Narrative 15: Blueprint - Automate, guide, and transform your support processes

Narrative 15: Blueprint - Automate, guide, and transform your support processes

Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series 

Narrative 15: Blueprint - Automate, guide, and transform your support processes

Even organizations that deliver quality products and services can face low customer satisfaction when their processes for addressing issues are poorly defined. This problem often stems from communication gaps, inadequate training, or failing to involve the right stakeholders at the required stages. The problems may range from minor procedural errors to major organizational oversights, and the impact extends beyond customers; employees also face significant difficulties when structured processes are not correctly followed.
Using a Blueprint in Zoho Desk drives consistent, high-quality customer service by making support processes transparent and repeatable at scale, regardless of team size or industry. It enables teams to easily spot bottlenecks, monitor SLA compliance, and refine workflows for maximum efficiency. Whether for onboarding, escalations, or compliance management, Blueprint helps businesses accelerate case resolution, deliver timely experiences, and onboard new agents faster with clear, actionable guidance on every ticket.

Components of a Blueprint

In Zoho Desk Blueprints, "stages" represent distinct steps or milestones in a business process, while "transitions" define the movement and conditions required to progress from one stage to another. 

Stages

Stages are the specific checkpoints or states that a support ticket or record passes through in a process, such as "Assigned," "In Progress," "Awaiting Response," or "Closed." Each stage captures the ticket's status at a given point in time and provides visibility into the process's progress.

Transitions 

Transitions are the actions, criteria, and intermediate checkpoints required to move a ticket from one stage to another. A transition can enforce checks, require specific actions, or mandate that fields be completed before advancing to the next stage. Transitions can also be configured to trigger automations, send notifications, or assign ticket owners.

​
A transition typically includes:
  • The criteria for when the transition is allowed
  • The actions to perform during the transition (updating fields, completing checklists, sending messages)
  • Transition ownership (who can act)
  • Automated actions are triggered upon execution
​
Common transitions: These transitions can be accessed from multiple stages, such as a "Cancel Ticket" action available at any point in the process.
Parallel transitions: Multiple transitions can be configured to run in parallel, allowing a ticket to move through multiple paths simultaneously.

Highlights

Enabling Strict Mode ensures that agents strictly follow ticket processes. When activated, all other actions in the ticket interface are disabled, allowing agents to perform ticket-related actions exclusively through the transition bar.

Admins can now selectively set which actions and fields are required during a transition. The introduction of the Configure Mandatory option enhances this capability to provide greater control and flexibility in customizing Blueprints for various groups of agents and refining specific aspects of the support process.

Admins can now effortlessly prioritize and reorder transitions with a simple drag-and-drop feature. This allows them to easily arrange the sequence of transitions in a Blueprint to determine how they are presented to agents. In the past, this process required agents to delete and re-add transitions in the desired order, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive.

The number of Points and Transitions permitted in a blueprint dictates the complexity of the internal processes you can design for your team. We have increased the number of pointers and transitions to allow you to incorporate greater complexity into your support operations as needed. 

When developing a Blueprint, you may find the need to rename a State or modify its Status Type after it has already been linked to the blueprint. This was not an option previously, but we've now made it possible. You can now change the Status Type and rename states associated with a blueprint. 

Key Features

  1. Design sequential ticket workflows with defined states and transitions.  
  2. Assign transition ownership to agents or departments.  
  3. Control ticket progression by restricting actions until necessary steps are completed.  
  4. Automate notifications, field updates, task assignments, and custom functions during and after transitions.  
  5. Use a Blueprints dashboard to track the number of tickets in each stage, SLA violations, bottlenecks, and overall process efficiency.  
Idea

Commonly automated business processes

  1. Quote management
  2. Task management
  3. Library book lending
  4. Hospital management
  5. Converting leads to customers
  6. Order cycles
  7. Support request handling and escalations
  8. Recruitment
  9. Deal follow-up

Takeaway

Creating a Blueprint involves specifying the states (ticket statuses), transitions (actions to move between states), and, if needed, criteria to apply the Blueprint only to specific tickets. It provides structured guidance to agents and makes help desk operations more efficient and consistent across teams.


Please stay tuned for more in the Desk behind-the-scenes series.


Regards,

 

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team

    • Recent Topics

    • Displaying related quotes in sales order and back

      Hi, My colleague liked to see to which sales orders, the quote has been converted. Quote shows Invoices, but not SO. Same, they would like to see the quotes in the sales order, as they can see invoices, packages, shipment, How can we achieve this ? Thank

    • Tip of the Week #71–Auto-move incoming messages to the right inboxes with keywords

      We all know that customer-facing teams, especially your sales and support teams, can’t afford to miss even a single customer conversation. But sometimes, sales queries or support requests can easily get lost in a crowded inbox or even end up in the wrong

    • Clearing Fields using MACROS?

