Automation #6 - Prevent Re-opening of Closed Tickets

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.

Typically when a customer submits a support ticket, it is assigned with a status to map its journey. Zoho Desk provides you with four default statuses: Open, On hold, Escalated, Closed; along with the option to create your own statutes which can then be mapped to these default ones.  

 

Once the solution has been provided to the customer and the ticket is resolved the ticket is marked as "Closed". But the status changes from "Closed" to "Open" if the customer replies to the same ticket. While this behaviour might be useful for some businesses who prefer to continue the same thread instead of reopening a new one, some might not want to do so. To ensure the ticket stays in the closed status and start a new thread for a customer reply, you can create a Workflow Rule and map it to a custom function script to achieve the desired results.

Prerequisite:

To ensure the Closed status is maintained even if a customer replies to a ticket, perform the following steps: 

1. Go to Setup, and under Customization, click Ticket Status, uncheck the "Fall-Back To Default" checkbox against "Closed" status.

2. OrgID, to get the OrgID, navigate to "Setup >> Developer Space >> API". Note down the OrgID

To create the workflow rule, perform the following 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, perform 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 Customer Reply checkbox to execute this rule every time a customer responds to a ticket.  

8. Click Next.

9. In the Criteria section, set the criteria as "Status is Closed" and click "Next"

In the Actions section, perform the following steps:

10. Click the + icon under "Action" and select "New" next to Custom Functions

11. Enter a name and description for the custom function.

12. In the script window, input the Custom Function you find below:

1. numberOfHours = 48;
2. orgId = "Paste Org Id here";
   
3. //Please paste your OrgID
   
4. TicketInfo = zoho.desk.getRecordById(orgId,"tickets",TicketID);
5. lastModified = TicketInfo.get("closedTime").toTime("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss");
6. status = TicketInfo.get("status");
7. hoursBetween = now.hoursBetween(lastModified).abs();
8. if(hoursBetween >= numberOfHours)
9. {
10. threadResponse = zoho.desk.getRelatedRecords(orgId, "threads", "tickets", TicketID);
    
11. if(threadResponse.get("data") != null)
    
12. {
    
13. latestThreadID = threadResponse.get("data").get(0).get("id");
14. splitTicketResponse = zoho.desk.ticket.split(orgId, TicketID, latestThreadID);
    
15. info "splitTicketResponse ::::" + splitTicketResponse;
    
16. info "======================================================";
    
17. NewTicketNumber = splitTicketResponse.get("ticketNumber");
18. NewTicketID = splitTicketResponse.get("id");
19. }
20. }
21. else
22. {
23. jsonString = {"status":"Open"};
24. TicketResponse = zoho.desk.update(orgId, "tickets", TicketID, jsonString);
    
25. info TicketResponse;
26. }

NOTE:
Line 1 numberOfHours = 48, refers to the hours post which the new response received in a existing ticket should be split as new ticket. You can replace the number of hours based on your requirement.
Line 2 replace the orgId.

13. Click Edit Arguments

14. In the Name field type TicketID, and from the Value drop-down list select Ticket Id under Ticket Information. 
15. Click "Save" to save the custom function
16. Click "Save" again to save the workflow.

These steps would ensure that when a ticket is marked Closed, it stays in the Closed status, even if a customer replies after the mentioned hours. But also ensure that the new reply is added as a new ticket so you don't miss anything!

• Topic Participants

• Chinmayee Mishra

  

• Mustafa Mayar

• Ash | Zoho Desk

  

• Analissa Moreno

• Natasha

• 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

• Filter lookup field using client script

  Hi, I used client scipt to filter a lookup field- the trigger is on detail page onload. It works, however sometimes when I start typing in that field the filter is removed and the whole list is shown. What can I do so that should not happen? Thanks

• Zoho CRM in Microsoft Power Automate Custom Data Connector

  Hello, I have set up a custom data connector in Microsoft Power Automate. It is a connector to retrieve Zoho CRM data. I am pretty certain that I have entered the OAuth 2.0 authentication information correctly. However when I test the Get request https://zohoapis.com/crm/v2/leads.

• CRM API Search Record for Last Name equals "."

  When using the CRM API to look for all contacts with a lastname = "." The API returns an Invalid Query Reponse I have tried (Last_Name:equals:.) (Last_Name:equals:%5C.) (Last_Name:equals:\.) We have a scenario where the Last Name may not be known for

• Announcing Early Access to "Zoho CRM for Everyone" — A new and exciting update to Zoho CRM

  We are delighted to announce an Early Access to Zoho CRM for Everyone— a truly democratic approach to managing a CRM, gift-wrapped in an exciting and intuitive user interface. Here, multiple teams across an organization can coordinate among each other

• Layout Rules Based on Task Owner

  We are managing our entire workflow on Zoho Projects From Deal to Shipment to Receiving Payment Now there is one thing that I would like to the ability is to Show or Hide different fields based on Task Owner For example for Shipment Tasks I would like

• Critical Feature Gaps Between Zoho Books and Zoho Finance Module in CRM

  We are extensively using Zoho Finance Module in our organization because of The Record Sharing feature provided by CRM something thats not possible in Books, we are able to limit what Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Estimates an employee can see based

• How to see exact clicked links in CRM from Zoho Campaigns ?

