Automation#30: Auto-Update Time Entry to the Nearest 5 Minutes

Hello Everyone, 

Time tracking is a feature in Zoho Desk to help businesses stay organized and efficient. For Zylker Techfix, this feature has helped to track the duration of gadget services to generate accurate bills.

However, Zylker Techfix faced a unique challenge: they needed to round off time entries for precise billing calculations. Manually adjusting each entry was time-consuming and prone to errors. A simple custom function helped in auto-adjustments in time entry.

Zylker Techfix automated the process of rounding time entries to the nearest 5 minutes. This not only saved time but also ensured accuracy in their billing operations.

In this week’s post, we share this custom function with you! 

Follow the steps below to set up your workflow rule and automate your time entries for seamless billing.

Prerequisites

1. Create a connection

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

  1.2 Click Create Connection.

  1.3 Select Zoho OAuth under Default Connection.

  1.4 Set the connection name as connection.

  1.5 Under Scope, choose the below scope values:

Desk.tickets.UPDATE

  1.6 Click Create and Connect.

  1.7 Click Connect.
  1.8 Choose the Desk's organization to connect with Deluge, and click Submit.

  1.9 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 Time Entry 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 Create.   

8. Click Next.

 

9. In the Criteria section, add criteria if required. click Next. 

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

11. Under Basic Information, Enter a Name and Description for the custom function. Choose Time Entry under Module.
12. Under Argument Mapping, give a desired Method Name. Map the arguments as below: 
       12.1 In the Argument Name field, type timeEntryId and select Time Entry Id under the Time Entry Section.

       12.2 In the Argument Name field, type ticketId and select Ticket Id under the Time Entry Section. 

       12.3 In the Argument Name field, type minutesSpent and select Minutes spent under the Time Entry Section.                                      

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

1. //---------- User Input ------------
2. roundOffValue = 5;
3. deskURL = "https://desk.zoho.com"; // Replace .com based on your DC
4. //----------------------------------
5. logs = Collection();
6. reminder = minutesSpent % roundOffValue;
7. minutesSpent = minutesSpent - reminder + roundOffValue;
8. params = Map();
9. params.put("minutesSpent",minutesSpent);
10. params.put("secondsSpent",0);
11. params.put("hoursSpent",0);
12. updateTimeEntry = invokeurl
13. [
14. url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId + "/timeEntry/" + timeEntryId
15. type :PATCH
16. parameters:params.toString()
17. connection:"connection"
18. ];
19. logs.insert("updateTimeEntry":updateTimeEntry);
20. info logs;

NOTE

 In Line 3, Replace ".com" with the domain extension based on your Data Center.

14. Click Save to save the custom function.

15. Click Save again to save the workflow.

Point to Remember 

This custom function rounds up the minutes in the Time Entry module. For example, 00:38:48 will be rounded up to 00:40:00, and 01:56:56 will be rounded up to 02:00:00.

We hope this custom function makes your time tracking smoother. We’d love to hear how this works for you! Share your feedback and connect with us for more tips and insights. Happy ticketing!

Regards,

Lydia | Zoho Desk

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• Rick

• Shivani | Zoho Desk

  

• 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

• When will Zoho Learn be able to support SCORM files on the mobile app?

  When I click the SCORM content, I just get a message saying it's not possible yet. Yet implies that it will be coming soon. All I'm asking for is a realistic timeline so I know whether or not to invest my time in using it. If it will be soon, then I will

• Zoho Books/Inventory - Update Marketplace Sales Order via API

  Hi everyone, Does anyone know if there is a way to update Sales Orders created from a marketplace intigration (Shopify in this case) via API? I'm trying to cover a scenario where an order is changed on the Shopify end and the changes must be reflected

• Conditional Layouts On Multi Select Field

  How we can use Conditional Layouts On Multi Select Field field? Please help.

• Multiple columns in a form

  I am evaluating Zoho Creator. However, I am seeing almost no layout control on a form.  Just a basic 1 or 2 column format that is then imposed on the entire form.  That's not going to work for many, many real world cases. We need multiple columns per line, and we need each line/section to occupy a single column or be able to span the columns.   Someone please tell me that I'm missing something and the capability is actually there.  

