Automation#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 single line field and then move to the next status within the blueprint. This entry updates under the Time Entry tab within the ticket.

Businesses rely on automated time entry to track time, but certain workflows require manual input. For example, ZylkerTechFix, a company specializing in hardware servicing and repairs, needed a precise way to log time spent on servicing devices across departments.

After an initial assessment, the support team transfers the ticket to the Engineering team. The time taken for servicing varied based on the complexity of the issue. To ensure accurate tracking, agents were required to manually log the time spent at this stage. A custom single line field was added to capture this information, and the organization flow was integrated into a Blueprint, making it seamless for agents and transparent for customers.

Let's go through setting up a Blueprint with a custom function that allows agents to manually log the time spent in a specific status once they've completed the process. This helps track time at each stage, improving efficiency and customer communication.

Prerequisites

Create a connection

  1.1 Go to Setup(S) and choose Connections under Developer Space.
  1.2 Click Create Connection.
  1.3 Select Zoho Desk under Default Services.
  1.4 Set the connection name as desk_connection.

  1.5 Under Choose Scopes, choose the below scope values:

Desk.tickets.READ

Desk.tickets.UPDATE

  1.6 Click Create and Connect.
  1.7 Click Connect.
  1.8 Choose the Zoho Desk's organization to connect with Deluge, and click Submit.
  1.9 Click Accept.

Connection is created successfully.

Create a custom single-line field

a. Navigate to Setup >> Customization >> Layouts and Fields.

b. Select Tickets module and the Department in which you will configure the Blueprint.

c. Click on the layout. Add single line field which has the field value length of 255. Give the Name – Spending Time.

This single line field is  for the agent to manually enter the time taken to handle this ticket. Enter the time in this format HH:MM:SS (eg: 02:15:30)  .

Configure Custom Function within the Blueprint

Create a Blueprint with the required transitions for your process.

1. To create a Blueprint, go to Setup >> Automation >> Blueprint. 
2. Choose the department (the same department where you created the custom field) and click on Create Blueprint.
3. Give a desired name under Blueprint Name and description.
4. Choose Tickets under the module and let the Field be Status.
5. Add Criteria as Specific records/All records as required.
6. Add Advanced configuration as required.
7. Click Next.
8. Drag and drop the required States for your organization flow. Connect the different states  
9. Click on the + icon between the states to add a transition. Give a Name and Description for the transition.
10. Click Add transition

Within Transitions

11. Under Before, add the Agents whom you would like to give access to the Blueprint.

12. Add Transition Owner from a Different Department, Choose Department and Criteria if required.
13. Under During, click on Add Operations >> Fields >> choose Spending Time.  This will be marked validation and Mandatory.
14. Under After, click on New next to custom functions.

15. Under Configure Custom Function, enter Name and Description.

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

1. // ----<<<< User Inputs >>>>----
2. // --- Replace ".com" with appropriate domain extension based on customer's location/DC ---
3. deskURL = "https://desk.zoho.com";
4. customFieldAPIName = "cf_"; // Replace the custom field API Name
5. orgId = "";// Replace the org ID
6. // ----<<<< Initial Configs >>>>----
7. logs = Map();
8. logs.insert("ticketId":ticketId,"timeEntryValue":timeEntryValue);
9. //---------------------------
10. try
11. {
12. // --- Perform the time calculation tasks ---
13. executedTime = toText(now,"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'","GMT");
14. timeEntryValueList = timeEntryValue.toList(":");
15. logs.insert("timeEntryValueList":timeEntryValueList);
16. secondsSpent = timeEntryValueList.get(0).toNumber() * 3600 + timeEntryValueList.get(1).toNumber() * 60 + timeEntryValueList.get(2).toNumber();
17. logs.insert("secondsSpent":secondsSpent);
18. getHistory = invokeurl
19. [
20. url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId + "/history?operationName=Blueprints_History"
21. type :GET
22. connection:"desk_connection"
23. ];
24. agentId = getHistory.get(0).get("agentId");
25. logs.insert("getHistory":getHistory);
26. createTimeEntry = invokeurl
27. [
28. url :deskURL + "/api/v1/tickets/" + ticketId + "/timeEntry"
29. type :POST
30. parameters:{"executedTime":executedTime,"secondsSpent":secondsSpent,"ownerId":agentId} + ""
31. connection:"desk_connection"
32. ];
33. logs.insert("createTimeEntryApiResponse":createTimeEntry);
34. update = zoho.desk.update(orgId,"tickets",ticketId,{"cf":{customFieldAPIName:""}});
35.     logs.insert("Update":update);
36. }
37. catch (errorInfo)
38. {
39. logs.insert("errorInfo":errorInfo);
40. }
41. info "logs: \n" + logs;
42. if(logs.containKey("errorInfo"))
43. {
44. throws "Error happen in the CF execution";
45. }

17. Click on the Edit Arguments in the script editer window, give a desired Method Name. Map the arguments as below:
       17.1 In the Argument Name field, type ticketId and select Ticket Id in the Tickets Section.

