Automation #11 - Auto Update Custom Fields with Values from Emails

Automation #11 - Auto Update Custom Fields with Values from Emails



This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips to optimize your customer support with the automation capabilities of Zoho Desk.

With the help of Custom fields in Zoho Desk you can extract context that is specific to your business. For example, a travel company might want their customers to enter PNR numbers while submitting their tickets. Or, a product manufacturing company may have a mandatory field for serial numbers in the add ticket form.
 
But when your customers send in emails with vital information like Order numbers and PNR numbers listed in the email content, extracting it to add it to the custom fields can be a challenge. Here's an automation designed to help you sidestep this challenge. It extracts specific context from the email content and updates the custom fields automatically.
 
Let's take the example of "Order Number" to understand how we can achieve this automation.
 
You may recall how we replaced Auth-tokens with Connections for all the existing custom functions. So the first step to making the most of ZohoDesk's automation capabilities is to create a connection to be used in the custom function later.
 
To create a  connection, carry out the following steps: 
  1. Click on Setup > Developer Space > Connections 
  2. Click Create Connection
  3. In the Pick Your Service section, under Pre-Defined Services find and select Zoho OAuth
  4. In the Connection Details section, add zohodesk as the Connection Name and Connection LinkName
  5. In the Choose Scopes list, select all values that start with 'Desk.' and ending with '.ALL' and then include Desk.search.READ, Desk.products.READ
  6. Click Create and Connect
  7. In the page that appears, click Connect
  8. If you have more than one portal associated, select the Portal to which this connection should be added and click Accept. 
Say you receive an email with the content: 
Order Number: 4345312

Contact Name: Sundar

To extract the value of the Order Number from the above email, proceed with these steps: 

  1. Go to Setup, and under Automation, click Workflows.
  2. On the left panel, under Workflows, click Rules > Create Rule.
    In the Basic Information section, carry out the following steps:
  3. In the Module drop-down menu, select Tickets.
  4. Enter a name and description for the rule.
  5. If you want to activate the rule right away, select the Active checkbox. Else, you can just create the rule now and activate it later, on the Rules page.
  6. Click Next.
    In the Execute on section, perform the following steps:
  7. Select the Create checkbox to execute this rule every time a new ticket is created. 
  8. Click Next.
    In the Criteria section, do not select any criteria and move to the next section.
    In the Actions section, carry out the following steps:
  9. Click the + icon and select Custom Functions > New
  10. Click Edit Arguments
  11. In the Name field type TicketID, and from the Value drop-down list select Ticket Id under Ticket Information.
  12. In the script window, input the Custom Function you find below:
    orgId = "paste orgId here";
    fromWord = "Order Number:";
    toWord = "Contact Name:";
    lenfromWord = fromWord.length();
    T_Info = invokeurl
    [
    url :"https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/tickets/" + TicketID + "/latestThread?include=plainText"
    type :GET
    connection:"zohodesk"
    ];
    plainText = T_Info.getJSON("plainText");
    orderNumber = plainText.subText(plainText.indexOf(fromWord) + lenfromWord ,plainText.indexOf(toWord));
    updateTicket = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"tickets",TicketID,{"cf":{"cf_order_number":orderNumber}});
    info updateTicket;
Once the steps are completed, the value will be updated in a custom field named Order Number and the API name of the field that is cf_order_number. For other business scenarios, you can replace "Order Number" with other keywords that describe the specific values you need to extract.

 

 

 

 

 


    • 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

    • Are Environments Worth It?

      In concept, Environments in ZC is a great idea. I think the flow is pretty smart when you compare it to GitHub, especially for a low code audience. However, in practice, I've found it to be unpredictable, and I've only used it a few times. Aside from

    • Enhanced duplicate check for Leads in CRM

      Hello Everyone, We are excited to announce that you can now check for duplicate entries in leads by comparing them with similar records in the Contacts Module. Previously, when you added a lead, only the converted leads were checked for duplicates. This

    • Pause(1);

      I'm using scheduler to invoke an interaction via http post with an external service. The schedule code uses a for-each loop that runs so fast my external application's log files get messed-up (they are named by date-time stamp). What I'm suggesting is

    • Integration Request: Elementor

      Integrating Zoho CRM forms with Elementor, the most popular page builder on Wordpress, would be great. I use it for our site, goenergylink.com, and I have had to use Zapier webhooks to be able to connect it with Elementor. The one issue I have run into

    • Ability to Change Visibility of Published YouTube Videos

      Hi Zoho Social Team, How are you? We would like to request an enhancement in Zoho Social regarding the management of already published youtube videos. Currently, after publishing a youtube video through Zoho Social, there is no option to change its visibility

    • Adding anchor links in Zoho CRM email templates

      I know you can add anchor link in Campaigns, but I dont see the option to that in the CRM email template. Am I missing something?