  Hi, I'm wondering how I can see the clicked links from an email sent from Campaigns when I'm in a campaign in the CRM module. I can see the number of clicks but I need the sales team to be able to see which link has been clicked by a prospect or contact.

• Important: Changes to Microsoft (Outlook) Bulk Email Sending

  Dear Marketers, We want to bring your attention to an important upcoming change announced by Microsoft (Outlook) that will impact users sending bulk emails to Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, and other Microsoft-hosted inboxes. This update focuses on strengthening

• Random Email Missing for specific domians

  Our mail service randomly fails to receive emails. When certain domains proactively send emails, our sales team reports that they haven’t received those messages from clients. This creates a financial risk for us in certain cases. We’ve already submitted

• If Problema Formula

  Ceil(Datecomp(${Seguimiento de Venta.Fecha de la proxima visita},Now())/1440) Tengo porblema al plantear el If Quiero que si el valor es dega

• Auto-Generate & Update Asset Serial Numbers using a custom function (Assets Module)

  Hello Team, I’ve been working on a script to automate one of our processes in Zoho FSM, and the core functionality has been successfully implemented. However, I’m encountering an issue related to serial number allocation, which is not working as expected.

• Important: Microsoft Outlook Bulk Email Updates

  Dear Marketers, We want to bring your attention to an important upcoming change announced by Microsoft (Outlook) that will impact users sending bulk emails to Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, and other Microsoft-hosted inboxes. This update focuses on strengthening

• Important: Changes to Microsoft (Outlook) Bulk Email Sending

  Dear Marketers, We want to bring your attention to an important upcoming change announced by Microsoft (Outlook) that will impact users sending bulk emails to Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, and other Microsoft-hosted inboxes. This update focuses on strengthening

• Citations Problem

  I'm having an odd problem with the "Add Citations" feature of Zoho Writer. When I add a citation using the "Fetch website details online" feature it works the first time I use it but if I try it a second time by clicking that link nothing at all happens

• Currency Field Does Not show commas upon entry - leading to inaccurate entries!

  Hello Zoho.. When our sales reps are entering deals and the profit/revenue it is difficult to accurately enter numbers with lots of zeros when there commas are NOT added until the record is saved. Could commas be added to this filed type as it is being

• Como puedo mover un prospecto "Cliente" de modulo

  Tengo un modulo llamado Seguimiento de Ventaa y otro llamado Cierre de Venta. Que cuando se marca como venta efectiva o venta no efectiva, pase a Cierre de Venta, Esto sin duplicarlo "Que esten en ambos modulos" ,Como esta en una base de datos "Excel"

• Zoho Projects Work Hours into Analytics

  Since the most recent update, my Analytics reports that were comparing Zoho Projects Work Hours (estimate) against Timesheet Hours are gone.  They were actually deleted.  When I try to recreate them in Analytics there is no "Work Hours" field.  Where

• Instant Sync of Zoho CRM Data?

  With how valuable Zoho Analytics is to actually creating data driven dashboards/reports, we are surprised that there is no instant or near instant sync between Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics. Waiting 3 hours is okay for most of our reports, but there are

• Enrich your CRM data and keep them updated

  You spend a lot of your time and efforts in generating quality leads for your business. While generating leads is a challenge in itself, the real deal begins when sales reps try to nurture these leads and convert them as customers. So how equipped is your sales team with information about your leads matters a lot.  For example, you might be using webforms to generate leads and collect customer information from your website. The lesser your webform fields are, the more your sign-ups right? From optimizing

• Quick Books to Zoho Analytics integration issue

  We have observed that few transactions are not flowing from Quick Books to Zoho Analytics when we integrate. There is no specific pattern observed. For Ex: In an accrual transaction a row is created for both Credit & Debit but for either of one row the

• Zoho Sign & Analytics

  Hi, Is it possible to import data from Sign into Analytics?

