Lifecycle Reports
From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports
A lifecycle report captures and visualises the sequential states that a ticket undergoes across its lifespan.
For instance, when a customer submits a support ticket for a faulty product, it is initially marked as Open. It transitions to In Progress when an agent begins addressing it, may be placed on On Hold while awaiting confirmation from the warehouse, and ultimately concludes as Completed once the replacement is dispatched. It is then moved to Closed status after the issue is resolved.
The lifecycle report provides details on the duration of each phase, the person responsible for managing it, and the date it advanced to the next stage. It tracks when and how long each ticket stays in a specific status. It can also consider other factors, like the person assigned or the ticket category. Most ticketing systems offer detailed filtering. This lets organizations look at lifecycle metrics by agent and team.
What does it track?
- Request ID: Zoho Desk identifies and distinguishes tickets using a unique reference number called a ticket ID.
- Event start time: The time when the ticket status begins.
- Event end time: The end time of the ticket status
- Status updated from: The initial status of the ticket.
- Status updated to: The current ticket status.
- Duration: The duration between the transition.
- Duration (Business Hours): The duration between the transition in business hours.
- Modified by: The agent who modified the request.
What are ticket-based reports?
Ticket-based reports are summaries created from the data collected in a help desk ticketing system. These reports focus on different aspects of ticket management and give insights into how customer support requests are handled and resolved. They usually include metrics like ticket volume trends, response times, resolution times, ticket statuses, agent and team performance, and customer satisfaction scores.
Types of lifecycle reports
Status transition: A simple solution to reduce delays
In a streaming service company, the status lifecycle report identifies tickets that remain in the Pending Verification status for an excessive amount of time, which can negatively impact user satisfaction. For instance, a user reporting an issue with their subscription may be stuck in Pending Verification while awaiting a response from the billing team.
By analyzing the lifecycle report, the company discovers that the delay arises from inefficient communication between the support and billing departments. To address this, they can implement automated notifications or escalation measures to alert the support team if a ticket remains in the Pending Verification status for an extended period. This approach will expedite resolution times and lead to enhanced user satisfaction.
Agent transition: Enhancing agents' accountability
In a travel agency, tickets concerning flight changes often require collaboration among different agents, such as those handling customer service and ticketing. By using the agent lifecycle report, managers can assess how long each agent spends on flight-related tickets.
For example, if an agent consistently takes longer to resolve these tickets than their colleagues, this data helps identify potential weaknesses in their process. The manager can then provide focused training through an internal knowledge base or redistribute tickets more evenly using assignment algorithms. By optimizing the distribution of work and offering targeted support, agents can improve their ticket handling efficiency, reduce delays, and resolve requests more swiftly.
Team transition: Supporting cross-team collaboration
A food delivery service frequently encounters tickets transitioning between the Customer Support and Delivery teams, especially for order-related inquiries. By analyzing the team lifecycle report, they can identify how long tickets linger with each team and determine whether delays stem from the Delivery team.
To address this, the company can implement time-based automation protocols that activate when tickets move to the Delivery team. This will facilitate quicker acknowledgement and necessary actions, minimize resolution times, and significantly improve the customer experience.
Department transition: Simplifying complex issues
A university admissions office handles support tickets that involve multiple departments, including Admissions, Financial Aid, and Academic Advising. By utilizing the department lifecycle report, they find that tickets regarding financial aid often take longer than anticipated during the transition from Admissions to Financial Aid.
The report uncovers that inefficient handoffs between these departments are contributing to the delays. To enhance this process, the university can establish automation protocols that streamline information transfer between departments, thus minimizing bottlenecks and ensuring that all essential details are passed along seamlessly.
Components
Status transitions
This tracks the movement of tasks, tickets, or items through various defined states, such as New, In Progress, On Hold, and Resolved. Watching these status changes helps managers understand the process flow, identify where delays occur, and confirm that each phase is being handled appropriately.
Time spent per status
This measures how long an item stays in each status before moving on. Calculating the time spent reveals bottlenecks, identifies inefficient stages, and guides efforts to shorten cycle times and accelerate overall resolution or delivery.
Agent and team analysis
This component breaks down performance metrics for individual agents and teams. It provides insights into productivity, workload distribution, and effectiveness. It helps with targeted training, balanced workload allocation, and recognizing top performers within the lifecycle.