• Global search

  Hi! I think it would be great to have a global search that would give you results from all records of a database, no only for a single field of a single form as we have now. Thanks!

• Any insights about API/v2? Having problem for a while.

  I don't know why it is throwing a 404 error, my report name is correct. Has someone had this issue and how you fix it?

• Edit QR code with redirect to form

  Guten morgen, wir haben ein Formular Reklamation_erstellen. Dort soll ein QR Code erstellt werden, der im Lieferschein angezeigt wird. Beim Scannen auf dem soll das jeweilige Formular zum BEARBEITEN geöffnet werden. Leider bekomme ich es nur so hin, dass

• Getting all the ingredients together for baking an app

  Good day everyone. After reading a lot of the help docs and watching videos, I now started on my app. To prevent hours and hours wasted on going down the wrong track, I would like some clarification on the following. But first some background: I have

• Help Needed with Configuring ZC Microservice

  I'm attempting to create a simple microservice, but am running into problems with scope and auth. Using Custom API Builder, here's my setup: 1. Method: GET 2. Auth: OAuth2 3. User Scope: All users 4. Response: Standard 5. Function: A function that returns

• Creator Simplified #10: Predefine Form Field Values and Make Them Read-Only for Users

  Hey Creators, Ready for this week's tip in the Creator Simplified series? Today, we will explore how to have read only fields in a form. Use Case: Assume a scenario where the default value for a Department field needs to be English Literature, but you

• Direct link to Record Summary

  Hi everyone, In one of my reports, I have built a Record Summary template to display the details of one record. I would like to be able to link directly to this Record Summary once I submit a new record, without having to go to the list of records first and click on View. Is there a possibility to do so ?  Should I use the URL by passing some parameters ? Thank you very much for your help ! Guillaume

• To Assign a genrated pdf to a file upload field using delug

  content = "<html><body>HTML Content on page One <div style='page-break-after:always'></div> HTML Content on page Two </body></html>"; file = zoho.file.convertToPDF(content); file.setFileName("Name of the file"); <variableName> = <FormLinkName>[ID == input.ID];

• Zoho Mail : Email Outgoing Blocked

  I suddenly received the following message yesterday. I cannot send any mail. Please resolve as soon as possible, I cannot work without sending email. Dear User, We regret to inform you that your email outgoing has been blocked and you will not be able

• Creator and Tables

  Good day. I am trying to create my first application. I have imported my data into Tables and am creating my app in Creator. I do not see my tables and cannot see how to write forms data to a table. Even the Workflow just uses the form. In one of the

• Calendar week view: Today + 6

  Is there anyway to have the calendar change dynamically based on the date? Due to the amount of events, we only display a week at a time, but towards the end of the week, we can no longer see ahead to next week (without changing it manually every time).

• customer Name and address details

  i created one application there is no customer details in that . how to add customer details and

• Recalculate every row in the subform

  Hello, Can anyone help me with a script, please? I have an issue. Sometimes it happens, that in a multi row subform one of the rows show an incorrect row total value. Not really understand how it can happen, if I have a 20 row subform, 19 rows show correct

• Creating Repeat Forms that remove redundancies

  I wanted to understand if you can make multi-layer forms that reduce the need for users to input information in again and again. We want a form that our suppliers fill out per ingredient they sell, and the end result should have the Ingredient (Section

• What is the difference between the free plan and the mail lite plan?

  What is the difference between the free plan and the mail lite plan? How many emails can I send per day?

• Unblock email

  Hi The outgoing mail from a client of me is blocked. I already made tickets and tickets are send to the EU desk but nobody is responding. The problem is already 4 days! There is absolutely no help from the support. I am really not satisfied at all! Can

• Domain verification failure

  Hello Zoho Support, I purchased my domain directly through Zoho Mail, but the domain verification keeps failing with the message “TXT verification failed.” I’ve already waited and retried several times, but it still won’t verify. Could you please manually

• Unable to send message;Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

  My email account is unable to send emails, and I urgently need to use it. How can I resolve this?If there is anything we have done wrong, please let us know in advance so we can actively cooperate to improve. User ID: 850482493

• URGENT: Email stopped workin - can't access admin panel

  For some reason email sending stopped working. When I try to send an email it fails with "Unable to send message;Reason:451 4.7.1 Temporary system error" I can receive email just fine I see in my notifications some errors about the MX records, however

• Can I associate an invoice to a Project after the fact?