      How would I go about clearing a follow-up field date from my deals? Currently I cannot set the new value as an empty box.

    • Migrating a Zoho Forms form into Zoho Creator

      Hi, How can I migrate my Zoho Forms form into Zoho Creator? Thanks. Truly, Emad

    • Is there any way to recall an email sent using Zoho CRM?

      If an email is sent using Zoho Mail, there is a recall option/functionality that is available to the sender. Is there any way to recall an email if it was sent using Zoho CRM? I can't seem to find that option. Any help would be appreciated.

    • Problem with reports due to "Connected" items change - Yes this IS a problem

      Now that the change has been made to use "connected" items I can no longer run the reporting I need in CRM. I should be able to start with Deals as the parent, connect down to the Account (Account_Name) on the deal as the child, then to any child items

    • Introducing notifications in the vendor portal

      Imagine this: You're a recruiter working with multiple vendors on a high-volume hiring project. You’ve just updated a job description after a last-minute change from the hiring manager. One of your vendors, however, is still working off the older version

    • Analytics for notes created

      Is there a way I can see how many notes were created per day? Via reporting or analytics?

    • Cannot update Recurring_Activity on Tasks – RRULE not accepted

      Hello, I am trying to update Tasks in Zoho CRM to make them recurring yearly, but I cannot find the correct recurrence pattern or way to update the Recurring_Activity field via API or Deluge. I have tried: Sending a string like "RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1"

    • Add image to report...

      Greetings, I send a weekly color coded report via Creator email. I would like to add the legend somewhere in the report. Header, footer where ever. I have the legend saved on Google Drive and can access it via shared link. Sure someone has wanted to add

    • More controls for User Fields in CRM

      Dear All, We are here with a minor but crucial enhancement to the user fields—now set accessibility permissions to the records for user field. User field allows you to extend co-ownership of records to your peers. You can collaborate with them for certain

    • Calls to accounts rather than leads or contacts?

      So..... We have a dilemma and I'm hoping someone has encountered this before and figured out a fix. We have just migrated to Zoho. It's great.....expect for how "Calls" are handled.... We are B2B. We do not use the leads module. A "Lead/Prospect" for

    • Image Upload Field | Zoho Canvas

      I'm working on making a custom view for one of our team's modules. It's an image upload field (Placement Photo) that would allow our sales reps to upload a picture of the house their working on. However, I don't see that field as a opinion when building

    • Power of Automation :: Automated 'Delayed & Closed' Status Update Based on Due Date

      Hello Everyone, 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

    • Range names in Zoho Sheet are BROKEN!

      Hi - you've pushed an update that has broken range names. A previously working spreadsheet now returns errors because the range names are not updating the values correctly. I've shared a video with the support desk to illustrate the problem. This spreadsheet

    • populate email address and name in zoho desk?

      Is it possible to populate the email address and name in the zoho desk widget? We only use it in the context of an authenticated user, so we already know the user's name and email. Thanks,

    • Are there default/pre-built dashboards in Zoho Desk?

      Hi, I am looking for some pre-built dashboard templates in Zoho Desk, similar to what we can find in CRM/Projects, etc Thank you

    • SAP S/4 HANA to CRM Integration - change the SAP Client ID

      Hi I am trying to push the business partners from SAP S/4 HANA to ZOHO CRM module. The SAP Client ID is 421 in my case....kindly let me know how do I specify the sap client because it's a dropdown with specific values as of now. Thanks Ravi Aswani

    • Adding branded signature to tickets reply

      Hi, i am unable to figure out how to add signatures with logo to tickets reply. please advice .

    • How to share ticket numbers across different ticket types

      I'm running an event and have three different ticket types. Add on Event + Main Event - Early bird Main Event only - Early bird Add on Event only - Early bird And Standard class - shown but not available until early bird finishes Add on Event + Main Event

    • Adding Social Media Buttons to Basic Campaigns

      Hi, I'm quote new to using Zoho Campaigns and I can't work out how to add Social Media Buttons into my basic campaign? In MailChimp there's a button that brings the icons into your campaign for you. I've tried adding the social media icons as 'buttons' in Zoho but it's not looking great. Can anyone help? Thanks!