       17.2 In the Argument Name field, type timeEntryValue and select Spending Time in the Tickets Section. Click Done.

NOTE

a. In Line 3, replace .com in the address with .in/.eu/.ca based on your DC.

b. In Line 4, enter the API name of the custom field.
To fetch the API name, go to Setup (S) → Customization → Layouts and Fields. Select the department for which you've configured this blueprint under Tickets module. Select the layout, click on the gear icon(Field settings) of the custom field and select Edit properties. Copy the API name under Edit field and paste it in line 4 of the code.   

c. In Line 5, enter the Org ID. Go to Setup >> Developer Space >> APIs. Under API Plan Details, you will fine the metric Org ID and its Values. Copy the value and paste it in line 3.  

18. Click on Save & Complete Blueprint.

19. Click Yes, Proceed. 
Your configuration is complete.

In the ticket, when the agent chooses to move to the next transition, the spending time values has to be entered by the agent in the format HH:MM:SS. Once the value is entered, the ticket proceeds to the next transition.

You can utilize the custom field "Spending Time" across multiple transitions too. Each time a transition occurs, the field resets, allowing users to input the time spent during subsequent transitions.

Please share your thoughts and understanding of how the Blueprint feature has helped your business. If you need help with Blueprints, our mailbox is open to hear you: support@zohodesk.com. 

Until the next post,

Lydia | Zoho Desk 

• Topic Participants

• Lydia | Zoho Desk

  

• Mark

• Shivani | Zoho Desk

  

• Jani Pakisjärvi

• 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

• Creator -Dynamic addition of Customer Portal User Licenses

  Hi, We have a Creator App for B2C about to get released. We are experiencing the Portal User license challenge. Unable to predict the number of users who will download and Subscribe. When a User is about Subscribe and the portal licenses does not exists,

• Migrate Mailbox between Microsoft 365 tenants - Safe, Fast & Easy

  Moving mailboxes between Microsoft 365 tenants is a difficult proposition when you've got a large number of user accounts, a lot of email data and a number of Microsoft 365 services to contend with. This is a common scenario when a business is undergoing

• 👍 Zoho CRM's Notes now gets Reactions and a new look

  Available in SA and JP DCs. Rolling out to other DCs in phases. Hello everyone, Notes help users capture important updates, collaborate with teammates, and maintain context for records. Now with Note Reactions, users can quickly acknowledge updates, express

• Widget Height were destroyed

  All widget heights in the Details Canvas view are broken. Moderation Update: This is a known issue with widget heights in Client Script popups and flyouts. A fix is in progress, and this post will be updated once it's released.

• Introducing Incentives for Zoho CRM: Build, automate, and track sales commissions

  Dear Customers, We are here with an amazing news! We built a direct solution to help manage your commission provisioning activity in your business. From creating commission plans to issuing payouts, this application leverages your sales reps’ performance

• Enhanced Zoho CRM and Office 365 calendar synchronization features!

  Dear customers, We're excited to share some significant improvements to our Office 365 calendar synchronization features, aimed at providing you with more control and a more personalized experience. What’s new Choose your Office 365 calendar: During the

• Introducing Zoho Key Service, a simpler way to access LLMs without API keys

  Available in the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions in the US, IN, AU, JP, and CA DCs. Hello everyone, We are excited to bring Zoho Key Service (ZKS) in Zoho CRM, a simpler way for organizations to access and use third party LLMs. You can

• Zoho Books Support

  Dear Team, Zoho Books offers a demo before you purchase zoho books. But after that when he actually purchases the product he has to rely on toll free number or help documents. But this might get frustrated in the initial period. Specially in initial period.

• How to add a fee based on payment method

  I currently accept both ACH payments and credit card. I want to add a 3% fee to a number of my subscription plans if the customer chooses to use a credit card (and not ACH/checking). How do I do this? Is there an in-built feature, or would i have to create

• Mirror Component in Zoho CRM: Access real-time related data without leaving your record

  Hi everyone, This feature is now available for the JP, CA, SA, UAE, and AU DCs. We're excited to bring to you Zoho CRM's mirror component, which presents relevant data on a record's details page and keeps everything users need in one place without having

• What's New in Zoho Invoice | July – September 2026

  Hello everyone! We're back with the latest updates and enhancements we've rolled out in Zoho Invoice from July to September 2026. Here's what's new this quarter: Zoho Invoice is Now Available in Nigeria Introducing the Super Admin Privilege E-Invoicing

• Convert MBOX to PDF Free on Mac and Windows

  MBOX files are widely used for storing email messages in email clients such as Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and other programs that support the MBOX format. Although this format is useful for handling emails, it can at times be inconvenient to access the