    • openUrl in blueprints

      My customer wants to open a URL at the end of a blueprint transition. Seems this isn't possible right now but it would be very useful. In this thread, https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/openurl-not-working the Zoho agent said that it's logically

    • Ability to Add YouTube Video to Playlist During Publishing

      Hi Zoho Social Team, How are you? While publishing YouTube videos through Zoho Social, we noticed that the platform currently does not allow selecting a playlist at the time of publishing. Instead, we can only add the video to a playlist after it has

    • Introducing Zoho Creator's 2025 Release Projection 2

      Hello Creators! I'm Prakash, from the Creator product management team, and today I'm delighted to unveil our next set of features as part of Release Projection 2 for 2025. With thoughtful analysis and planning, we've curated powerful new capabilities

    • Sharing Form Ownership Among Multiple Users

      I would really like the ability to share form ownership among multiple users. It's frustrating to me that if a co-worker wants to make an edit to a form, I have to transfer ownership to them. It would be great if forms could act like google forms, where multiple people can edit a form and view responses. 

    • Marketer’s Space - Ace Your Spooky-Season Marketing with Pre-designed Templates in Zoho Campaigns

      Hello marketers, Welcome back to another post in Marketer’s Space! We’re in Q4, which means that you have endless opportunities to connect with your audience, starting with Halloween campaigns! In this post, we’ll show you how to design the perfect Halloween

    • Zia expands to China with native features and DeepSeek-powered generative AI features

      Hello everyone, We are glad to support Zia native features and Zia generative AI features for our customers in China. From hereon, all AI-features in Desk will be accessible in China data center with the integration of DeepSeek generative AI model. DeepSeek

    • Email in each module

      We have a contact ,module which then has a link to customer assets which in turn the asset has a multiple link to service visits. When we link assets to customers we choose by name and it brings over the associate email via the lookup. Great feature.

    • Global Search placement in the new UI

      Having a hard time with the global search placement in the UI redesign. Surely I can't be the only one. Previously global search placement was perfect. A bar at the top/center of the page. Exactly where you would expect it to be. Since the new UI has

    • Introducing Skill-Based Ticket Assignment

      The goal of every support team is to provide great support, and to do so as fast as they can. To make this possible, it is important that agents spend their time judiciously, especially when they're dealing with a large number of tickets of varying urgency

    • Kaizen #213 - Workflow APIs - Part 1

      Welcome to another week of Kaizen! If you have ever managed complex business processes, you know that Workflows are the quiet backbone of any well-run business process. They keep things moving; assigning owners, sending alerts, keeping deals on track,

    • Browser and address bar hide

      Hi, How i can do hide the address bar with browser headline when i am working on the sheet, because i am using (freeze panes) which i want visible for full work. For your reference here i am attached the screen shot and marked yellow lines which really

    • Cells Border

      Hi I am using Zoho Sheet on S Tab , is there any option to make all border of any cell at once. I think this is very basic which we are missing. This is available in mobile but not in tab or suggest if i am missing this function. And for Tab can you give

    • Credit Management: #2 Configuring Right Payment Terms for Credit Control

      Think about the last time you ordered something online and saw that little note at the checkout, "Pay on Delivery" or "Pay later". It's simple, but it actually sets the tone. As a business owner, you know exactly when payment is expected. Now, imagine

    • Zobot and Sales IQ

      What will happen to the Zoho Sales IQ being integrated to the website after creating the Zobot on the website too

    • Help Center and SEO: Any Benefit to My Domain-Mapped Website Ranking?

      First of, I love the Help Center which I've just decided to integrate into my website to replace its old-fashioned FAQs. So much more to achieve there now! Lots of new benefits to the site visitors and to me in terms of organizing and delivering all the

    • Support french language options

      Greetings, I want to use Zoho with the french language portal, however the supplied translation is not very good (google translate). There are many basic mistakes on the main most important sections (my requests, submit a request). Is there a way for

    • Automation #7 - Auto-update Email Content to a Ticket

      This is a monthly series where we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Email is one of the most commonly

    • filter broke my data

      I uploaded a file recently from Sheets and it has top 2 rows frozen, with table headers in second row and each one is filterable. somehow my first 2 columns became unfiltered and no matter what I do I cannot reapply the filter?? also didn't realize they

