🎄 Jingle, Mingle, and Automate: Spread Christmas Cheer with Zoho Desk Auto-Replies! 🎄

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to this week's episode of the Community Learning Series.

Christmas is in the air, and I’m sure we can all feel the jingle and the mingle of the season! The folks at Zylker Techfix are no exception—they’re busy with holiday plans and festive cheer. But amidst all the celebrations, they also wanted to ensure their customers felt cared for, even while their agents enjoy a well-deserved break.

With Zoho Desk, they found the perfect solution: a simple workflow rule that automates replies to customers during the holidays. By configuring the Holiday List and Business Hours, Zylker Techfix reassured their customers with thoughtful, seasonal messages—spreading festive cheer while letting them know their queries will be handled once the team is back.

Here's how you can configure the automation.

In Zoho Desk, you can configure holidays for the year manually:

1. Create a Holiday List

• Go to Setup (S) >> Organization >> Holiday Lists.
  
• Click on the New Holiday List tab to create a holiday list for your organization. 

2. Associate Business Hours

• Within the Holiday List, enable the toggle for Associate Business Hours and link the preferred Business Hours.
  

3. Link from Business Hours

• Alternatively, you can associate the Holiday List directly on the Business Hours page.
• Navigate to Setup (S) >> Organization >> Business Hours and enable the Associate Holiday List toggle.
  

This ensures your Holiday List and Business Hours work seamlessly together for better holiday management.

You can associate only one Holiday to a Business Hour. 

To avoid duplicate notifications, disable the Receiving a new ticket toggle under Contact Notifications before configuring this Workflow rule. (Go to Setup(S) >> Customization >> Notifications (Notification Rules) >> Contact Notifications)

Steps to configure Workflow with a Custom Action 

To create the Workflow rule, perform the following steps:

1. Go to Setup >> Automation >>Workflows.

2. In the left panel, under Workflows, click Rules > Create Rule.

In the Basic Information section, perform the following steps:

3. In the Module drop-down menu, select Tickets.

4. Enter a name and description for the rule.

5. To activate the rule immediately, select the Active checkbox. Otherwise, you can activate it later from the Rules page.

6. Click Next.

In the Execute on section, perform the following steps:

7. Select Create and Customer Reply to execute the rule when a ticket is created or a customer replies.

8. Click Next.

Under Criteria:

9. Select the criteria Execution Time, choose on a holiday of, and select the Business Hours to which you have associated the Holiday Lists. Click Next.

10. Add another criteria Execution Time, choose outside of business hours, and select the business hours during which your organization is operational.

The outside business hours criteria is added to ensure the workflow starts operating either from the holiday eve or once business hours end.

11.  Add an Action 

In the Actions section, You can add an Alert or a Custom Action (Email reply).

I. To Add an Alert: Create/ Edit the Email Notification 

a. You can create or edit an email template by navigating to Setup (S) >> Customization >> Email Templates. To create a new email template, click on the Add tab.

b. To edit the default notification, select the email template Acknowledge Contact on Receiving a New Ticket under Contact Notifications and modify the email message based on your holiday reasons.

c. To add this Alert to the Action in the workflow, Click on the + icon under Action and select Alerts, then click New under Action Type.

d. Enter a name, choose the email template Acknowledge Contact on Receiving a New Ticket under Contact Notifications or a custom alert you’ve created, select the teams or roles you would like to notify, and click Save.

II. Add an Custom Action (Email reply)

i. To add a Email reply  to the workflow rule, click on the + icon under "Action" and select Email Reply under Action Type.

ii. Enter a name. Under From Address, select Email address from the drop-down list.

iii. Under To Address, click on the Insert Placeholder { } option and select the Email placeholder from Tickets, Contacts, or Accounts as required.

iv.  In  the Ticket Reply section, type the customised message that you want to send to your customers. You can use Insert Placeholder as required within the Ticket Reply section. 

v. Click Save to save the Action.

12. Add an Action based on your preference (Alert/ Email reply) within the Workflow rule. 

13. Click Save to save the Workflow.

The alert email will be sent separately to your customer's inbox, whereas the custom action email reply will be threaded within the customer's inquiry email.