Work schedule adjustments
Using lifecycle data, this part checks if current staffing and schedules match workload patterns. It helps optimize shifts and resource availability. This helps avoid both over-staffing and under-staffing, ensuring demand is met and wait times are reduced.
Report and visualization
This presents the collected data through detailed reports and graphs, such as charts and dashboards. This makes complex lifecycle information easy to understand and share. Visuals help identify trends, issues, and opportunities for improvement quickly and effectively.
Benefits
Identify workflow bottlenecks
Lifecycle reports reveal the stages or processes where delays or inefficiencies occur. By pinpointing these bottlenecks, organizations can investigate causes and implement targeted improvements to keep work flowing smoothly and avoid stagnation.
Measure team performance
These reports provide precise data on how teams or individuals are performing against defined metrics such as ticket resolution, project progress, or task completion rates. They enable team leads to assess productivity objectively, identify high performers, and address performance gaps with evidence-based insights.
Improve resolution time
Tracking the lifecycle of tasks or tickets highlights opportunities to shorten turnaround times, such as by automating repetitive steps, reallocating workload, or streamlining approval chains. Accelerating resolution improves customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Support continuous improvement
Lifecycle reporting creates a feedback loop where ongoing data collection drives iterative refinement. Organizations use insights from past performance to refine processes, adopt best practices, and innovate workflows that adapt to changing demands and evolving goals.
Optimize resource allocation
With clear visibility into workload distribution, resource utilization, and process timing, lifecycle reports enable managers to assign the right people, apply the right technology, and allocate their budget where those resources are needed most.
Takeaway
Using a lifecycle report in a help desk ticketing system is essential for operational success. It offers a clear, data-driven view of each stage in the ticket process, from issue intake to resolution. This enables teams to identify delays and reduce resolution times.
The insights from the report support better resource allocation and enable help desks to provide faster and more consistent support experiences. This leads to higher customer satisfaction and boosts productivity and efficiency in a scalable way.
Stay tuned for more articles in our Desk Reports series.
Regards,
Kavya Rao
The Zoho Desk Team
Managing a help desk involves complex responsibilities, such as identifying bottlenecks, minimising errors, and evaluating team performance for seamless service delivery. To do this effectively, access to comprehensive analytics and real-time insights is crucial. Zoho Desk streamlines these tasks by also providing detailed analytics and live reports through the Radar app, allowing managers to make informed decisions anytime, anywhere. Download now!
Also read:
Time-based reports
Agent-based reports
Topic Participants
Kavya Rao Addepalli
Sticky Posts
Zoho Desk Partners with Microsoft's M365 Copilot for seamless customer service experiences
Hello Zoho Desk users, We are happy to announce that Zoho Desk has partnered with Microsoft's M365 to empower customer service teams with enhanced capabilities and seamless experiences for agents. Microsoft announced their partnership during their keynoteWhatsApp pricing changes: Pay per message starting July 1, 2025
Starting July 1, 2025, WhatsApp is shifting from conversation-based pricing to per-message billing. That means every business-initiated message you send will count. Not just the first one in a 24-hour window. Pricing updates on the WhatsApp Business PlatformLive Webinar - Work smarter with Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace integration
Hello customers! Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace are coming together for a webinar on 14th May, 2024. Zoho Workplace is a suite of productivity apps for email, chat, docs, calls, and more at one single place. Zoho Desk is closely integrated with a few toolsApple iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 updates for Zoho Desk users
Hello Zoho Desk users! Apple recently announced the release of iOS 17 and iPad OS 17. These latest OS updates will help you stay productive and efficient, through interactive and seamless user experiences. Zoho Desk has incorporated the updates to helpZoho Desk Cheat Sheet For The Year-End
Check out these Zoho Desk best practices to end this year on a high and have a great one ahead! #1 Set Business (Holiday) Hours - If you have limited working hours, please make sure you restrict your business hours or set them as holidays for the coming days. Let your customers know when you will, and won't, be available. #2 Update the Annual Holiday List - Check the holidays for the new year and update the holiday schedule. Usually, holidays from the current year will be carried over for the next
Recent Topics
Automation #4 - Auto Delete Tickets based on Rules
This is a monthly series in which 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. Unwanted tickets spammingZoho Community Digest — Enero 2026
