Automation#33: Automate Splitting Names for Existing Contact Records
An organized directory – who doesn't love one?
Previously, we explored how to split contact names into First Name and Last Name for new contacts in Zoho Desk. But what about existing contacts already in your database? This week, we bring you a custom function that automates this process, ensuring a well-structured and easily searchable contact list.
Handling Existing Contacts
- On ticket creation for an existing contact, this custom function will scan the email and split the name stored in the "Last Name" field into "First Name" and "Last Name."
- To avoid unnecessary modifications, we introduce a checkbox in the contact layout. This allows you to mark contacts that have already been split, preventing duplicate actions.
Let's walk through the steps needed to ensure a smooth and error-free execution.
I. Create a Checkbox Field in the Contacts Layout
a. Go to Setup >> Customization >> Layouts and Fields >> Select the Contacts module >> Select the layout >> Drag the checkbox field >> Give a desired name for the checkbox (e.g., Name Split).
b. Click on the gear icon of the checkbox field, select Edit Properties, and note the API name. This API name must be pasted into the custom function on line 4.
c. Uncheck the Enable by Default checkbox if it is marked.
II. Configure Custom Function within the Workflow Rule
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 deskcontact.
1.5 Under Scope, choose the below scope values:
Desk.contacts.UPDATEDesk.contacts.READ
1.6 Click Create and Connect.
1.7 Click Connect and click Accept.
Connection is created successfully.
2. Create a Workflow Rule
2.1. Go to Setup, choose Workflows under Automation.
2.2 Under Workflows, click Rules >> Create Rule.
In the Basic Information section,
2.3. Select Tickets from the drop-down menu under Module.
2.4. Enter a Rule Name and Description for the rule.
2.5. If you want to activate the rule right away, select the Active checkbox. Else, create the rule and activate it later.
2.6. Click Next.
In the Execute on section, follow these steps:
2.7. Select Create.
2.8. Click Next.
2.9. In the Criteria section, add criteria if required. click Next.
2.10. In the Actions section, click the + icon and select New next to Custom Functions.
2.11. Enter a Name and Description for the custom function. Choose Tickets under Module.
2.12 Under Argument Mapping, give a desired Method Name. Map the arguments as below:
2.12 Under Argument Mapping, give a desired Method Name. Map the arguments as below:
2.12.1 In the Argument Name field, type contactId and select Contact ID under the Contacts Section.
2.13. In the script window, insert the Custom Function given below:
- //------------- User Input ----------
- orgId = "60xxxxxxxx0"; //replace with your Org ID
- operator = ".";
- checkBoxFieldAPIName = "enter_the_field_api_name"; //Enter API name of the checkbox
- //---------------------------------
- logs = Map();
- try {
- contacts = zoho.desk.getRecordById(orgId,"contacts",contactId, "deskcontact");
- firstName = contacts.get("firstName");
- lastName = contacts.get("lastName");
- if(lastName.contains(operator))
- {
- if(operator.contains(".")){
- lastName = lastName.subString(0,lastName.indexOf("@"));
- }
- firstName = lastName.subString(0,lastName.indexOf(operator)).trim();
- lastName = lastName.subString(lastName.indexOf(operator) + 1);
- updateContact = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"contacts",contactId,{"firstName":firstName,"lastName":lastName,"cf":{checkBoxFieldAPIName:true}},"deskcontact");
- }
- }
- catch (errorInfo)
- {
- logs.insert("errorInfo":errorInfo);
- }
- info "logs: \n" + logs;
- if(logs.containKey("errorInfo"))
- {
- throws "Error happen in the CF execution";
- }
NOTE
a. In Line 2, Enter your OrgId with " ". To access OrgId, go to Setup (S) >> Developer Space >> APIs >> API Authentication.
b. In Line 4, enter the API name of the check box created within the Contacts layout.
Information
This custom function will split the contact name as First Name and Last Name based on the "." operator between the names in the email.
2.14. Click Save to save the custom function.
2.15. Click Save again to save the workflow.
By implementing this custom function and workflow rule, you can automate the process of splitting contact names within Zoho Desk, ensuring a clean and organized database, which will enhance searchability.
We hope this guide helps streamline your contact management! If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to share in the comments. Happy Organizing!