Implementation

When a ticket is created or a customer responds to a pending ticket during the Holiday List or outside Business Hours, an automated response is sent to inform them that a ticket has been created and will be promptly handled as soon as business hours resume after the holiday. 

It’s the perfect way to enjoy your holidays and keep your customers smiling. So go ahead—plan your celebrations and let Zoho Desk take care of the rest!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas filled with joy, warmth, and just the right balance of work and play! 🎅🎄

Christmas wishes from The Zoho Desk Team. 

Until Next week, 

Lydia | Zoho Desk. 

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• Sticky Posts

• Zoho Desk Virtual Meetup: US Central, October 5 - 7, 2021

  After the interactive Virtual Meetups in the other regions, we are starting with the US Central and Midwest regions from October 5 to October 7, 2021. The dates for other regions will be announced soon.  At this event, we will explore the topics which

• 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

• Ask the Experts 10: A 5-hour online Q&A on Zoho Desk Best Practices

  Welcome to Zoho Desk's Ask the Experts session! This is a monthly discussion on our  forums; wherein a panel of experts will take on questions  specific to topics related to Zoho Desk. The panel will be available for a 5-hour period and will answer any questions posted here.   Let's begin the year learning some best practices from our experts. In this month's ATE we are opening the floor to questions on how to use Zoho Desk the best way.  If you have a business use case but not sure if Workflow is

• 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. 

• Ask the Experts 7: A 5-hour online Q&A on Telephony and Call Module

  Welcome to Ask the Experts session! This is a monthly discussion in forums; each session, a panel of experts will take questions on specific topics related to Zoho Desk. The panel will be available for a 5-hour period and answer any questions posted here. In this month's Ask the Experts, we will take questions on everything related to Telephony and the Call Module in Zoho Desk. We will discuss the following aspects:  Integration with different Telephony vendors Routing calls to agents Converting

• Recent Topics

• Within the Basic KPI component in Analytics, it is impossible to set "next" day range as a filter

  Hi there, I am currently setting up a deal dashboard for the Sales team. While it is possible to filter deal records to show records that were created LAST X days only, it looks like a NEXT X days Closing date filter is not available. Would it be possible

• Extracting data from cells in zoho sheets for zoho books

  I am currently uploading my bank statment in excel format to zoho workdrive. I would like flow to extract certain data and send it to zoho books. Would scripting in zoho flow be able to help me with this? By this I mean should I attempt this in zoho flow

• Pulling Specific Products from Sales Orders in Books to a CRM Record

  We currently process orders directly through our website (woocommerce) as well as through manual sales orders in zoho books. When an order comes through the website, all of the individual products from that order show up in the CRM record of that customer.

• Você já viu os cursos do Zoho Mind?

  Pessoal, Tem uma plataforma da Zoho chamada Zoho Mind, muito interessante os cursos e vídeos tutoriais que lá possui. Para a turma do Zoho Creator, tem uma dica de Buscar dados em Formulário, segue o link e clique em Zoho Creator. https://www.zohomind.com.br/#/videostutoriais

• Como gerar gatilhos para pagamento de impostos no Zoho Books?

  Olá Pessoal, boa tarde! Gostaria de saber como vocês estão escriturando os impostos a pagar no Zoho Books. Vi que temos a opção de Bills, porém se eu escriturar nesta aba do Zoho Books para gerar lembretes de tempo de vencimento por exemplo vai refletir

• Subform Time field to string.

  Good afternoon All. I have a Subform 'Delivery_Receiving_Hours' that captures Day (Dropdown), Time_Open (Time), and Time_Close (Time). I need to capture this data and send it to a multiline field in the CRM. The code, posted below, below will capture

• workflow for bounced email gets triggered, but email is status = opened

  Hello, I have a workflow that sends me an email if outgoing email are bounced. Now I got some kind of this emails, but the corrosponding contacts have status = open at the email. Why this bounce-workflow is triggered? Reports > Email Reports > Bounce

• Data export

  I need to export our customer's data and projects' data for our purpose but am unable to export full data i only get around 3160 projects and around 2k customer can you please help me to get full data, please

• Adjusting Physical Inventory

  Not getting very far with support on this one, they say they are going to fix it but nothings happened since November. Please give this a thumbs up if you would like to see this feature or comment if you have some insight. Use Case: Inventory set to be

• QR codes in templates

  I'm excited about the new QR code generator. I have included a QR code that contains the record ID setting "${ID}" as input data. In the report detail it works perfectly but when printing it in a template the code is not shown.