• Zoho Not Receiving Emails Sent via PHP mail() – Arrives at Gmail/Outlook, but Not Zoho

  I have a PHP script on my website that sends emails using the basic mail() function — not SMTP or wp_mail() from WordPress. The email sends successfully to other addresses I own (like Gmail and Outlook), but emails sent to my Zoho-hosted address are never

• Currency column showing $ symbol

  Hello, I'm importing data from Zoho Projects to Zoho Analytics and I was wondering why "Budget amount" column is set in dollars even if the "Currency" column = EUR: Is there a way to get the budget amount as "EUR" + nnnnnn? Thank you

• Record Locking for Meetings CRM

  How can I lock meetings module in CRM? For other modules I can use Record Locking or Client Script, to lock some fields But for Meetings Client Script and Record Locking are both absent We have a problem, where employees are able to change meeting time

• How to get the Logo

  Hii Can you please Help me the how to get the Company Setting Photo using the Deluge I will Write this Code But here Will Fetch the Photo_id but We needed the image curl1= "https://www.zohoapis.eu/crm/v7/org"; info curl1 ; getTemplate1 = invokeurl [ url

• Create Funnel to Track Email Outreach Conversion

  Hello, We would like to create a funnel that measures: N° of emails sent -> N° of emails opened -> N° of emails responded We would like to measure this email response conversion rate for each of our SDRs. We use the analytics tool of Zoho CRM and not

• Zoho CRM - Analytics: How Can I Set Monday as First Day of The Week?

  Hello, In the analytics section of our Zoho CRM (not Zoho Analytics), we would like to track our SDRs' outreach activity. However, it appears that Zoho CRM treats Sunday as the first day of the week for the "This Week" and "Previous Week" filters. How

• Data Model - CRM Adjusting size of Entity boxes

  (Sorry if duplicate, previous post seems to have disappeared.) I am viewing the Data Model for CRM, and while it is great to see such a model, there is an obstacle. Many of the entities show only a subset of their fields. The entity boxes have scrollbars

• The Status in Zoho Finance is inaccurate

  We have many overdue invoices, but when we try to filter it by Status Overdue in the Zoho Finance Module it shows it as none This is also creating a problem when I need to Create a Chart or KPI for overdue Invoices If I open the Invoice I can see the

• Zoho API integration - missing tables even after using MODULES.READ scope across all modules

  I tried to connect Zoho CRM to my Airbyte connector. I used clientid, client secret and the refresh token to do so. All I see is 77 tables available after connector. I miss few tables like lead agreement deal contact Can you please let me know, what scope

• In Zoho CRM, is it possible to transition from Approach 1 to Approach 3 based on the contract End Date? automatically

  In Zoho CRM, is it possible to transition from Approach 1 to Approach 3 based on the contract End Date? I have one issue between Approach 1 to Approach 3 there is another transition Approach 2 Iam faceing the issue if use the blue print API means i able

• subscribe email list for offer and updates is not working for zoho commerce

  my subscribing to email list is not working for offers and updates for my ecommerce website soignee it is saying please wait can anyone tell me the reason for this

• "In Zoho CRM, during the Blueprint transition to the QC stage, I want to make the 'Packing Proof' image field mandatory."

  @Dr Saurabh Joshi @Haiku Technical Support @Ishwarya SG @Sparrow Hill President @Hugh Marshall "In Zoho CRM, during the Blueprint transition to the QC stage, I want to make the 'Packing Proof' image field mandatory."

• Can Zoho CRM Emails be used in Zoho Analytics in any capacity?

  We're wanting to display details about Lead Activity in regular reports through Zoho Analytics but we're having difficulty integrating Emails at all. We'd like to be able to note when an email is received and when it is sent somewhere other than just

• Recurring Events Not Appearing in "My Events" and therefore not syncing with Google Apps

  We use the Google Sync functionality for our events, and it appears to have been working fine except: I've created a set of recurring events that I noticed were missing from my Google Apps calendar. Upon further research, it appears this is occurring

• Product Updates in Zoho Workplace applications | March 2025

  Hello Workplace Community, Let’s take a look at the new features and enhancements that went live across all Workplace applications this March. Zoho Mail Include original attachments in reply email When you Reply or Reply All to an email, original attachments

• Free Webinar Alert! Track, Bill, Get Paid: Streamline Finances with Zoho Books and Zoho Mail

  Hello Zoho Community! Struggling to keep track of invoices, payments, and client communication? We’ve got you covered! In this webinar, we’ll show you how Zoho Mail and Zoho Books work together to simplify invoicing, track payments, and streamline financial

• Bug in Kiosk Studio: GetRecords "Fields to Display" Change does not work

  I made a Change in our Kiosk GetRecords "Fields to Display". The change does not appear in the actual Kiosk. Neither on preview, nor on live usage. Configuration: Actual Kiosk:

• Field of Lookup Module 2 Way Dynamic Connection

  I have several lookup fields in my custom Module And I have added fields from lookup fields to my module In my account module, I have a field called Quarterly Revenue Forecast But this is only one way i-e the field value is only fetched during record

• payment gateway disabling in my ecommerce store

  hi i have disabled my payment gateway paytm from my website soigne from the backend but it is showing in my front end part when someone orders my products i want to remove it completelty so that it does not show in the front end part plz give me a suitable

• Next Page