Discussions from Ask The Experts 19: Inside Zoho Desk Spring Release 2025 : Zia in Focus

Hello everyone,  
We had insightful discussions in both the sessions of Ask the Experts(ATE) 19, diving deep into engaging conversations around Zia and the spring release. Your enthusiastic participation and thought-provoking questions brought the sessions to life!  
In this post, we’re spotlighting the Q&A highlights focused exclusively on Zia.

1. Why are Zia Answer bots not performing as intended after integrating them with the internal Knowledge Base (KB)? Why is the bot unable to provide relevant answers when questions are asked in natural language?

Zia's Answer bot's response is based on how closely the user's query matches the content of your Knowledge Base(KB) articles. Zia operates using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology, which combines AI search and AI-generated responses. For AI search, we use AI training models specifically implemented for your knowledge base, while ChatGPT/Zia is used for generating the responses based on the service you select. Refer Setting up Generative AI Services: Zia or ChatGPT.

A. To improve this, we recommend following our best practices for training Zia Answer Bots. These include:
      i. Use simple and commonly-used phrases rather than jargons/isolated keywords in your help documents.
      ii. Include clear headings or sub-titles within your help documents to improve searchability and matching accuracy.
B. If you still do not receive relevant answers, we offer an improved Zia search powered by a new training model. If you would like to use it, please drop your request to support@zohodesk.com.

Additionally, we have introduced Generative AI powered by Zia, that is powered by open-source and run in Zoho's environment. To enable this, go to Setup(S) >> Zia >> Generative AI >> Services >> select Zia, under Choose service.  This is hosted entirely within Zoho's environment and is included at no additional cost and works with the Enterprise edition or Zoho bundles supporting Enterprise features.

 

2. How to optimize and incorporate the Zia bot within the Professional Edition?
Zia offers its complete range of functionalities exclusively within Zoho Desk Enterprise Edition and Zoho's bundle services.
However, there are specific Zia features available on the Professional Edition:
  a. Zia powered by ChatGPT: This integration is accessible within Zoho Desk, enabling responses based on open-domain data. In the Professional edition, Zia will  respond using information from the public domain, and the "Reply with Knowledge Base" feature is not available.

Additionally, Zia supports enhanced ticket handling through features like Ticket Summary, Zia Insights, Writing Assistance, and AI-generated content.
  b. Content Analysis: Launched in the recent spring update, this feature improves upon the existing spell-check capability and is accessible across all paid editions..

 

3. Is it possible to train Zia to provide answers based on resolutions from closed tickets rather than solely relying on the Knowledge Base?
Currently, Zia can only be trained using your Knowledge Base and not from tickets or their resolutions.
Tickets often contain sensitive customer data and personally identifiable information (PII), which should not be accessible to all agents or customers. Due to this privacy constraint, we currently do not train Zia using ticket data.
However, there's an option to add information from the Resolution under the Ticket tabs. While creating a resolution, the agent can select "Save And Add Article" to add the resolution to the Knowledge Base thereby giving Zia an option to train on the article. 
 

We plan to introduce a feature allowing agents to generate replies based on similar tickets. In this approach, Zia will reference similar tickets and their corresponding responses to suggest an answer. Instead of directly training Zia on potentially sensitive ticket data, this reply assistance feature will help agents by leveraging responses from comparable tickets.

4. Will Zoho offer additional AI models beyond Zia and OpenAI?  

Yes, we plan to introduce more AI models, primarily those hosted and managed by Zoho, considering the B2B nature of our services and ensuring data security and privacy.

5. How is data currently handled with OpenAI and Zia?  

Currently, when using OpenAI, fields marked as PII  are masked on the User Query or KB articles before sending them to Open AI for response generation alone and not for training. Similarly, Zia, powered by open-source models like Lama 3.1, uses data strictly for generation purposes. We've fine-tuned Lama 3.1 specifically for Zoho Desk requirements.

6. Which additional open-source models does Zoho plan to support in the future?  

Besides Llama, we plan to soon support additional models such as Qwen, and Mistral.

7. Will Zoho Desk allow users to integrate their own AI models?  

Yes, we are working towards creating a platform within Zoho Desk that allows users to bring their own open-source models or custom LLMs for various features.

