Episode I : Exploring the World of Custom Functions in Zoho Desk

Hello Again!
Welcome to an Automation Adventure in the World of Zoho Desk
Join us on a journey to explore how custom functions can enhance and extend the capabilities of Zoho Desk.

Automation is everywhere. From robotic arms assembling products on factory floors to automating tasks in the software world, automation has revolutionized how we work out stuff. But what does this have to do with Zoho Desk? 

Anline, a curious resident in the Zoho Desk world, is exploring how automation can transform her workflow.

Anline’s Quest in the Zoho Desk World  

Anline is building her own world within Zoho Desk, but she’s hit a few roadblocks. She wants to perform specific operations; like updating ticket statuses, fetching data from external services, and automate repetitive tasks. She knows Zoho Desk has the tools she needs, but where does she start?

DeskAutomate Services is here as a guide to the Automation City. The citizens of Zoho Desk World operate based on their licenses. Each license unlocks different levels of automation capabilities.

Anline has the Enterprise edition, which grants her the access to the most powerful tools: Custom Functions. How can this empower Anline?

The Power of Custom Functions  

Custom Functions are like magic spells in the Zoho Desk world. They give users flexibility to tailor automation to their exact needs. While basic automation features are available to all license holders, Custom Functions are exclusive to Enterprise users. These functions let Anline go beyond the basics and create automations that meet her unique requirements. What makes them even more accessible is Deluge, Zoho’s in-house scripting language.

But there’s a catch: Anline isn’t a coding expert in Deluge. How can she harness the power of Custom Functions without getting lost in complex scripts? DeskAutomate guides Anline to the prebuilt functions and a user-friendly framework, simplifying the coding process.

Whether you’re new to coding or an experienced developer, Deluge simplifies the process of creating Custom Functions with its intuitive interface and drag-and-drop functionality.

The Deluge Script Editor: Your Coding Playground  

To access the Custom Function window, go to Setup (S) >> Developer Space >> Functions >> New Function.

When you open the Custom Function window in Zoho Desk, you’ll find a user-friendly interface designed to help you build scripts using drag-and-drop options. Here’s what you’ll discover: Each section has predefined variables which you can drag and use based on your requirements.

1. Basic Commands
The Basic section includes essential commands like setting variables, adding comments, and inserting informational text into your script. These foundational elements help you structure your Custom Function logically.

          Example: businessDaysCount = 5; //<variable> = <expression>;

2. Conditional Logic
The Condition section allows you to add conditional operators such as if, else if, and else. These operators let you program decision-making logic into your Custom Function.
Example:

1. if (TicketStatus == "Open")
2. {
3.     info "This ticket is still open.";
4. }

3. Notifications
The notifications section lets you enter values to send emails or post messages via Cliq.
Example:

1. sendmail
2. [
3. from : zoho.userid
4. to   : support@zylker.com
5. subject : "Ticket is created"
6. message : "Thank you for your enquiry. A ticket has been created and our experts will respond to you."
7. ]; 

4. Integrations
Zoho Desk makes coding easy for integrations. With drag-and-drop options, you can create webhook integrations and API calls without writing complex code from scratch. The Custom Function window provides all the necessary code snippets, so you can customize them to fit your requirements.

Example: contactRecord = zoho.crm.getRecordbyId("Contacts",9876787);

5. Collections
The Collections feature lets you gather and manage strings of data or specific information within your Custom Function. This is particularly useful when you need to process or analyze multiple data points.
Example:

1. myList = Collect();
2. myList.insert("ID1");
3. myList.insert("ID2");
4. myList.insert("ID3");
5. for each ID in myList
6. {
7.    info ID;
8. }

You can also enable the Syntax Builder within your Coding playground. Enabling this option will help you choose variables from the drop-down windows having prebuilt variables/Fields.

Mapping Parameters and Testing Your Script  

Once you’ve built your Custom Function, the next step is to map it to your Zoho Desk environment:

1. Edit Arguments
The Edit Arguments option lets you map params within your Custom Function to fields in your tickets. For example, you can link the Ticket ID, Ticket Owner, or Case ID to the corresponding fields in your Zoho Desk setup. This ensures that your Custom Function interacts seamlessly with your data.

2. Authentication and Connections
Zoho Desk uses OAuth tokens to establish secure connections for Custom Functions. Commonly, this involves using Zoho OAuth to make API calls within Zoho's scope. You can choose the appropriate scopes during authorization to ensure your Custom Function has access to the necessary data and functionalities.
Note: If you choose third-party applications, please create a connection using the required default or custom services.