¡Hola, comunidad! 🌟 Aquí os traemos las novedades más interesantes de Zoho durante este mes de enero, incluyendo actualizaciones de productos, integraciones y un recordatorio sobre los workshops certificados que vuelven a España. 🎓 Eventos y ComunidadAutomation #3 - Auto-sync email attachments to 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. Most of our customers use emailAutomation #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 optimizeAutomation #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 optimizeAutomation #14: Capture Jira Issue Key/ID in a Ticket Custom Field
Hello Everyone! This month's edition brings you a custom function to consolidate your records associated with Jira integration. Jira integration enables support engineers and R&D units to collaborate seamlessly on feature development, product improvement,Automation #16: Automate Ticket Reopening on Scheduled Timestamp
Hello Everyone! This edition uncovers the option to schedule reopening a ticket automatically. Zylker Finance tracks insurance policyholder activities through Zoho Desk. For policyholders who pay monthly premiums, tickets are closed upon payment completion.Automation#19:Auto-Close Tickets Upon Task Completion
Hello Everyone! We’re excited to bring you another custom function this week. In this edition, we’ll show you how to automatically close tickets when all associated tasks are marked as completed. Let’s see how ZylkaPure, a leading water filter company,Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts
Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have TerenceImproved UX design for Projects CRM integration
The current integration embeds the entier projects inteface into the CRM this is confusing and allows users to get lost. For example as a user i navigate to an account and go down to the related projects list and want to get information about a specificLink Purchase Order to Deal
Zoho Books directly syncs with contacts, vendors and products in Zoho CRM including field mapping. Is there any way to associate vendor purchase orders with deals, so that we can calculate our profit margin for each deal with connected sales invoicesTransformer vos stocks en décisions intelligentes avec Zoho Inventory et Zoho Analytics
Zoho Inventory permet de suivre facilement les niveaux de stock et d’anticiper les restockages. Pour de nombreuses entreprises, cela suffit à gérer les opérations au quotidien. Mais à mesure que l’activité se développe, cette clarté peut commencer à montrerZoho Commerce - Poor Features Set for Blogging
Hi Zoho Commerce team, I'm sure you will have noticed that I have been asking many questions about the Blogs feature in Commerce. I thought that it would be useful if I share my feedback in a constructive way, to highlight the areas which I feel needSecurity Enhancements | Migrate to the Updated Policies
Hello everyone, Zoho Directory's security policies have been updated and reorganized into three new policies with features that enhance the overall organization security. These policies provide a stronger and more secure sign-in methods and improve theBring Zoho Shifts Capabilities into Zoho People Shift Module
Hello Zoho People Product Team, After a deep review of the Zoho People Shift module and a direct comparison with Zoho Shifts, we would like to raise a feature request and serious concern regarding the current state of shift management in Zoho People.Facturation électronique 2026 - obligation dès le 1er septembre 2026
Bonjour, Je me permets de réagir à divers posts publiés ici et là concernant le projet de E-Invoicing, dans le cadre de la facturation électronique prévue très prochainement. Dans le cadre du passage à la facturation électronique pour les entreprises,Quick Create needs Client Script support
As per the title. We need client scripts to apply at a Quick Create level. We enforce logic on the form to ensure data quality, automate field values, etc. However, all this is lost when a user attempts a "Quick Create". It is disappointing because, fromHow to block a WhatsApp user for sending spam
Is there a way to block those whatsapp users that just come to play and annoy our service, they also spam us. We have a waba service with sales iqInquiry regarding auto-save behavior for Zoho Sign Embedded Sending
Dear Zoho Support Team, I am currently integrating Zoho Sign's Embedded Sending functionality using iframes on my website. I would like to know if there is a way to ensure that the document state (including any added fields) is automatically saved asIntroducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone
Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform toAutomation#17: Auto-Create Tasks in Zoho Projects Upon Ticket Creation in Zoho Desk
Hello Everyone, This edition delivers the solution to automatically create a task in Zoho Projects when a ticket is created in Zoho Desk. Zylker Resorts uses Zoho Desk for bookings and handling guest requests. Zylker resorts outsources cab bookings toAutomation#20 : Auto-Add Ticket Tags based on Keywords
Hello Everyone! Welcome to unveiling custom functions on our Community series. This week's post lets you add tags to your tickets automatically based on the keywords in the ticket subject and the ticket thread. Discover how this custom function helpsAutomation#21: Track Ticket Transfers Across Departments