 

8. How do we use the Zia GenAI-powered chat? Do we need to set it up with predefined answers?
To create an Answer bot, navigate to Setup > Zia > Answer Bot.The Answer Bot operates by learning from your existing knowledge base data. The Answer Bot leverages generative AI, which can either be powered by Zia using open-source technology or through OpenAI's ChatGPT integration, for which you would need an API key. In our recent spring release, we extended the availability of the Answer Bot across instant messaging (IM) channels. You can now deploy the generative AI-powered Answer Bot, trained specifically on your knowledge base, across IM channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, and your own website. You can also deploy the Answer Bot through ASAP within your Mobile App (SDK). The AI-powered Self-Service with Answer Bot can be powered with Zia(Llama) or ChatGPT.

9. I'm using Zia to predict the"Issue Theme" field automatically, and it shows as successful. However, when I open a ticket, it doesn't suggest any value for me to confirm. Why is this happening?
Regarding Zia's field predictions, there are two available options:
     i. Auto-update predicted value.
     ii. Allow agents to confirm the predicted values manually ("Let me confirm predicted value manually" option).
        To enable Field predictions, navigate to Setup (S) >> Zia >> Field Predictions >> Create A Field Prediction. In the Field Update mode field, you can choose to  predict the field automatically or confirm the predicted value manually.
If you're using the "Let me confirm" option, you need to manually confirm the predicted values. To do this, navigate to the Field Prediction section within the Ticket Detail View. You'll find a wand (star) icon in the sidebar (ibar). Click this icon to view the predicted values from Zia. Here, you can either confirm or reject the suggested value, and your choice will help improve Zia's training data.
We're actively working on integrating this feature directly into the ticket properties, so that Zia's recommended values will appear directly within the field itself.

 

10. Does Zia learn from our responses to tickets as well?
Currently, Zia does not learn from the responses you send. It does not have the capability to learn from the messages you type and send. We are working on expanding the capability for Zia to respond in the business tone based on the custom instructions added by agents for each feature.

11. Do I need to upgrade all licenses to Enterprise to use the new Zia LLM if I'm currently on Zoho One?
Yes, you have to upgrade Zoho Desk to the Enterprise edition to use Zia powered by open-source models. Zia is available by default in the Enterprise plan and all Zoho bundles supporting the Enterprise edition of Zoho Desk.
 

12. How does Zia determine that an agent needs to intervene in a ticket? Does it instruct the user to contact support, or can it notify agents to own the ticket?
Currently, Zia cannot request an agent to intervene in a ticket.
However, we have a feature called Field Predictions, which uses your historical ticket data to predict and assign ticket ownership. When a customer replies, Zia analyzes the customer's message and, based on its training data, assigns the ticket to an appropriate agent who has previously handled similar conversations. Currently, we do not have a feature that proactively prompts an agent to intervene.

13. While managing multiple departments, can we enable Zia Reply Assistance for just one department?
Currently, the Zia Reply Assistance is configured at the organization level, meaning it applies to all the departments. However, we are actively working on making it department-specific.

14. As I understand, does Zia use ChatGPT for translation purposes?
No, Zoho uses its own translation model. In our recent spring release, we introduced a feature called Writing Assistance. This feature allows you to draft replies in your preferred language (for example, English) and translate them into other languages like Spanish or Italian using Zia. In this scenario, Zia does not utilize ChatGPT. However, for summarizing content or providing reply assistance, we rely primarily on ChatGPT to generate responses directly in languages such as Spanish or Italian.
Additionally, Zia uses open-source models without any associated charges.

 

15. How can we utilize AI to analyze data and generate reports?
Currently, Zia is not available for the Reports module. We do have Zia dashboards to monitor Zia's performance, however, we are developing a feature that will allow you to interact with Zia conversationally to create reports on the go.
If you have a subscription to Zoho Analytics, you can already leverage AI to generate reports. Zoho Analytics integrates with Zoho Desk, allowing you to ask questions in natural language and receive AI-generated reports.

16. Can we obtain customer tone reports from Zia Insights?
Currently, Zia Insights, powered by open-source models, is in its initial phase and does not yet support sending insights directly to reports.
Another way to obtain customer tone reports from Zia insights is using Zia API. Identify the tone and record it on a custom field. Generate reports based on the custom field to get insights on customer tones. We are working on this capability to send Zia Insights results from individual tickets to reports and dashboards. 