3. Save and Test

After saving your script, use Save & Execute Script to test it with sample inputs. This lets you test the function, ensuring functionality, debug, and refine your code before deployment.
In the upcoming episodes, we'll dive into how Custom Functions work and contribute to expanding the capabilities within Zoho Desk.
See you in the next episode,
Regards,
Lydia | Zoho Desk. 

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• 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

• Option to accept and pay for estimate from Public Estimate link?

  Is there any way that our customers can get the Estimate in their email, click on "View Estimate" and from the public link, click Accept and Pay? When they click that, in the background Zoho would create the invoice record in the so that the payment would

• Kaizen #125 Manipulating Multi-Select Lookup fields (MxN) using Zoho CRM APIs

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen. In last week's post in the Kaizen series, we discussed how subforms work in Zoho CRM and how to manipulate subform data using Zoho CRM APIs. In this post, we will discuss how to manipulate a multi-select

• Easily track referrals with Zoho Forms

  Referral tracking can be a powerful way for businesses to understand where their leads are coming from. With Zoho Forms, tracking the referral sources of your leads is an easy and straightforward process. Here are some tips to help you make the most of

• Add an email to an existing ticket is not working

  I noticed that in Zoho Desk the funcionality to add an email to an existing ticket is not working using the syntax [##12345##], has the method changed? In red is the syntax we use to add email to an existing ticket As you can see, he did not add the email

• New CRM to Campaigns Sync Doesn't Continue Making Updates

  Changes made in CRM are not appearing in mapped fields in matching Campaign records after migrating to the new sync process. The only way we've found to get records to update is to call into Support and point out the problem. After convincing Support

• Zoho Integration with UPS

  I have 2 questions: Firstly, is there a way to notify UPS that we have a package to collect once we have done the shipping label? Secondly, how do I get the tracking number and shipment method onto the Invoice and Package Slip for the customer? Than

• Cannot log in to IMAP account as of last night

  Hey I've been using MFA with an authenticator for a while and have had to use application passwords for Outlook and Edison Mail on my Android devices. Last night the app passwords started to be rejected on my Android devices so I created new ones for

• Low Stock View

  We use the Low Stock view frequently as a guide to inform us when to reorder items, but the view is misleading because it does not take into account Purchase Orders that have already been raised. Unless you are aware and check item by item, this can lead

• Improve History Feature in Zoho Inventory

  At present there is a "history" tab on Zoho Inventory Items, however this only shows a date and time stamp along with the users name. It doesn't say what was changed. What is the value of this if you can't see what was changed? My Ideal is to include

• Show backordered items on packing slip

  We send out a lot of large orders, and often there are one or two things backordered. How can I fix the packing slips to show quantity ordered  & quantity packed There should also be the ability to "ship" 0 of an item so the receiver knows that things

• Document | Files

  The vendor "Partial matches" still not fixed here after years of putting up with having to select most vendors manually ! ( again, the banking "Transaction rules" would solve a lot of these issues ) Some unwanted, irrelevant pdf's also arrive. It would

• books+POS+ tap to pay+ stripe

  So in the UK we now have tap to pay with stripe. So we can use the stripe app as a POS terminal. Brilliant news. Can we hope that the Books App might add this feature ASAP. It would be great to have one system rather than using the not very good Square

• Canvas Form View - Client Script Page on load - Url params not working

  We have a custom module with a canvas page for form view. We have a button in Customers module to open this canvas page using invokeurl function. We send few parameters as in the URL as query parameters. https://crm.zoho.in/crm/orgxxxxxxxx/tab/CustomModule12/create/canvas/64333200000261xxxx?layoutId=643332000002605001&c=${Customers.Customer

• Sending Recruit SMS's to Zoho Cliq - Or tracking in the Messages module in Recruit?

  Is there any way to send SMS Gateway messages in Recruit to ZOho Cliq? We use 2-way SMS massages a lot in Zoho Recruit to speed up communication with Candidates. However the only way to keep track of received SMS's is by keeping a look out for the Email

• Is it possible to set a customer context variable in Zobot

  Hi, I want to use a context variable to route users down different paths in my Zobot chat flow. I know I can do this when the user enters data. But I want to know if I can use a variable that is 'hard coded' on the card, that the user is unaware of. Use

• Cannot change Blog Title

  There is nowhere to change the blog title. You can change the blog URL but that is making no difference to the text "Enter Your Post Title" am I missing something?

• Kaizen #203 - Answering Your Questions | Handling API Limits and Error Responses

  Hi Everyone, Welcome back to yet another post in the Kaizen Series! We appreciate your keen participation in the 200th milestone celebration of the Kaizen series. We will continue to answer the queries we received through the feedback. When working with

• How to verify website ownership with google search console

  Hi, I am having a free .in domain provided by Zoho I have created a website on it now I want to verify my ownership to google webmaster. Can you please help me how to do that.