  We have generated an invoice but would like to assoicate it to a Zoho Project after the fact.  Is there any way to accomplish that? Thanks, Scott

• Emails I send as a cc or bcc NEVER GO THROUGH TO THA RECEIVER !!

  every time i send a cc or bcc copy of an email to anyone when I’m using my zohomail.com email - no one ever gets the cc of bcc copy if the email: why???? And i triple check that the email addresses are correct; then i get back an email message (EVERYTIME)

• Cannot see correct DNS config for mail after moving domain to another provider

  I have moved my domain from one provider to another and after that zoho mail stopped working (expected). Problem is, zoho mail admin panel still shows (10 hours after move) that all records are correct while I haven't changed anything in my domain DNS

• Add Support for Authenticator App MFA in Zoho Desk Help Center

  Hello Zoho Desk Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement related to security for the Zoho Desk Help Center (customer portal). Currently, the Help Center supports MFA for portal users via SAML, JWT, SMS authentication,

• How to unlink a SAML user from the existing Zoho Desk user (domain change case)

  Hi everyone, I’m trying to understand how to handle a situation where a customer changes their company domain. In our setup, users authenticate via SAML, so when the domain changes, the SAML system treats them as a new user. However, in Zoho Desk, I’d

• Price Managment

  I have been in discussions with Zoho for some time and not getting what I need. Maybe someone can help explain the logic behind this for me as I fail to understand. When creating an item, you input a sales rate and purchase rate. These rates are just

• Related to zoho survey

  Hi team. I want to know something regarding zoho survey question builder. I have two questions each of dropdown (One answer) - question type. In the first question, there are 16 answer choices and in the second question, there are 3 answer choices. For

• 60 Days Into Zoho - Tiktok Branding Startup -7 Questions?!

  Wsp Everybody I co-own a TikTok Branding / Consulting Startup & have been using Zoho for the past 60 days - Am now looking to make our overall operations & processes more Efficient & Effective! Curious to know how others are using the platform & what's

• Text Message

  When trying to sent a text message, it says its an error i should contact a zoho agent

• Zoho POS is now available for Canadian retailers

  Hey everyone, We're excited to introduce the all-new Canadian edition of Zoho POS, which helps retail businesses simplify and manage their end-to-end business operations. Start by signing up and exploring the 15-day free trial. Sign up now How does Zoho

• Payroll In Canada

  Hi, When can we expect to have payroll in Canada with books 

• Mass update to change or shift all project dates and keep project structure + shift all sub-tasks dates with main tasks

  Most users would expect that if they change the start date of their project then that will be reflected inside the actual project and any project structure would be retained.  Additionally if a task list with associated sub-tasks is moved, most users would expect that those sub-tasks would also be moved along with their parent task.  This is not the case. For a total Project shift of dates: * the start and end date from > "Edit Project" page can have a radio button added to "shift all project tasks

• Closing Accounting Periods - Invoice/Posting dates

  Hi, I have seen in another thread but I'm unsure on how the 'transaction locking' works with regards to new and old transactions. When producing monthly accounts if I close December 24 accounts on 8th Jan 25 will transaction locking prevent me from posting

• In-person ZUG Meetups for Real Estate Professionals - US Q1 2026

  The Real Estate Zoho User Group is going on a multi-city, in-person meetup tour across the US, and we’d love to see you there! These meetups are a great opportunity to: Connect with fellow real estate professionals using Zoho Share challenges and discover

• Zoho CRM custom fields not showing in zoho creator

  Hi Team, I have created a Products form with Zoho CRM integration and connected it to Products module of CRM. But when I see the reports of Products in Zoho creator then I am not able to see custom fields of Products module. Only standard fields of Products

• Sending email notifications based on language

  Hello. I would like to know how we can bypass the default notifications (which are just in English) for when a ticket is created/replied to/closed, to be in other languages, based on the language field in the ticket? I can create other email templates,

• Error AS101 when adding new email alias

  Hi, I am trying to add apple@(mydomain).com The error AS101 is shown while I try to add the alias.

• Next Page