Automation #13 - Auto assign tickets based on agent shift time

Automation #13 - Auto assign tickets based on agent shift time



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.
 
Business working in shifts need to adopt a different dynamic for customer support. For a seamless flow of tickets from one agent to another, it is important to avoid unnecessary delays that make angry customers. A simple two-step automation in Desk will let you ensure your incoming tickets are assigned to agents in the current shift. Giving your customer support teams to work in better co-ordination.
 
To achieve this first the ticket needs to be moved into the unassigned bucket. Then we use a custom function to achieve a round robin mechanism without load balancing to assign these tickets in the current shift.

As always, 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 end with '.ALL' and then include Desk.search.READ, Desk.products.READ
  6. Click Create and Connect
  7. In the page that appears, click Connect
Now move the tickets to the unassigned bucket, by follow 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.
    In the script window, input the Custom Function you find below:
    orgId = "paste orgId here";
    contactId = "paste contact ID here";
    TicketInfo = zoho.desk.getRecordById(orgId, "tickets", TicketID,"zohodesk");
    departmentId = TicketInfo.get("departmentId");
    agentId = TicketInfo.get("assigneeId");
    Param = Map();
    Param.put("departmentId", departmentId);
    Param.put("limit", "20");
    onlineagents = invokeurl
    [
    url: "    https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/onlineAgents?"
    type: GET
    parameters: Param
    connection:"zohodesk"
    ];
    if (onlineagents.notContains(agentId))
    {
    info zoho.desk.update(orgId, "tickets", TicketID,{"assigneeId":null},"zohodesk");
    } 

Note: navigate to Setup > Developer Space > API > get orgId and replace in custom function.


To achieve the round robin automation without load balancing, follow these steps:


Pre-requisite:
  1. In the Contacts Layout, create two fields:
    1. Add a multi line field and name it as Agent List
    2. Add a single line field and name it as Next Agent
  2. For the values, collect and save all the agentIds in the Agent List and the First Agent in the Next Agent Field. Please note the Agent List should be a comma separated values. 
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, 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";
contactId = "paste contact ID here";
TicketInfo = zoho.desk.getRecordById(orgId, "tickets", TicketID,"zohodesk");
departmentId = TicketInfo.get("departmentId");
agentId = TicketInfo.get("assigneeId");
Param = Map();
Param.put("departmentId", departmentId);
Param.put("limit", "20");
checkAvail = invokeurl
[
url :"https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/onlineAgents?departmentId=" + departmentId + "&include=mailStatus,phoneStatus,chatStatus,phoneMode,presenceStatus"
type :GET
connection:"zohodesk"
];
if (!checkAvail.toString().contains(agentId.toString()))
{
stopLoop = "false";
contactInfo = zoho.desk.getRecordById(orgId,"contacts",contactId);
allAgents = contactInfo.getJSON("cf").getJSON("cf_agent_list").toList();

elist = {"1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","10","11","12","13","14"};
for each  agent in elist
{
contactInfo = zoho.desk.getRecordById(orgId,"contacts",contactId,"zohodesk");
nextAgent = contactInfo.getJSON("cf").getJSON("cf_next_agent").toLong();
if(checkAvail.toString().contains(nextAgent.toString()) && stopLoop == "false")
{
assignTicket = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"tickets",TicketID,{"assigneeId":allAgents.get(allAgents.indexOf(nextAgent))},"zohodesk");
if(allAgents.indexOf(nextAgent).toLong() < allAgents.size().toLong() - 1)
{
updateContact = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"contacts",contactId,{"cf":{"cf_next_agent":allAgents.get(allAgents.indexOf(nextAgent) + 1)}},"zohodesk");
}
else
{
updateContact = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"contacts",contactId,{"cf":{"cf_next_agent":allAgents.get("0")}},"zohodesk");
}
stopLoop = "true";
}
else if(stopLoop == "false")
{
if(allAgents.indexOf(nextAgent).toLong() < allAgents.size().toLong() - 1)
{
updateContact = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"contacts",contactId,{"cf":{"cf_next_agent":allAgents.get(allAgents.indexOf(nextAgent) + 1)}},"zohodesk");
}
else
{
updateContact = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"contacts",contactId,{"cf":{"cf_next_agent":allAgents.get("0")}},"zohodesk");
}
}
}
}
Note: navigate to Setup > Developer Space > API > to get orgId and replace it in the custom function.
 