17. Could you please clarify how Zoho ensures the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in relation to data retention and Zia’s learning processes?
Regarding data retention, Zoho does not retain your data for training the generative AI models. Zia and ChatGPT utilize your data temporarily for generating responses. For other features, such as field predictions, all data remains within our Zoho ecosystem and does not share data externally for training purposes. Zoho complies with GDPR and HIPAA and sends data to Open AI only after masking Personally Identifiable information.

18. What permissions can be configured when creating knowledge base articles for use with the Answer Bot?  
The Answer Bot operates on two channels: one for agents and the other for customers, and uses permission-based generation. When creating knowledge base articles, you can set permissions such as "All Users," "Agents Only," or "Registered Users." Agents accessing the Answer Bot through the Ticket Detail view will have access to all articles, while end-users accessing via ASAP will only see articles marked for "All Users." Currently, the "Registered Users" permission is supported only for agents. Based on these permissions, the Answer Bot determines which articles it can use to generate responses.
We also have a private beta available for a new AI training model: New Retrieval System. If you're interested, please email us your details, and we can enable this feature to further enhance your Answer Bot's accuracy.

 

19. I currently have Generative AI enabled. What is the difference between ChatGPT and Zia? Should I switch to Zia under Generative AI?
ChatGPT is an integration with OpenAI, where you need your own API key and add credits to your wallet. With ChatGPT, your Zoho Desk data is sent outside Zoho servers to OpenAI for generating responses. On the other hand, Zia is powered by open-source language models, such as Llama, and your data remains within Zoho's servers.
If you switch to Zia under Generative AI, it will be included in your existing Enterprise plan without any additional cost. Zia also offers greater contextual intelligence regarding your data. For example, ChatGPT supports summarizing only up to five conversations per ticket, whereas Zia can summarize up to 30 conversations. Refer here for details. 

Here are the recordings from our Ask the Experts 19 sessions: 

ATE19 Zoho Desk Spring Release 2025 Session 1 | ATE 19 Zoho Desk Spring Release 2025 Session 2

Stay tuned on the Ask the Experts Community for more updates as we gear up for the upcoming sessions focussed exclusively on Zia and AI in Zoho Desk. 
Regards, 
Lydia | Zoho Desk

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• Sticky Posts

• 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

• 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.

• Ask the Experts 5: Online Q&A on Zoho Desk Extensibility

  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.

• Ask the Experts 4: A 5 hour online Q&A on agent productivity

  Welcome to Ask the expert 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.

• Ask the Experts 3: A 5 hour online Q&A on reports and dashboards

  Welcome to Ask the expert 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.

• Recent Topics

• Happiness Feedback Report

  Hello,  I want to see all the feedback, which has been left on ratings in a report for all past tickets. Unfortunately, the pre-built happiness dashboard only lets you go back one month. When I create a report, I cannot add the column 'feedback' and I

• Interest on late payments

  Is this ever going to be implemented on Zoho Books?  It's particularly annoying as its been working so well on Zoho invoice for the last year or so.

• Awful audio quality

  Hi guys I'm using Zoho Cliq (paid) with my team (remote team : France, Madagascar and Tunisia). Unfortunately, we encounter issues everytime on audio call (and more when we use screenshare) with sound quality, audio lag, etc. We spend loooot of time to

• How do I see what participants see when I am app sharing in a meeting?

  How do I see what participants see when I am app sharing in a meeting? In my view, I only see myself as active, but not the app (keynote on mac)

• Items: Custom lookup field with values from a custom module?

  Use case: I have created a new custom module called Makes to hold the names of thousands of different manufacturers. I am trying to create a custom lookup field for Items that uses the custom module. I am not able to select the custom module for the lookup

• Canva Integration

  Hello! As many marketing departments are streamlining their teams, many have begun utilizing Canva for all design mockups and approvals prior to its integration into Marketing automation software. While Zoho Social has this integration already accomplished,

• Clone Entire Zoho Boooks Organization, including all transactions for testing & training

  Can Zoho Books support help with direct cloning of entire Zoho Books & Inventory Organization? including all transactions, just like a copy & paste or disk cloning. Is this possible?

• Can't change login email address in zoho books.

  Hello, Does anyone have any idea how to change login email in zoho books?

• Zoho Site Vs. Wordpress website - which is better ?

