🎄 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

• Exciting Update: Multi WhatsApp Business Account (WABA) Support Now Available in SalesIQ!

  We’re pleased to share an important update that will enhance the way you manage your WhatsApp Business accounts (WABAs) within SalesIQ. With the launch of Multi WABA support, you can now connect and manage multiple brands more effectively, each under

• Gravity Forms plugin not passing some fields

  I use the gravity form zoho plugin to push data from my lead form into my lead page in Zoho CRM. Everything was working file for about 6 months. Suddenly on Oct 1st, some of the fields are no longer getting passed to Zoho. The fields with the problem

• Can't delete bank transactions (i changed from 14 days trail to free just now)

  Hi, I manually added one bank transaction When i try to delete it, it say below: What should I do?

• Feature Request: Search in the PC client. Some thoughts about the search.

  Hi all. I'm really excited to start using Zoho Notebook, but I'm missing some of the search capabilities on my desktop. There are also some thoughts on improving search in general. Search is very important to me, without it it is difficult for me to use

• Leave Policy for Brazil

  Hi, Brazil asked us to configure Zoho People to apply the following policy: · To block starting vacations 2 business days before holidays or weekends; Employees cannot start their vacations 2 days before holidays or weekends. Example: If December 25th

• Adding date field to each individual Items when creating Invoices?

  When adding items into an invoice I need to be able to have a date for each item. Example below: Date Item Description Qty Rate Discount(%) Tax Amount 31/07/13 Brown Sugar Performance 1.00 3,000.00 0.00 10% $3300 Is this possible or will it be in the

• Auto-Create OneDrive Folder Structure Upon Lead Creation

  Hello, New to Zoho and looking for help on a critical process automation I'm looking to implement. My company currently utilizes OneDrive for file management and the folder structure is Proposals -> Client Name -> Address (where I need to initially create

• Profile Page View Customization

  I need to change the fields, sections from the profile view of an emplyoyee.

• What do the Image Sizes mean in Zoho CRM Email Templates?

  Below you can see the image options in email templates: Banner, Fit, Small, Medium, Original, Custom. Can someone from Zoho please share with me: What each is/means? How each will look on desktop AND mobile? How to edit "custom"?  If I choose "Custom"

• Translate any published presentation to the language of your choice

  As part of our constant effort to enrich your presentation experience, Zoho Show has rolled out a new feature for translating published presentations. Consider the following scenario: Zylker IT services, a multinational corporation, has announced product

• Blueprint: multi-select lookup field not available in the criteria option

  I read this old forum post which stated that multi-select lookup fields are now selectable as an option in a Blueprint transition configuration: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/blueprint-multi-select-lookup-field-not-available-within-blueprint-transition

• Apply Credit Note Automatically

  We need the ability to apply open Credit Notes toward invoices generated by recurring invoice as the first, priority payment. This should be an option that we can enable/disable in the recurring profile and/or the Credit Note. Other invoicing systems can do this. I'm not sure why Zoho Invoice doesn't have it. Here's an example for a Recurring Invoice... If a customer has open Credit Notes, and a saved credit card set for auto-pay, once an invoice goes out, the credit balance gets automatically applied

• Workflow for "Expenses" module?

  Hi there, over the last 2 years, Zoho Expense has seen tremendous growth and we are happy with it. But, sometimes it is frustrating to see things are being implemented halfheartedly, or so it seems. For example, There is the possibility to create workflows

• Record Template - Conditionally printing sections

  Is there a way to conditionally print a section of a Record Template? More specifically I am printing records from a Form "Invoice". That Form has 3 SubForms. I'd like to print the content of those SubForms using a Record Template but only if they have at least one line item. If they have no line items, I'd like to hide the headers for that section on the printout.

• User can choose the PDF report

  Hi. I would like to find out if a user (Creator or customer portal) to choose from the different PDF customised reports that have been built?

• Query table pull last 12 months

  I am tying to pull the following criteria and the date is always what causes me the issue. I want to pull people (pco_id) who have entries of "event_id" being these 2 events and whos "kind" is Regular or Guest and where the event_starts_at (date column)

• PLEASE FIX Search options and consider a Global seach option

  A recent update has removed the ability to search for addresses and phone numbers under contacts. We cannot find where this moved to (If it is still available). Please put these options back as we cannot locate specific projects anymore. Also please consider allowing for a Global search. This would really improve the search engine. For example: If I search for "Sally Jones" then all invoices , estimates, vendors etc.. would populate.. Please let me know if you need any more information. Thank You....

• Customize your calendar based on personal preferences

  Greetings, We're happy to introduce a few new capabilities to the Activities module's Calendar View! Now you can tailor your calendar's appearance and notification settings to suit your needs. In the past, the Calendar View lacked customization options

• BUG ALERT: Client Script + Commands -> $Page contextual data is not updated

  When using the new Client Script Commands feature, there is an issue with the Client Script $Page contextual data not accurately being updated each time a Command is run. Assuming a Client Script Command called "Client Script Command Bug" with the following

• Show iFrame of related List inside of Blueprint Transition

  Hey, is it possible to show an iFrame of a related list like this inside of a Blueprint transition?