    • 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

    • Unify Overlapping Functionalities Across Zoho Products

      Hi Zoho One Team, We would like to raise a concern about the current overlap of core functionalities across various Zoho applications. While Zoho offers a rich suite of tools, many applications include similar or identical features—such as shift management,

    • Zoho Desk Domain mapping / Cloudflare CNAME not recognized

      Hello, my website is behind Cloudflare and SSL. From the Cloudflare control panel I added a CNAME record such as support.mydomain.com pointing to desk.cs.zohohost.com but I'm stuck with the message "Make sure you've mapped the CNAME entry..."

    • Power of Automation :: Quick way to associate your Projects with Zoho CRM

      A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and

    • Create an Eye-Catching Announcement Widget for Your Help Center

      Hello Everyone! In this week’s edition, let’s explore how to keep your customers updated with exciting news in the Help Center. See how ZylkerMobile wowed their customers by bringing updates right to their portal. ZylkerMobile, the renowned brand for

    • I want to add my other zoho account in same pc

      why does zoho restrict me doing many things as i also want to add my second mail account bit its not allowing me to do that

    • Search in Zoho Community Not Working

      I realize this is a bit of a meta topic, but the search for the various Zoho Communities appears to not be working. I'm under the impression that they run on some version of the Zoho Desk platform, so I'm posting this here.

    • Capture Stripe’s Customer ID

      Does anyone know of a way to capture Stripe’s customer ID that is created when the form/payment is processed? I would like to have the customer ID stored in our CRM so we could utilize in some custom functions down the road.

    • Custom Modules - Where are Comments??

      In the standard ticket module and in the tasks module, we have an interactive comment box that we can post important details/notes and can tag others if needed. Where is this functionality for Custom Modules? Ideally, custom modules would have very similar,

    • Dynamic Signature - Record owner

      Hi everyone, I’m using Zoho Writer merge templates from Zoho CRM and have two questions: Owner signature: How can I automatically insert the CRM record owner’s signature in the merged document? I’m not sure where this signature is stored or how to reference

    • PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (CORPORATE) INDIA - NOT AVAILABLE IN BANKING

      Dear sir, Kindly fix it. PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (INDIA) is available but PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (CORPORATE) is not available. Kindly enable this banking since we need to categorize the entries. Regards, Sanjay Jena email id/ user id : travewithmerchant@

    • Amazon invoice in Zoho Books

      I have just made my first few sales on Amazon India. Amazon Seller account generates invoices for the sales made on Amazon. These invoices are sent to customers also. Now when I was only making offline sales, I used to create Invoices in Zoho Book. Now

    • CUSTOM FUNCTION GIVE ERROR #EVAL!

      CUSTEM FUNCTION CREATE KYA ZOHOSHEET ME US FUNCTION KO USE KIYA LEKIN DATA TO SAHI HAI LAKIN DATA SHEET ME NAHI LAG LAHA HAI KRUPYA SOLVE KARE MY CODE IS float ADDTWO_TWO(float NO1, float NO2) { ADD = NO1 + NO2; return ADD; }

    • Zoho ShowTime: Certificates of Completion - Award your learners with a sense of achievement

      In our increasingly competitive market, professional trainers need to differentiate themselves if they are to survive. One way to do this is to focus on innovation and deliver an ideal learning experience. By developing a renowned certificate program that provides learners with a specialized skill set for a particular industry, both trainees and future prospects will recognize the trainer's leadership in that field. This can help with long-term growth, revenue generation, and even marketing and branding.

    • IMAP Migration from Gmail

      I have been trying to import my email from a Gmail server and keep receiving the following error. I have reduced the security, activated imap and no improvement. The link to the Google support item has not helped. Unable to connect to your account. Please

    • Your Incoming has been blocked and the emails will not be fetched in your Zoho account and POP Accounts Click here to get unblocked.