Best regards,
Lydia |Zoho Desk
Topic Participants
Lydia | Zoho Desk
info
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 featuresShare 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 hereWebinar 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
New Field in CRM Product Module Not Visible in Zoho Creator for Mapping
I created a new single-line field in the Products module in Zoho CRM. Zoho CRM and Zoho Creator are integrated, but the newly created field in CRM is not visible in Zoho Creator when I try to map fields.Send WhatsApp voice messages from Bigin
Greetings, I hope all of you are doing well. We're happy to announce this enhancement we've made to Bigin. Bigin's WhatsApp integration now supports audio messages, so you can record and send voice messages. This makes it easier to handle customer questionsMicrosoft Teams now available as an online meeting provider
Hello everyone, We're pleased to announce that Zoho CRM now supports Microsoft Teams as an online meeting provider—alongside the other providers already available. Admins can enable Microsoft Teams directly from the Preferences tab under the MeetingsI want to subscribe 1 professional user but the email only 250 per day?
When I subscribe 1 professional user, I am only able to send 250 email per day? So less? Or is it typo, 2500 rather than 250? Any sale agent or friends can clear my doubt? Thank YouHow to add a % Growth column for year-over-year comparison (2024 vs 2025)
Hello, I am trying to build a monthly revenue comparison between 2024 and 2025 in Zoho CRM Analytics. My current setup is: Module: Deals (Affaires) Filter: Stage = Closed Won Date field: Closing Date Grouping: By Month Metrics: Sum of Amount for 2024,How do you map a user picklist field to another user picklist field.
In Zoho Projects, I'm trying to map a custom field (user picklist) in Task Details to a field (user picklist) in the Project Details. How do you get the two to map to each other? This is what I currently have that works for my other fields but doesn'tExplore Competitive 3D Scanner Prices at Protomont Technologies
The genesis of Protomont Technologies emerged from the collaborative efforts of the founders in 2019, both the founders shoulder an enormous experience in the world of 3D Printing. Protomont Technology aims to craft your vision with creativity, empoweringNew and improved API resources for Zoho Sign Developers
Hello, Developers community! We know that for you, an API's real value depends on how quickly, easily, and reliably you can integrate the it with your application. That's why we're excited to talk about the recent improvements to our developer resources,Project Approval Process Workflow
Issue: When a new Project is created, there is lack of process/workflow that provides their manager a process to approve or review. Suggestion/Idea: Similar to “Workflow”, we need “Workflow” ability at Project level, where based on the criteria of theMarketing Tip #5: Improve store speed with optimized images
Slow-loading websites can turn visitors away. One of the biggest culprits? Large, uncompressed images. By optimizing your images, your store loads faster and creates a smoother shopping experience leading to higher sales. It also indirectly improves SEO.Why can I not choose Unearned Revenue as an account on items?
Hello, I do not understand why we don't have the ability to code an item to unearned revenue. It is not an uncommon situation to have in business. I understand that there is the Retainer invoice as an option, however that doesn't really work for us. OurForm Submission Emails
Is there a current delay with submission emails being sent? We've had 10-20 forms completed today but only a handful of emails.Rules not working properly
I created a rule to display certain fields on certain states. But it seems to be not working. It hides the fields even when I selected California, (which is a state that should show the fields when selected)Notebook font size issue
If I copy something from somewhere and paste it in my notebook, the font size becomes smaller.Sign in process is beyond stupid. I'd rather plug my phone into USB and copy files than sign in to this POS.
792 clicks and fields to fill in just to get into a 3rd rate app is too stupid for me.Ampersand in URL parameter // EncodeURL does not work
Hi Zoho, I have a url link with a parameter. The parameter is including ampersand in some cases (Can be "H&M" or "P&I") When trying to use %26 instead of "&" (the result I get using EncodeURL()) I get H%26M instead of H&M in the parameter field. How can I solve this? Thanks! Ravidhow can we create in zoho crm a new contact when the looup does not find a similar existing one
In forms/integrations/zoho crm / ne w record tab, contact name is to be mapped with my form contact name. When I go in biew edit/lookup configuration, I don t get the options (help dedicated page simply repeat the same info you get in the app) and doesDirectory Websites
Directories are a good website category to gain search engine traffic. Directories for a professional service category as an example can help their members in search results over their individual website. It would be nice to have a directory templateManage Task on Mobile
How do we manage our task on mobile devices? It seems that there should be a standalone mobile app to handle the new task features. The new features released in regards to Task management are great by the way! Now we need to bring that all together inSet Default Payment Method & Default account
Hi, I would like to know how to set the default payment method and default bank account when recording payments in zoho books. At present we have to change these fields everytime we record a payment, which leads to potential error and as we have a veryCustomer Portal on Zoho Desk
Hi, I'd like to know more about the items below I found when setting up the Customer Portal on Zoho Desk. Could someone help me explaining these in details? Especially the 2nd and 3rd point. Thanking you in advance! Permissions Customers can sign up for Customer Portal Customers can view tickets of their organization (contacts) Customers must register to access Customer Portal Display Community in Customer Self Service portalComputer Showing Offline in Unattended Access
I have a computer that was connected to the internet but showing offline in Assist. I tried uninstalling the program and deleting it from Zoho Assist the reinstalling and it still does not show up. I have been a user for several months and am not pleased with the lack of connectivity with Assist. If this continues I will have to find another product. The computer I reinstalled it on is not even showing up in Assist now. The name is NYRVLI-PC. ThanksClosing 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 postingZoho CRM Portal Error
Hi, We’re experiencing an issue with the Zoho CRM Portal. When we try to access it, we receive an HTTPS connection error: net::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID. If we proceed past that, we then get a 400 Bad Request error. Could you please help us resolveCan we do Image swatches for color variants?
