple team members need to work on the same record. With User Fields, you can extend record ownership beyond a single user and enable smoother teamwork across

• Recherche d'un développeur

  Bonjour, j'ai un projet de SAAS sur une base de zoho créator et zoho CRM et je recherche un développeur qualifié français pour créer l'application créator (fonctionnel et graphique) et les workflow et blueprint de CRM

• Next Page