• "SPF record exceed the allowed limit of 10"

  Hi, I was wondering if there were a "universal Zoho SPF record" that would allow all my configured Zoho services that email things to meet this limitation ? or do I have to have an entry for mail, com, billing, etc?

• Animated GIF Images in Chat

  I know this seems to be a small feature request but in a recent Cliq update Zoho disabled autoplay for animated GIFs posted in Cliq conversations. We think this was not a good change. In our organization, animated GIFs in a chat play a role in expressing

• I can't seem to login in to Mail Apps of MacOS /IOS

  Hi, i'm having trouble in signing in to mail apps from IOS. It's always come back to wrong passwords. But i already changed my password like 3 times. But still it says wrong credentials

• Profile Image Showing Incorrectly in Zoho Mail

  Hi everyone, I’m facing a serious issue with Zoho Mail. The profile image showing for my email address is incorrect — it’s not my image. When I send an email to my Gmail account, it displays someone else’s image. This looks very suspicious and can make

• I need access to my old email

  I need access to my old email bromzeman@zoho.com to verify it for forwarding. I can’t access the inbox to get the confirmation code. Please assist with recovery or forwarding. as you might already know, they made alot of the email addresses to have that

• Set Defaults for Email Groups

  Is there a way to set defaults for all of the groups that I establish as a moderator? For example, I want every group I establish to have the following settings: 1. Moderator is <user> 2. User is <user>, <user> 3. Notifications for new group turned

• LOGS FOR RECEIVED MAIL ( READ DATE & TIME)

  In Zoho mail we can extract the read logs of received mails so that we can see when we have read the mail and at what time & we have read it.

• Domain verification probem

  Hello, i use a domain from Namecheap with hosting from Cinfu when i try to verify my domain on zoho i get "TXT Verification failure" i even tried the HTML verification and the code appears but also giving me the verification failure error.

• Switching to Cloudflare email routing from Zoho Mail

  Hello, I'm currently working on migrating from Zoho Mail to Cloudflare's email routing solution. This requires changing MX and TXT records for our custom domain - when we do this, will our users still be able to log into their accounts and access an archived

• Un Subscription Button

  How can i Add the Un Subscription Button in Zoho mail

• Documents unable view and need to downlad

  I can't view .doc files in Zoho mail unless I download them, but I can view PDF files without downloading.

• we encountered a problem while sending your email. please try again later.

• Adding and removing people from groups

  We're having problems adding people to a group. Apparently Zoho has one email address and will not recognize a different email address.

• MAIL SEARCH IS NOT WORKING

  THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN BUGGING ME SINCE MORNING, PLEASE RESOLVE THIS AT THE EARLIEST

• URL Parameter on Help Center SIgn in link

  Is it possible to add a url parameter to the sign in link on the Help Center?

• migrating from HelpScout

  I am attempting to import a conversation file from helpscout into desk and am receiving size errors. What is the current file size restriction. Does anyone have any tips for a successful migration?

• Layout Rules Don't Apply To Blueprints

  Hi Zoho the conditional layout rules for fields and making fields required don't work well with with Blueprints if those same fields are called DURING a Blueprint. Example. I have field A that is used in layout rule. If value of field A is "1" it is supposed to show and make required field B. If the value to field A is "2" it is supposed to show and make required field C. Now I have a Blueprint that says when last stage moves to "Closed," during the transition, the agent must fill out field A. Now

• Article Name Sorting in Zoho Desk Knowledge Base (agent / admin side)

  Dear Zoho Desk Support, We are writing to request an enhancement to the Knowledge Base management feature within Zoho Desk. Currently, there is no option to sort articles by their name, which significantly hinders efficient article management, especially

• How to parse JSON data with SQL in Zoho Analytics?

  Hi all, I have a column with JSON data. I want to show this column in a chart, but it is very messy, and no JSON parsing function is supported on Zoho Analytics. data example: {"id": 5, "status": "false", "date": "15/10/22"} what I want to do in SQL is

• Add an Equation Field (Or update the Formula Field)

  Hi, I would like to be able to have one field as a Text Field with QR Code, and then have multiple Equation/Formula Fields that then take parts of that fields data with LEFT, MID, RIGHT, REGEX, etc. Thanks Dan

• How to parse column having JSON data using SQL?

  We have a daily sync from a PostgreSQL database that brings data into Zoho Analytics. Some of the columns store raw JSON data. We need to build SQL queries on top to parse data from JSON and store them in discrete columns. There is no option for "Data

• Enable report button based on the current user role

  Greetings  i have a report that contains action buttons, i want these buttons to appear as enabled only when the current logged in user has a certain role, for example only CEO role users will be able to use this button. but when setting the conditions

• Next Page