We want to do something like the attached screenshot on our new zoho store. We need image swatches instead of normal text selection. We want to user to select an image as color option. Is this doable? I don't see any option on zoho backend. Please hIntegrating Zoho CRM EmbeddedApp SDK with Next.js — Initialization and Data Fetching Issues
You can get an idea from my code I have given in end: First, I worked on a React project and tried the same thing — it worked. My goal was to import the Zoho script and then load contacts using the Zoho Widget SDK, which was successful in React. Now,monetizing the courses
Can I add a price for course enrollment ?Can we add zoho books features like invoices estemates etc on our zohocommerce website. When our customer login with their account they can able to see all books features in one place on zohocommerce?
Can we add zoho books features like invoices estemates etc on our zohocommerce website. When our customer login with their account they can able to see all books features in one place on zohocommerce?Copy paste from word document deletes random spaces
Hello Dear Zoho Team, When copying from a word document into Notebook, often I face a problem of the program deleting random spaces between words, the document become terribly faulty, eventhough it is perfect in its original source document (and withoutCreate custom rollup summary fields in Zoho CRM
Hello everyone, In Zoho CRM, rollup summary fields have been essential tools for summarizing data across related records and enabling users to gain quick insights without having to jump across modules. Previously, only predefined summary functions wereDownload a file from within a zoho creator widget
I have a widget running in Zoho Creator , it displays uploaded documents in a table file, and I have added a download link in the view. ( The widget is created with html, css and javascript). I do not succeed in getting the download working. Do I haveTaxes for EU B2B Transactions
Currently, ZC doesn't seem to have a procedure for validating VAT numbers of businesses purchasing in another EU state, and removing local VAT is valid. This is essential for all inter EU B2B trade.Unable to Receive Emails on Zoho Mail After Office 365 Coexistence Setup – Error: 553 Relaying Disallowed
Hello, My domain name is bigniter.com, and I’ve been using Zoho Mail as my email service provider without any issues. Recently, I followed the steps outlined in the Zoho documentation to enable Coexistence with Office 365: 🔗 https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/coexistence-with-office365.html#multi-serverCRM Related list table in Zoho analytics
In Zoho Analytics, where can I view the tables created from zoho crm related lists? For example, in my Zoho CRM setup, I have added the Product module as a related list in the Lead module, and also the Lead module as a related list in the Product module.Candidate Registration/Invitation
It would be great to include the 'invite' candidate functionality into some of the automation functions - ether through a custom function trigger or webhook or accessible through an email template. Currently there is no way to add this functionality into any workflows or blueprint steps which, I find limits the ability to invite candidates to engage with us directly through our candidate portal.[Free Webinar] Learning Table Series - Creator for Infrastructure Management | A Partner-driven collaborative session
Hello Everyone! We’re excited to invite you to another edition of Learning Table Series, where we showcase how Zoho Creator empowers industries with innovative and automated solutions. About the Learning Table Series The Learning Table Series is a free,Where we can change the icon in social preview
Hi, we changed our logo, and the image that appear in preview (ex : when we post a appointment link somewhere) is still our old logo. I did change our logo in the org setting. https://bookings.zoho.com/app/#/home/dashboard/settings/basic-info?clview=falseI have error AS101 when I try to add paypal@mydomain.com to Zoho
Please help me with this. I tried to call the help line 4 times but don't get any response.VAT on Multiple Expenses
Firstly, might I say I am based in Ireland, and I'm not an accountant, and therefore my understanding of procedures could be somewhat limited. Scenario. An employee pays for items throughout a month, and therefore their claim for expenses includes multiple items - some of the items are VAT deductible (eg, an IT product) and some are not (eg, a client lunch). Discovery The odd thing in ZBooks, is that whilst it seems possible to add a VAT rate to a one-off item of expense, it is not possible to addDetect and ignore bots in visitors
The SalesIQ visitor numbers are basically useless to us because there is no bot detection. We get the same bots coming in from the same countries looking at the same pages every day. It can't be that difficult to tell the difference between an actualNext Page