  Hi I  have a Wordpress website  hosted at hostgator.   I use zoho CRM  for leads , customers, scheduling , etc.  I am considering moving my website to zoho sites.  What are advantages  and disadvantages to using zoho site compared to a wordpress website? On a scale of 1 to 10 ,  how good is zoho sites?    zoho sites with being found by potential customer searching the web for products , services? I sell and service business phone systems into local markets in California. My goal would be to increase

• Bank Reconciliation Reports Do Not Have the Requisite Information Needed for a Proper Bank Rec Report

  Basic accounting practices for bank reconciliations dictate that bank reconciliation reports have the following components: Date or Period of Reconciliation: The report should clearly state the date for which the reconciliation is being performed, typically

• How to record chargeback in zoho books?

  Hi all, Does anyone know how to record a chargeback transaction in zoho books? Thanks, Mo

• workflow fields before assigning the ticket when the client opens the case by email.

  I want to create a workflow that forces the technician to complete the mandatory fields before assigning the ticket when the client opens the case by email.

• Answer to wrong email address

  Hi Everybody! When we receive a customer request (let's call him Peter) on our info@abc.com mail address, we manually forward the email message to Zoho desk (support@). Of course, sender of that message is info@abc.com and Zoho opens a new ticket with "info" as the contact name and info@abc.com as email address (nobody can blame Zoho for doing that). We then edit the ticket and fill in contact name (Peter), account name (Peter Ltd) and email address (peter@mail.com) of the customer. When we answer

• Zoho Desk nog sending true Gmail

  Desk isn't sending our outgoing e-mail anymore. We can still receive e-mails but not send. I reconnected the email again and disabled the 2FA (to test). If I choose the Desk generated outgoing email address it works just fine. Please assist.

• Add Hebrew Language Support for Zia Auto-Tag in Zoho Desk

  Dear Zoho Desk Team, We hope this message finds you well. We are currently utilizing the Zia Auto-Tag feature in Zoho Desk, which has proven to be quite valuable for categorizing and organizing tickets based on their content. However, we’ve encountered

• Footer: Zoho make a big downgrad with new footer option

  Every post about the new footer function is negative and all say: its a big downgrade. The idea behind this new function was: Make it more simple. Great, now its faster and more simple to add an footer. But nobody from zoho team think about the more bigger

• Need help with Zoho Billing/Subscriptions API

  Hello, We need help in figuring out which APIs to use in the following scenarios to process customer payments and manage subscriptions. When 14 days trial period is over and subscription status in Zoho changes to "TRIAL_EXPIRED" , customer comes back

• Multiple Filters? Question answered many times, but never satisfactorily

  Hi. I love Zoho Creator.   However, I would like to know more about creating a view that allows users to easily filter the records, using several filters at once.   I know many people have asked this before, and mostly the answer given is "Use the search function, and search in each column for the required parameter"   However, this is not a satisfactory solution for a number of reasons:   1) You have to know the exact value to search for (sometimes the value might be a two or three word answer)

• Sendmail with filtered report as attachment - Best practice ?

  Salut, I am scripting sendmail workflows with reports attached. I need those reports to be filtered. For example, a 10 subrows order would have 3 different suppliers, and I want those 3 suppliers to receive a copy of the order with only the subrows related

• Issues w/ Screen Share & Accessing via Mobile Web Browsers

  1. How do I share my screen while still seeing video of myself & paticipants without rebroadcasting the participant video feeds? All other video conferencing tools provide this feature so not sure if it's a setting I'm missing or a programming oversight. 2. How do I know what screen/application I'm sharing? After selecting the screen/application a notice appears however it is appears on the wrong screen leading to confusion about what participants can actually see.  3. How to I allow participants

• Time Limited Coupon or Expiring Link in Workflows

  I would like to see a feature where I can include a time limited link in Workflow Campaigns. For example: I could link to a sales page with a discount and set the link to expire after 24h. The link would be generated by Campaigns for each campaign sent

• Option to duplicate views ( ticket and others)

  Hello, I would like to ask for the option to duplicates views, especially ticket views. Often we need to use the views for very particular information, including filtering out custom data. It would be great to allow duplicate an existing View, so it can

• Option to copy/duplicate Custom Ticket views

  Hi Team, Hope you're all well. I was wondering if you would consider a feature on Custom Ticket views: The option to copy or duplicate an existing custom ticket view It would help tremendously for views with a lot of criteria that could be reused multiple

• Democratize data visualization across your organization using Chart View in CRM

  Hello everyone - As part of CRM for Everyone, we've introduced a whole new set of features. This announcement will focus on one of them: Chart View. Why did we add this view? To put insights directly in the hands of the people closest to the action. Here's

• Will Zoho implement DANE?