Hello Everyone! With Halloween just around the corner, we'd like to let you know the Zoho Desk team is always there to sweep away your customer service troubles! This week, we’re excited to introduce a custom function that tracks tickets moved betweenEmail Integration - Zoho CRM - OAuth and IMAP
Hello, We are attempting to integrate our Microsoft 365 email with Zoho CRM. We are using the documentation at Email Configuration for IMAP and POP3 (zoho.com) We use Microsoft 365 and per their recommendations (and requirements) for secure email we haveHomepage not assignable to group
MS Teams for daily call operations
Hello all, Our most anticipated and crucial update is finally here! Organizations using Microsoft Teams phone system can now integrate it effectively with Zoho CRM for tasks like dialling numbers and logging calls. We are enhancing our MS Teams functionalityAutomation#22 Track Ticket Duration at Specific Status
Hello Everyone! Welcome back to the Community Learning Series! Today, we explore how Zylker Techfix, a gadget servicing firm, boosted productivity by tracking the time spent at a particular ticket status in Zoho Desk. Zylker Techfix customized Zoho Desk’sAutomation#23: Automate Guided Conversations in Zoho Desk with Business Hours
Hello Everyone, This week's edition introduces a custom function designed to automate Guided Conversations in Zoho Desk, based on your business hours. With this feature, you can align the bot's behavior with your business schedule, ensuring a smooth andAddress changes in quote form
When entering a quote, the first piece of information required is the Account, which properly populates the billing and shipping address fields. Then I use the lookup function to select a contact, and when I do, the billing and shipping addresses areAutomation#24: Auto-Update custom field from Accounts to Tickets
Hello Everyone! Welcome back to the Community Learning Series! This episode dives into how Zylker Techfix streamlines account-related ticket references. Previously, employees had to manually check account details to retrieve specific customer information,Kaizen #227 : Client Script Support for List Page (Canvas)
Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. In today's post lets see how Client Script can be used in Canvas List Page to mask sensitive information from specific roles and add colors to Canvas List Page records based on custom criteria.This useImplement Date-Time-Based Triggers in Zoho Desk
Dear Zoho Desk Support Team, We are writing to request a new feature that would allow for the creation of workflows triggered by specific date-time conditions. Currently, Zoho Desk does not provide native support for date-time-based triggers, limitingAutomation#25: Move Tickets to Unassigned When the Owner Is Offline
Hello Everyone, Welcome to this week's Community Series! 'Tis the holiday season—a time when work often takes a brief pause. The holiday spirit is in full swing at Zylker Techfix too, with employees taking some well-deserved time off. During this period,Automation#27: Retain Ticket Owner on Moved Tickets
Hello Everyone! This week, we present to you a custom function that retains the ticket owner when a ticket is moved from one department to another. Here’s more to help you understand the custom function: At Zylker Techfix, Alex, the Support Engineer managesAutomation#28 Notify Agents on Article Expiry
Hello Everyone! This week, we’re bringing you a feature that notifies your team when articles in the Knowledge Base are set to expire to keep your content relevant and helpful for customers. The Zoho Desk's Knowledge Base is an asset for customers toAutomation#29 Retain ticket status on moved tickets
Hello Everyone, Hear out Zylker Techfix’s Success Story on Smoother Ticket Transitions! Zylker Techfix, a gadget servicing firm committed to quick repairs and timely deliveries, faced a challenge when ticket statuses changed automatically while movingAutomation#32:Auto Add New Portal Users to the Help Center User Groups
Hello Everyone, Introducing a custom function that automates the process of adding new portal users to Help Center user groups, making user management effortless! By default, Zoho Desk allows you to assign new portal users to groups manually. But withAutomation#34 : Automate Email threading for Ticket notification
Hello Everyone, It's been a while since we've presented an automation. However, our community has been buzzing with ideas, use cases, and discussions with our community experts and Ask the Experts session. So, here we are again, presenting an automationAutomation#35 : Auto-Add Comments under the Owner's Name in Tickets via Macros
Hello Everyone, This week's custom function provides simple steps to configure a Macro for adding comments to tickets with the name of the Comment owner. When managing tickets, you can use the Comment feature to communicate internally with your team andAutomation#36: Auto-create time-entry after performing the Blueprint transition
Hello Everyone, This week’s edition focuses on configuring a custom function within Zoho Desk to streamline time tracking within the Blueprint. In this case, we create a custom field, and request the agent to enter the spending time within the singleNext Page