• Zoho Marketing Plus : Un outil tout-en-un pour la création de pages, la collaboration et la gestion du calendrier marketing

  Nous sommes ravis de vous présenter trois nouvelles fonctionnalités puissantes de Zoho Marketing Plus s’enrichit désormais d’un page web (l'éditeur de pages), qui vous permet de créer des pages attrayantes et à fort taux de conversion pour vos campagnes

• Error 403: Forbidden When Updating Email Signature via API

  Hi Zoho Desk team, First, congratulations again on the excellent Zoho API. But, I’m encountering an issue while attempting to update an email signature via the API. Whenever I make a request to update the signature, the response returns an HTTP 403 Forbidden

• Grouping payments to match deposits

  Is there a way to group multiple invoice payments together so they match credit card batches and grouped deposits in the bank account? Basically, we are creating invoices for each of our transactions, and applying a payment to each of the invoices. Our payments are either credit cards or checks. We want to be able to group payments together so when our bank account reflects a credit card batch made up of many transactions, or the deposit we took to the bank that has multiple checks from different

• Employees can not add some expenses suddenly

  Zoho expense was working fine and whenever there was a new merchant, it would automatically add and also the same auto added in Zoho Books (due to merchant-vendor sync) untill now. From today, it is having problems in searching the existing vendors and

• Zoho email setup in office365

  When i am trying to setup zoho mail setup using my domain in office365 and it is not working and it says that we couldn't log on to the incoming (IMAP) server and please check your email address and password and try again. I was able to login using my

• iOS 10: Caller ID new feature?

  Hi, in the update history of the iOS App (for iOS10) - v.3.2 - i found the point "caller identification" has this feature been deactivated again? i cannot find anything on my iphone on how to activate this feature. or does it just work from the beginning?

• Recommendations to store meeting notes for easy access from Contacts, Accounts & Deals module records?

  I would like your advice on how to achieve this use case for my organization. It’s related to where/how best to store meeting notes from a conversation with Contact(s) working at an Account (Company) in the context of a Deal. The ideal solution (from

• Bank reconciliation. Match Transaction -filter

  When matching an imported bank statement file we only get a match if it is an excact match on both amount and date. Then a suggestions comes up with a very broad selection regarding amount, and no default "between" dates. I can then go an manually adjust the filter, and have to put in from-to amounts and dates. How do I set a default from-to date?  As an example, I would like the date to be +- 3 days, Thanks.

• Added new staff but does not appear in other organization list

  Hi, I added the new staff under Sales Manager in the contacts, but it does not appear in the other organization list where I need to create a contact, and I can't select the newly added Sales Manager

• Integrating Calendly with Zoho Calendar in Zoho Mail

  I moved my office into a business incubator space that uses Calendly for meeting management and events. Calendly doesn't have a integration with Zoho Calendar and vice versa. I was directed to Zapier for integration but it doesn't have an integration

• Map fields from module X to a lookup field in subform in module Y

  Hi there In the 1st screenshot attached, you can see a subform in myLeads module. You can see that there is a number already filled there - that is the 'Property ID' and it is a single line field. It is the 'Property ID' of an entry I have in another

• 🎄 Jingle, Mingle, and Automate: Spread Christmas Cheer with Zoho Desk Auto-Replies! 🎄

  Hello Everyone! Welcome to this week's episode of the Community Learning Series. Christmas is in the air, and I’m sure we can all feel the jingle and the mingle of the season! The folks at Zylker Techfix are no exception—they’re busy with holiday plans

• how to create a new line in string in Client Script?

  I want to show an alert using client script, I need to add a new line in String, I assume I can use \n\n inside a string, but unfortunately it doesnt work ZDK.Client.showAlert("First Line \n\nI expect this is in second line");

• Surely it's time Inline editing from views

  I think the first request I found for in-line editing from grids was approximately 12 years ago - that post was locked because it was suggested Zoho sheetview solved the problem. However, it's now 2024, and in-line editing from grids is just a basic expectation.