    • Introducing the Workflow and Actions APIs for Zoho CRM

      We are absolutely thrilled to announce the release of Workflow APIs and Actions APIs in Zoho CRM’s v8 API suite! This powerful new set of endpoints gives developers unprecedented programmatic control over business automation. For years, Workflow Rules

    • Zoho CRM Analytics - Allow To Reorder Dashboards

      I would like to suggest that you add the ability to reorder dashboards in the Analytics Module. I can see that this has been requested some time ago, the latest 9 years ago. I am not sure if this is a big or small endeavor, but such a small fix can go

    • Zoho Form URL displays incorrect name

      Hi, I have a form I created called "Design Request form". It displays this way everywhere I look. However, in the URL, it shows up as "DesignJobRequestFormFINAL011325PROOFV1B" and I'm not sure why. I can't find where to fix this. Does anyone have any

    • Consumers are talking about your business. Are you listening?👂

      A loyal customer might be praising your product in a forum. A frustrated user could be posting a harsh review on a public site. An excited partner may have left a comment on your campaign. A domain expert might be deconstructing your product. A prospect

    • What counts as a Temp for Billing Purposes in Workerly

      I'm considering trying this product but am not sure how the temp count is used for billing purposes. For example, if we keep a large data base of 500 potential workers.....are we billed for that or only if they are assigned to a client at a given point

    • Form name incorrectly displayed in URL

      Hi, I have a form I created called "Design Request form". It displays this way everywhere I look. However, in the URL, it shows up as "DesignJobRequestFormFINAL011325PROOFV1B" and I'm not sure why. I can't find where to fix this. Does anyone have any

    • I can't receive mail

      Hello, I can't receive e-mail. I no longer receive e-mails to the e-mail I received for ​my site. I also edited the DNS settings, but it doesn't work at all.

    • 1‑to‑1 invite missing post-setup (needs re-invite) vs channel invite auto-joins without business prompt

      1. Zoho Cliq 1‑to‑1 external invite The inviter sent a 1‑to‑1 invite to an invitee who didn’t have a Cliq account. After the invitee completed account setup and created a business/organization, the website redirected them to Cliq, where they opened Cliq

    • 【開催報告】東京 ユーザー交流会 Vol.3 2025/10/17 Zoho サービスの活用促進を外部ツールとの連携で実現！

      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。 10月17日(金)に新橋で「東京 ユーザー交流会 Vol.3」を開催しました。ご参加くださったユーザーの皆さま、ありがとうございました！ この投稿では、当日のセッションの様子や使用した資料を紹介しています。残念ながら当日お越しいただけなかった方も、ぜひチェックしてみてください😊 ユーザー活用事例セッション：Zoho Flowと決済システムの連携 あみろくの岡島さんに、Zoho サービスの活用事例として、Zoho Flow を活用した外部サービスとの連携事例をご共有いただきました。

    • received email opens in a new tab every time I log in

      as per the title: since about when I first made my email account, every single time Ive logged in to view my inbox, a new tab opens for an email I viewed once as if restoring a closed session. I thought I just didnt understand the "starting up" settings

    • Engage with your customers at scale using WhatsApp Marketing Template messages

      Hi everyone, To make it easier for organizations to communicate with customers, Desk now allows you to send individual, mass, and bulk WhatsApp template messages from both the Ticket and Contact modules. How is this going to benefit your business? WhatsApp

    • Importation Tickets error

      Hi, I'm newbie here 🤓 So, i'm importing data from csv, but when I try advance to mapping fields the importer tool show this message: Previously I try import, other data, and not show errors in this step. Some ideas? Best Regards,

    • Showing description in timesheet and timelogs.

      I am wondering if it’s possible in version 5 of Zoho People to have the description show by default or with a manipulation on the user’s part. Let me show you what I mean. As you can see this is the view for the users. Now if they want to see the full

    • Workaround: openURL in Blueprints - An alternate approach

      There is a roundabout way to open a URL in blueprints after a save event. By using the 'onBeforeMandatoryFormSave' in Client Script, you can open an external URL. Now, the problem is, this is designed to be run BEFORE the blueprint is saved, not after,

    • MTD SA in the UK

      Hello ID 20106048857 The Inland Revenue have confirmed that this tax account is registered as Cash Basis In Settings>Profile I have set ‘Report Basis’ as “Cash" However, I see on Zoho on Settings>Taxes>Income Tax that the ‘Tax Basis’ is marked ‘Accrual'

    • Migrate file from Single File Upload to Multi File Upload

      Dears, I have created a new field Multi File Upload to replace the old Single File Upload field. I'd like to ask you guys what is the best way to migrate the files to the new field?

    • Next Page