      When entering my account, this error is thrown at me, and I deleted a good part of my deleted messages, but I still can not unblock it, I would appreciate your help. reservas@lineasperutravel.com

    • Request for Creating Multiple Email Accounts on One Mobile Number

      Dear Zoho Team, I am planning to shift all my work-related communication to Zoho Mail because of its reliability and features. For my work, I need to create 3–4 separate email accounts for different purposes. Could you please confirm if it is possible

    • Signature issue

      Problem: The signature does not appear when replying or forwarding an email. solve issue: settintgs/Signature Check option place a signature above the content with quotation marks

    • mail admin not loading

      i am trying to login to mailadmin ... gears keeps rotating forever... its not a password issue whats so ever ... not cookies issues whatsoever from android app i can login but there so few things to do from there .. i changed ip address the same... i

    • Unify All Zoho Video Meeting Experiences into One Standardized Platform

      Hi Zoho Team, We would like to share an important user experience concern regarding the current state of video meeting functionality across the Zoho ecosystem. The Problem Within Zoho, there are multiple ways to initiate or schedule a video meeting: Zoho

    • Changing Account in Quote form does not update address information.

      I am trying to update the address information in a quote I've created. I corrected the address in the "Account" but that did not change in the quote. If I re-enter the Account Name in the Quote form, nothing updates. How do I fix this?

    • Zoho One Backup of entire account

      Hello, When using Zoho one is there a way to backup your entire account of all apps that you are using \ activively using in a single step or do you have to backup each applications data individually? Thanks,

    • ZIA in Zoho Cliq

      Is It possible to use the ZIA feature from Zoho Analytics in the Zoho Cliq?

    • Issue with “CC” and “Subject Details” of the initial mail when reply / replied all / forward using Zoho Mail Client (Desktop / Web Mail / Mobile App)

      It is observed that when I reply / reply all / forward a mail using Zoho Mail Client (Desktop / Web Mail / Mobile App), the “CC” and “Subject Details” are omitted from the mail which was replied/forwarded. However this is not the case with outlook mail

    • Unable to send Emails - 452 4.3.1 Temporary System Error

      Whene ever i request smtp server to send the email (without attachment). i recieve error "452 4.3.1 Temporary System Error"

    • I can't receive email

      I cannot receive any email sent to my Zoho email after the free upgrade plan trial is finished.

    • Help for the alisa adding

      Sorry, I would like to add a paypal alias on my domain email address. However, the system blocked it. How can I do it?

    • Problem with Writer and Workdrive

      Hi team, I’m the super admin for our Zoho One org. WorkDrive is active, and Zoho Docs is deprecated for our org. However, Zoho Writer cannot connect to WorkDrive at all — we’ve cleared cache, tried incognito, and restarted several times. I was able to

    • Lite plan attachment said 250mb but actually 25mb ?

      Lite plan attachment said 250mb but actually 25mb ? I can't attach over 25mb files, and can't receive mails has attached files over 25mb too

    • Zoho Books | Product updates | August 2025

      Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From the right sidebar where you can manage all your widgets, to integrating Zoho Payments feeds in Zoho Books, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience.

    • Constant color of a legend value

      It would be nice if we can set a constant color/pattern to a value when creating a chart. We would often use the same value in different graph options and I always have to copy the color that we've set to a certain value from a previous graph to make

    • Can no longer export as pdf

      In NOTEBOOK I am no longer able to export notes to pdfs as I used to be able to. When I hit that command it asks where I want to send it, but no matter what I chose there is no pdf attachment that shows up in order to send. Nothing happens.

    • Option to Customize Career Site URL Without “/jobs/Careers”

      Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the Career Site URL structure in Zoho Recruit. In the old version of the career site, our URL was simply: 👉 https://jobs.domain.com However, after moving to

    • Old vs New Value for Deleted Lookup Values

      Suppose the following scenario, where a value in a lookup is deleted: 1. User has countries form 2. Form A has a lookup to countries form 3. User selects Italy in Form A and saves it with the Italy ID 4. Form A report shows Italy 5. Italy is inadvertently

    • Desktop app doesn't support notecards created on Android

      Hi, Does anybody have same problem? Some of last notecards created on Android app (v. 6.6) doesn't show in desktop app (v. 3.5.5). I see these note cards but whith they appear with exclamation mark in yellow triangle (see screenshot) and when I try to

    • customize payment page

      Is there a way to customize, other than the theme colour, the payment page that customers are taken to from invoices? I can't seem to find a way. I just don't like the formatting of the current page and would like to make it look better. I've looked at

    • 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

    • Vertical images displayed as horizontal

      Some pictures that originally are in vertical position are displayed in horizontal after the upload. It seems that system rotates them by 90 degrees. How can I fix this issue?

    • Next Page