Automation#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’s ticket statuses to align with their servicing process. Here’s their workflow: when a gadget was submitted for service, the ticket entered “Open” status. After an initial examination, it moved to “Service” status, mapped to the “Hold” type while repairs were underway. Once repairs were complete, the ticket progressed to “Billing” and then to “Closed” after payment and delivery. To improve operations, Zylker Techfix wanted to know how long tickets stayed in “Service” status, giving them insights into potential delays and resource use. With a custom function, they tracked this time in a custom field, then used it to generate reports that highlighted areas for process improvement.

With this custom function, you can gain a clear view of your support timeline, identify bottlenecks, and serve clients more efficiently. Let’s dive into how you can implement this custom function to refine your own operations and drive productivity forward.

Prerequisites

1. Create a Custom Field

To track ticket duration at a StatusName (call it In progress) mapped to the Status Type On Hold, 

     

      1.1 Go to Setup (S) >> Customization >> Layouts and Fields.

             Select Tickets under Layouts and the Department in which you would like to track the ticket duration. 

      1.2 Create a custom single line field in the Tickets layout of the respective department. 

            1.2.1 Click on the layout, add a single line field with a label StatusTime. 

                      You can label the field with your preferred name. 

      1.3 Note the API names for the the single line field to insert into the custom function.     

            To find the API name, Click on the Gear wheel icon of the single line field.

            Click on Edit Properties, you will find the API Name under the Edit Field. Refer to Create Custom Fields. 

2. Create a connection

      2.1 Go to Setup(S) and choose Connections under Developer Space.

      2.2 Click Create Connection.

      2.3 Select Zoho OAuth under Default Connection.

      2.4 Set the connection name as deskconnection.

      2.5 Under Scope, choose the below scope values:

             Desk.tickets.READ

             Desk.tickets.UPDATE

      2.6 Click Create and Connect.

      2.7 Click Connect and click Accept.

Connection is created successfully.

Create a Workflow Rule

1. Go to Setup, choose Workflows under Automation. 

2. Under Workflows, click Rules >> Create Rule.

In the Basic Information section,

3. Select Tickets from the drop-down menu under Module.

4. Enter a Rule Name and Description for the rule.

5. If you want to activate the rule right away, select the Active checkbox. Else, create the rule and activate it later.

6. Click Next.

 

In the Execute on section, follow these steps:

7. Select Field Update, Choose Status.  

8. Click Next.

 

9. Leave the Criteria section blank and click Next. (Add a criteria if you require it.) 

10. In the Actions section, click the + icon and select New next to Custom Functions.

11. Enter a Name and Description for the custom function.

12. Under Argument Mapping, give a desired Method Name. Map the arguments as below: 

      12.1 In the Argument Name field, type ticketId and from the Value drop-down list, select Ticket Id under the Tickets Section.                                         

13. In the script window, insert the Custom Function given below:

1. ///----<<<< User Inputs >>>>----
2. deskURL = "https://desk.zoho.com";
3. //Replace with your custom domain
4. //Replace your Custom Field API Name to Update Desired Type Status Duration Ex: Open 
5. durationApiName = "cf_status_name";
6. // ex: "cf_open_time"
7. //Replace your Desired Status Type Name Ex: Open
8. statusType = "On Hold";
9. // Open or On Hold or Closed
10. //Replace the Status Name 
11. statusName = "In Progress";
12. // Ex: In Progress, Waiting for Reply, etc
13. // ----<<<< Initial Configs >>>>----
14. logs = Map();
15. logs.insert("ticketId":ticketId);
16. openHoursToUpdate = 0;
17. openMinutesToUpdate = 0;
18. onHoldHoursToUpdate = 0;
19. onHoldMinutesToUpdate = 0;
20. //---------------------------
21. try 
22. {
23. // ---- start your logic from here ----
24. ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo = invokeurl
25. [
26.   url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId + "/statusLifeCycle"
27.   type :GET
28.   connection:"deskconnection"
29. ];
30. logs.insert("ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo":ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo);
31. if(ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo != null && ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo.containsKey("statusLifeCycle") && ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo.get("statusLifeCycle").size() > 0)
32. {
33.   for each  statusInfo in ticketStatusLifeCycleInfo.get("statusLifeCycle")
34.   {
35.   statusType = statusInfo.get("statusType");
36.   statusName = statusInfo.get("status");
37.   if(statusType == statusType && statusName == statusName)
38.   {
39.     statusDuration = statusInfo.get("duration");
40.     if(statusDuration != null && statusDuration != "")
41.     {
42.     statusDuration = statusDuration.replaceAll(" hrs","");
43.     durationCollection = statusDuration.toCollection(":");
44.     hourDuration = durationCollection.get(0);
45.     minuteDuration = durationCollection.get(1);
46.     openHoursToUpdate = openHoursToUpdate + hourDuration.toNumber();
47.     openMinutesToUpdate = openMinutesToUpdate + minuteDuration.toNumber();
48.     }
49.   }
50.   }
51.   openHoursToUpdate = (openMinutesToUpdate / 60).toNumber() + openHoursToUpdate;
52.   openMinutesToUpdate = openMinutesToUpdate % 60;
53.   logs.insert("openHoursToUpdate":openHoursToUpdate);
54.   logs.insert("openMinutesToUpdate":openMinutesToUpdate);
55.   ticketUpdateParams = Map();
56.   ticketUpdateParams.insert("cf":{durationApiName:openHoursToUpdate + ":" + openMinutesToUpdate});
57.   logs.insert("ticketUpdateParams":ticketUpdateParams);
58.   ticketUpdate = invokeurl
59.   [
60.   url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId
61.   type :PUT
62.   parameters:ticketUpdateParams + ""
63.   connection:"deskconnection"
64.   ];
65.   logs.insert("ticketUpdate":ticketUpdate);
66. }
67. }
68. catch (errorInfo)
69. {
70. logs.insert("errorInfo":errorInfo);
71. }
72. info "logs: \n" + logs; 
    
73. logs.insert("errorInfo":errorInfo);
    
74. info "logs: \n" + logs;

NOTE

a. In Line 2, Replace ".com" with the domain extension based on your Data Center.

b. In Line 5, add the API name of the custom field created within the Tickets layout. 

c. In Line 8 and line 11, enter the status type and status name. 