• Lookup Fields not Converting

  I manage holiday properties. I have a lookup to the Accounts (Properties) in the Leads module. The lookup is connected to the property address field. When I convert it the lookup field does not update in Deals, although the property address does. There

• 2024: A Year of Transformation with Zoho Forms

  As we close the curtain on another exciting year, it’s time to reflect on the strides Zoho Forms has taken in 2024. From empowering businesses with advanced tools to simplifying workflows and enhancing user experiences, our updates this year were all

• Stop selling out of stock Items.

  Hi I have been using Zohobooks for a around 8 month now. I am not involved in selling process but my staff cant stop selling product which they do not hold in stock, this is a big headache for me as physical count never matches what is shown on the books. 

• Bigin API Token Request ("invalid_client")

  Hi people, I tried to connect to the API without success, I've read all of the documentation multiple time and tried just about everything. I tried to do it with Python Request module and with Postman, passing the information through both the URL parameter

• Customer Happiness not clickable when using API

  Is there a way to automatically add the Customer Feedback links when generating email drafts via the API? Currently, the feedback links are only added when generating an email draft using the UI. I tried using the endpoint described in https://desk.zoho.com/DeskAPIDocument#CustomerFeedback#CustomerFeedback_Getthecustomerfeedbackplaceholderlink

• Send To Zoho Sign not Showing

  The button send to Zoho sign is not showing on my Zoho CRM . Is there additional steps I need to take after installing Zoho Sign to CRM ?

• How to Get An Image's URL once it's uploaded to library?

  I manage to find URLs to the images I uploaded to my library, but after a day, it seems the links stop working like its only temporary. Where can I find the ACTUAL solid URL for my images that I upload to my Library so I can use them for my custom template / HTML coded template? Thanks, Mac

• 【Zoho CRM】インポート機能のアップデート：既存データへのタグ追加が可能に！

  ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中のインポート機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 Zoho CRMのタグは、データを効率的に分類、認識するためのラベルです。 タグ付けは次の3つの方法で行えます： 個別タグ付け：少数のデータを手動でタグ付け 自動化：特定のタイミングで繰り返しタグ付け 一括更新：インポート機能でタグを追加または更新 今回のアップデートでは、インポート時に既存のタグを残したまま、新しいタグの追加、既存タグを置き換えできるようになりました。

• Link to Desk tickets

  Hello, We are using Analytics to analyze data in Desk. Is there a way to embed a link to a ticket in reports?  We'd love to be able to see the drill down data, and click a value in a result row that would launch the Desk Ticket in another window/tab. Thanks in advance for any ideas!

• Bluerprints: How to connect the created record back?

  I've a blueprint which creates another record as part of an 'After' transition. But the two records don't seem to be linked together. If it's not automatic - how do I get the created record ID to link it to the original record? Thanks!

• Populate a Related List Item based on a Stage

  I would like to know if I can populate a CLOSED DEAL section in a contact that populates only when a Deal (something in the Deal Module) is listed as Closed - Won. I'd like another section that is just called deals, which shows me all other deals that

• Being able to draw inside a module ?

  I was wondering if anyone know of a solution for this request. We would like to be able to draw directly from one module in the CRM and have it attached to that record. Here is an example. Paul would go to the customer once he as done the measuring, he

• 2 serial numbers for 1 item (Mac address and Serial number)

  There is a way to track 2 serial number type for 1 Item. Ex: Some electronic devices have a MAC address and a serial number. I need to track those 2 numbers

• Holidays

  Hi; For defining Holidays, you need to add logic to handle the year as well as the month & day. We need to be able to enter Holidays for the next year. I need to add a holiday for January 2, 2017, but I can't until January 1st, which is a Sunday and we

• Delete a department or category

  How do I delete a Department?  Also, how do I delete a Category? This is pretty basic stuff here and it's impossible to find.

• Remove or hide default views

  I'm looking to only have the views pertinent to my organization.  Is there a way to show only my custom views (or separate them to a different area or something)? If not, this should be a feature as switching from Zendesk we had this option...

• Analytics Module: Can you move items from one dashboard to another?

  Is there a way to move items from one dashboard to another? I want to rearrange my dashboard now that I know what i'm doing but i don't want to remake my various widgets? Edit: Hey Zoho, This would be a good feature: to be able to move/copy widgets to

• Copy Widget to another Dashboard

  I can see the option to clone a widget to the same dashboard but is it possible to copy it to another dashboard?

• Is there a way to print the dashboard?

  I would like the capability of printing the dashboard - is that possible?

• Custom Deal Name in Lead Conversion Mapping

  I know there are ways to change the name of a Deal after conversion using a custom function, so no need to repost that information. I would like to see the CRM Improved with Deal Name Customisation and I think the Lead Conversion Mapping page would be

• Next Page