    • Hide Inactive Social Sign-In Providers from Login Screen

      Hello Zoho Team, We hope you are doing well. Currently, Zoho One allows admins to configure security policies and enable or disable Social Sign-In options for third-party providers such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook,

    • [Free Webinar] AI Agents in Zoho Creator - Creator Tech Connect

      Hello Everyone! We welcome you all to the upcoming free webinar on the Creator Tech Connect Series. The Creator Tech Connect series is a free monthly webinar that runs for around 45 minutes. It comprises technical sessions in which we delve deep into

    • Download All Attached Files

      It would be extremely useful to have "download-all" functionality for downloading files attached to a task, subtask, comment, forum post or hosted in the "Documents" section etc. We've instructed our users to zip multiple files prior to uploading, but of course they forget all the time. Having to download lots of files one-at-a-time off a comment or task wastes a lot of time.

    • Ship via Carrier Not Working Since Commerce Update

      Since the recent update to the Commerce platform, I can no longer use the ship via carrier function. It will take me to the address screen and let me verify them but when I go to save and move tot he next screen it will not do anything. This is happening

    • automations: Can I execute a step on a specific date?

      I have created a form in Zoho forms, and created a contacts list. I have also begun setting up an automation with the intention of sending the form to the contact list on a specific date every month (via email) for the entire year (essentially sending

    • Zoho Expense - The ability to add detail to a Trip during booking

      As an admin, I would like the ability to add more detail to the approved Trips. At present a requestor can add flights, accommodation details and suggest their preferences. It would be great if the exact details of the trip could be added either by the

    • Adding Folders in Android App

      Is it possible to create a new email folder within the Zoho Mail Android app?  Or can this only be done from the desktop version of Zoho Mail? Cheers!

    • Schedule Exports for Regular Project Updates

      Tracking project data often means exporting data at regular intervals. Instead of manually exporting data every time, users can schedule exports for Phases, Tasks, and Tasks in Zoho Projects. These exports can be set to run once, daily, weekly, or monthly

    • Question about custom fields using Pivot Tables.

      I have created a pivot table showing annual revenue of a client and how much payment that client is paying my company. Is there a way using pivot table to add an additional field that subtracts those to fields / shows me a percentage of that difference?

    • Request for Light/Dark Mode

      Would love the ability to switch between Light and Dark mode similar to Zoho CRM. https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/introducing-dark-mode-light-mode-a-new-look-for-your-crm

    • Journey Email - Ignored Contacts

      I have a journey setup which simply sends a string of emails over time. For some reason I am getting large amounts of the contacts who enter the first email being ignored and I can't find anywhere in reports or audit logs why these contacts are not

    • Involved account types are not applicable when create journals

      { "journal_date": "2016-01-31", "reference_number": "20160131", "notes": "SimplePay Payroll", "line_items": [{ "account_id": "538624000000035003", "description": "Net Pay", "amount": 26690.09, "debit_or_credit": "credit" }, { "account_id": "538624000000000403", "description": "Gross", "amount": 32000, "debit_or_credit": "debit" }, { "account_id": "538624000000000427", "description": "CPP", "amount": 1295.64, "debit_or_credit": "debit" }, { "account_id": "538624000000000376", "description":

    • Zoho Books - Include Payment Terms as a Custom View filter

      It would be great if you could created a custom view based on Payment Terms. This would be really handy for seeing a list of customers who have credit terms. A workaround is not required. I could do something with a creditor checkbox, but it would be

    • How to update changed purchase account of item in invoice

      I have selected the wrong purchase account for various articles and created invoices. I had to adjust the purchase account in the article afterwards, but the old purchase account is still posted in the transaction-journal of the invoice. To adjust the

    • Help - Zoho CRM notification on mobile (IOS/Android)

      Hello Community! Can I get the IOS/Andoid CRM app to notify me of events, calls, etc. due as I can with MANY other apps?   I am running the free Zoho I would like this to be native to the Zoho CRM app. I do not want to write a sep. mobile app

    • Zoho Books Idea - Include another field in Bank Details for Address

      Hi Books team, Currently use the Description field in the Bank Details to store the bank's address. This works fine but it would be great if you could add another field for Bank Address, so that other notes about the bank account could be stored in the

    • a question about the COQL API v8

      When I specify eight or more values in a WHERE IN clause and execute it, an error occurs. Is there a limit to the number of values that can be specified in a WHERE IN clause? ↓Error select * FROM Vendors WHERE (id in (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)) ↓Success

    • Zoho Books Idea - Bank Details Button on Banking

      Hi Books team, Sometimes I'm asked to share bank details with a customer or a colleague. So I go to the Banking Module, find the correct bank account, click Setting > Edit, then copy and paste the bank details. Wouldn't it be great if there was a button

    • JS SDK 8.0 – TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'getCacheStore') with sample code

      Hello Zoho Support Team, I’m integrating the Zoho CRM JavaScript SDK v8.0 and I’m getting the error below when running your official sample. I tested directly from: https://github.com/zoho/zohocrm-javascript-sdk-8.0/blob/main/samples/create_records_sample/create_records.js

    • Next Page