• Multi branding issue with sender addresses

  Hello, I'm currently working on a project involving two (seperate) brands. Named 'Windeck' and 'Prolance'. They've chosen CRM Plus and I'm currently working on CRM, SalesIQ, Social and Marketing Automation. So far, I'm able to make enough separations

• How to Replace an Assessment in a Job Opening on Zoho Recruit

  Hi everyone, I’m currently using Zoho Recruit and would like to replace the assessment linked to a specific job opening. I want to remove the existing assessment and add a new one. What is the best way to do this without losing any important data or affecting

• Is there API Doc for Zoho Survey?

  Hi everyone, Is there API doc for Zoho Survey? Currently evaluating a solution - use case to automate survey administration especially for internal use. But after a brief search, I couldn't find API doc for this. So I thought I should ask here. Than

• Email Campaigns overview page is missing SENT DATE and # people sent to!

  I would like to see the date the email campaign was sent, so I can understand and track when each email campaign was sent. Right now, unless you go to a contact who received a campaign, you cannot see when the campaign was sent (!!!!!!). So, if my boss

• SEO recommendation of H1 tag for website tittle

  The exact words are “ It is good practice to place the page title inside the H1tag.” Now I already have one H1 tag on my website but it is not website tittle. In the SEO recommendation that is clear too that I have h1 tag on my page. Now I don’t know

• How to choose other payment methodes than creditcards

  We have connected stripe as a payment provider in zoho books, booking, commerce and checkout. In stripe we selected al major payment methodes for Belgium (mainly bancontact). However, at checkout customers seems to have only the possibility to pay with

• Introducing Zia LLM: Zoho’s in-house Generative AI solution for CRM's AI capabilities

  Hello everyone, We're excited to announce the launch of our in-house Large Language Model (LLM) by Zia to power our AI offerings. What is LLM? LLM stands for Large Language Model, a powerful AI technology that processes and generates human-like text based

• How to call a Creator function which is in a different Creator application?

  How to call a Creator function which is in a different Creator application?

• Can the code in my "Successful form submission" WF be invoked from a function?

  Can "Successful form submission" be invoked from a function? Data gets into a form manually and programatically. My code in "successful form submission" is good and I want to reuse it/call it, from another function which does Insert Into How to achieve

• New Built In QR/Barcode Generator Print Settings

  I'm trying out the new QR/Barcode generator field in Creator. I would think most people will want to print these, like I do. I am not seeing any way to control the height or width of the barcode for printing (inside the print/pdf template builder). The

• Kaizen #169 - Serialization and Schema Management in Queries

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post in the Kaizen series! In Kaizen #166, we discussed handling Variables in Queries and associating the query in Kiosk. This week, we will discuss Serialization and Schema management in Queries. Business Scenario

• Introducing Keyboard Shortcuts for Zoho CRM

  Dear Customers, We're happy to introduce keyboard shortcuts for Zoho CRM features! Until now, you might have been navigating to modules manually using the mouse, and at times, it could be tedious, especially when you had to search for specific modules

• Feature Request: Notebooks within notebooks (Tree-like structure)

  Dear Zoho! I already migrated all my stuff from Google Keep, Im really fond of Zoho Notebook so far. One thing that could make the service much more powerful is multi-level notebooks (or tree like structure). For example, entering into Notebook named

• Introducing automation and utility conversations in WhatsApp marketing

  We’re excited to announce the addition of two new features to our WhatsApp integration: Automation and Utility conversations. These enhancements will allow you to streamline your marketing efforts and engage with your customers more effectively by automating

• Can't get authorization for Sandbox environment using the self client

  Hello, After creating a self client, and following the client-credentials method (as it's not optimat to manually generate a code for every 10 minutes), after inputting the sandbox org id for SOID parameter, im getting the error: "error": "no_org". For

• Create landing pages from Zoho Marketing Plus

  Hey everyone, Over the last few months, we've introduced various features and enhancements to bolster the marketing capabilities of Zoho Marketing Plus and make it simpler for everyone. To that end, we're excited to announce that Zoho LandingPage is now

• Next Page