14. Click Save to save the custom function.

15. Click Save again to save the workflow.

Creating Ticket Tracking Reports

You can generate Reports under Analytics to view the time duration of your tickets in one go. 

Go to the Analytics module >> Choose Reports >> Add Report >> Select Tickets module and Time Entry under Related modules. Refer to Create Custom Report 

Let us know how this custom helps improve your ticketing process.

Until next week,

Warm regards,

Lydia | Zoho Desk 

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• Mohd Hayzee

• Shivani | Zoho Desk

  

• admin

• 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

• Integrating a Zoho Project Gantt Chart into Reports

  Is is possible to integrate a Zoho Project Gantt Chart into a Zoho Report Dashboard. I am in the process of creating Project Status Dashboards for the projects that we track in Zoho Projects and I would like to incorporate the gantt chart within Reports.  Please let me know! Thanks

• ZOHO BOOKS - EXCESSIVELY SLOW TODAY

  Dear Zoho Books This is not the first time but it seems to be 3 times per week now that the system is extremely slow. I work on Zoho Books 95% of my day so this is very frustrating. Zoho you need to do something about this. I have had my IT guy check

• Gantt Chart - Zoho Analytics

  Are there any plans to add Gantt Charts capabilities to Zoho Analytics?

• 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.

• 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, from

• is it possible to add more than one Whatsapp Phone Number to be integrated to Zoho CRM?

  so I have successfully added one Whatsapp number like this from this User Interface it seems I can't add a new Whatsapp Number. I need to add a new Whatsapp Number so I can control the lead assignment if a chat sent to Whatsapp Phone Number 1 then assign

• 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

• Zoho sheet desktop version

  Hi Zoho team Where can I access desktop version of zoho sheets? It is important as web version is slow and requires one to be online all the time to do even basic work. If it is available, please guide me to the same.

• 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

• CRM limit reached: only 2 subforms can be created

  we recently stumbled upon a limit of 2 subforms per module. while we found a workaround on this occasion, only 2 subforms can be quite limiting in an enterprise setting. @Ishwarya SG I've read about imminent increase of other components (e.

• LESS_THAN_MIN_OCCURANCE - code 2945

  Hi I'm trying to post a customer record to creator API and getting this error message. So cryptic. Can someone please help? Thanks Varun

• How to update "Lead Status" to more than 100 records

  Hello Zoho CRM, How do I update "Lead Status" to more than 100 records at once? To give you a background, these leads were uploaded or Imported at once but the lead status record was incorrectly chosen. So since there was a way to quickly add records in the system no matter how many they are, we are also wondering if there is a quicker way to update these records to the correct "Lead Status". I hope our concern makes sense and that there will be a fix for it. All the best, Jonathan

• Analytics for notes created

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

• Add Custom Reports To Dashboard or Home Tab

  Hi there, I think it would be great to be able to add our custom reports to the Home Tab or Dashboards. Thanks! Chad

• No TDS Deduction

  In some of our case, where we are reselling items at the same rate we purchased. In this scenario, Indian IT Law has a provision to request customer not to deduct TDS if the transaction value is same. TDS is paid by us (intermediary reseller) before we

• 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

• Lead Blueprint transition in custom list view

  Hi, Is It possible to insert the Blueprint transition label in a custom Canvas list view? I am using Lead module. I see the status, but it would be great if our users could execute the Blueprint right from the list view without having to enter the detailed

• 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

• Has anyone integrated SMS well for Zoho Desk?

  Our company does property management and needs to be able to handle inbound sms messages which create a ticket for Zoho Desk. We then need to be able to reply back from Zoho desk which sends the user an sms message. This seems like a fairly common thing

• 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

• Enable Locations for Expense

  Hi, please enable Locations (ex Branches) for Zoho Expense so that there is consistency between this app and Zoho Books. Thanks in advance.

• Adding branded signature to tickets reply

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

• Zoho Marketing Automation 2.0 - Landing Page function not working

  Dear Zoho Team, I am working on implementing Zoho Marketing Automation 2.0, and am now looking into the section "Lead Generation". If I open the "Landing Pages" section, I immediately get an Error code: Error: internal error occurred. Can you help me

• Zoho Mail Android app update: Manage folders

  Hello everyone! In the latest version(v2.9) of the Zoho Mail Android app update, we have brought in support for an option to manage folders. You can now create, edit, and delete folders from within the mobile app. You can also manage folders for the POP

• 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

• How to keep track of bags, cans, drums of inventory?

  We buy and sell products that are packaged in bags 🛍️, cans🥫, drums🛢️, etc. with batch numbers. When we get a shipment of one of the products, how do we track we received (say) 10 cans each of 5L of a product and maybe we received 10 cans of another

• 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

• Next Page