  I know that setting up DNSSEC and DANE is quite a risky process. But it will improve email security. With DANE, a server can verify a SSL certificate before connecting to the server. There are some RFC related to DANE which can be found here: DNS-based

• How do I stop Notifications in Mail?

  How does one turn off notifications for our Mail accounts? Why is an answer to such a basic question impossible to find in this community forum? Also, could you point us to the most current user guide so we don't have to spend time asking such fundamental

• Turning off self view in Zoho Meeting

  Hi Is it possible to turn off/hide self view in meetings?  Cant see any options for it. Thanks

• Is it possible to hide self view in Zoho Meetings

  Hi - I want to hide my camera view when conducting meetings in Zoho Meetings.  Most of my meetings are one to one with clients & I prefer to focus on them them on the screen? I've searched and cant find any options for this? Thanks Ro

• Darshan Hiranandani : Can I hide my self-view in Zoho Meetings, and if so, how?

  Hi everyone, I’m Darshan Hiranandani, looking for a way to hide my self-view during meetings in Zoho Meetings. I find that seeing my own video feed can be distracting, and I’d like to know if there’s an option to hide or disable it. Could anyone provide

• mx.zoho.com servers blacklisted by UCEPROTECTL3

  Hello, An MXtoolbox check for my domain showed that UCEPROTECTL3 has blacklisted all three of the zoho MX servers. I am unable to sign up for Zeptomail service for our company transactional emails until this issue is resolved. But this is out of my hands.

• How to integrate Zoho CRM, Zoho Forms and a WIX Web Site

  Attached video demonstrates how to use Zoho Forms included in Zoho One, to design a Contact Us form to be embedded into a WIX web site and integrated into Zoho CRM.

• Events on Calendar disappeared

  hello, Events (e.g. repeating events) disappeared on my calendar for Wed, Oct 2, which led to missing some meetings on that day. What exactly is wrong? This is not the first time this is happening! Please, fix this calendar issue.

• FICHIER FEC - ZOHO BOOKS

  J'ai testé le fichier FEC, disponible depuis quelques semaines dans zoho books pour les sociétés françaises. C'est une grande avancée car nous allons enfin pouvoir importer facilement (sans avoir à réaliser de complexes rapports dans zoho analytics) la

• ERROR CODE :550 - Your message to <xxx@xxxxx.xx> was classified as SPAM.

  Hey Team, I'm using Zoho Mail with my own domain, and from some of the recipients I'm receiving following error message: ERROR CODE :550 - Your message to <xx@xxxx.xx> was classified as SPAM. Please add more content, cut down on HTML links, use fewer

• Allow 3 Subforms in a custom module

  We have many custom modules in CRM and every now and then we need more than 2 subforms for a module We are on Zoho One Plan Can you please increase the subfrom limit from 2 to 3 Our current workaround is to create a solution in Zoho Creator and embed

• Time Zones

  Hello, Is there a way to add a time zone in a Deal related to "bid due"? We work on projects across the world and even though some things adjust to my own time zone, I have found that any dates we manually enter - Bid Date, RFI Due Date, etc. do not appear

• Create Zoho Project and assign a contact without account

  I’m trying to automate the creation of new projects in Zoho Projects using Zoho Flow. In my setup, I often need to assign projects to individual contacts who don’t have an associated Account/Company in Zoho CRM—just a personal contact. When I create a

• Update main form's Lookup value following the completion of a Subform within that same main form

  Hi, It's quite a simple request but I'm struggling with getting the deluge to work smoothly. In short, I have a main form (Place_New_Order). Public users will be able to use it. They have a subform to complete with their contact details etc (name, email,

• ZOHO LOGIN PROBLEM

  Hello, my name is Bernice. One of the users in our company is having a problem logging into their system. They had two-factor authentication on their phone but unfortunately, they lost that phone. Now when trying to login to their Zoho people they are

• New in CRM: Dynamic filters for lookup fields

  Last modified on Oct 28, 2024: This feature was initially available only through Early Access upon request. It is now available to all users across all data centers, except for the IN DC. Users in the IN DC can temporarily request access using this form

• Next Page