• Notes - Reaction Buttons

  Using the native notes option within CRM is fine, it works and the RTF features are great, however, would it be possible - if there isnt already something in place, where we can add a reactions button, similar to teams/whatsapp to show that its been read

• ZohoBooks - "Account transactions" report doesn't have any "Desciptions"

  Hi, I'd like to push for this to be included in ZohoBooks: In a "account transactions" report all the numbers are right, but I'd really like to see the "Description" as part of this report, i.e. the line-item-description as I would see it in the bank statement. Essentially all you see is a list of numbers adding up to the total. It is very difficult to see if things are right without being able to see what exactly each transaction refers to. Going into each transaction one-by-one is not a workable

• Address limits per customer by edition

  I’m on the Standard edition and have reached a limit of 30 addresses under a single customer. Before I move to an annual Professional subscription, I need to confirm the following: What is the maximum number of addresses allowed under one contact, and

• Export from List view

  I'm constantly having the issue where my users are building lists in ListView for various objects and then realising they cant export the data, then they have to go and build the data set in reports to export. I would like to see the ability to export to excel/csv from ListView.

• Cannot apply tags to multiple items at once

  It is very frustrating needing to apply tags to notes individually. Even worse that it takes multiple clicks to do it. Can there please be an update to: 1.) Allow us to apply tags to batches of notes in one go. 2.) Make it less clicks to add a tag 3.)

• Get all hiring updates via Zoho Cliq bot notifications

  We’re introducing a new way to stay updated on recruitment activities: Cliq Bot notifications. Now you can receive Zoho Recruit notifications directly in Zoho Cliq—alongside your existing in-app alerts and emails. Whether it’s a candidate status change,

• Notes Acknowledgement

  It would be great to have emojis that can be used for Notes. Emojis such as Thumbs Up to let someone know you agree with them or a emoji for thanks. It's a simple way to acknowledge that you read someone's note. Moderation update: Emoji reactions for

• Is it possible to log text messages from iphone into Zoho CRM

  My team is more and more utilizing text messaging to communicate with clients. Does Zoho have a solution for logging these text messages when clicking "Send Text Message" from the Zoho app. Much like when you call, you get prompted to log a call, can

• Project Finances: Fully Accessible within Projects

  Project finances and work items are now on the same screen and it transforms the way you run your project. Managing your project finances is now much easier and in the same screen as your work items. Access quotes, invoices, bills, sales orders, and purchase

• zoho stream web notifications

  since im locked out of IMAP and cant use my mail app that lets my team collaborate and chat below emails, im trying out the zoho version of this... zoho streams. On the bottom of an email in the zoho mail web app, i "comment" and mention another user.

• UI / UX Improvements

  Please consider changing the Dependency Details window from a column-based layout to a list-based layout, or allowing users to choose their preferred layout. The current column-based view uses screen space inefficiently and makes navigation difficult,

• Zoho CRM and Desk sandboxes for testing native integration

  Hello team, We are evaluating the native integration between Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk, We have sandbox instances of both products and want to test the integration there, without any effect on our production CRM or production Desk data. While setting up

• Function #24: Automatically display deal name from Zoho CRM on quotes in Zoho Books

  Deals allow businesses to organize and visualize their sales pipeline. This provides a clear overview of all potential opportunities and helps in making informed decisions. Zoho CRM empowers you to create deals or potentials for your clients and monitor

• Zoho Books | Product updates | August 2026

  Hello users, July has been an exciting month for Zoho Books! This month, we're excited to introduce HTML PDF Templates, Placeholders as Pills, expanded approval workflows for Sales Returns and Journals, and significant compliance updates across the India,

• Auto-Sync Field of Lookup Values When Parent Record Changes

  Hi Zoho Team, Currently, when you use a "Field of Lookup" in Zoho CRM, the value is captured as a snapshot at the time the lookup is set. If the parent record is later updated, the Field of Lookup value on the child record does NOT update and stays stale.

• [Request] Pivot filter date option : from set date to relative value ie from 01Jan to LastMonth

  I don't think I can currently do this... but it's worth asking if it's possible. My use case is concerning annual leave which is calculated from the beginning of the calendar year (01Jan) then each month I want to have details of leave taken etc... In

• Customer Statement Showing Incorrect Negative Balance Due to Unused Advance

  Dear Zoho Support Team, We are facing an issue with the Customer Statement in Zoho Invoice related to customer advances/mobilization advances. The issue is that when a customer has made an advance payment that has not yet been fully utilized against invoices,

• Mois de la sensibilisation à la cybersécurité 2026 : faites de la sécurité un réflexe avec Zoho

  Imaginez : vos systèmes informatiques répondent aux normes de sécurité en vigueur et votre entreprise est assurée contre les cyberattaques. Pourtant, un matin, tout bascule. Vos données sont chiffrées et un message glaçant s’affiche à l’écran : « Si vous

• Specifying time increments on a Date/Time field

  Hi all, Im using a Date/Time field in my CRM module. At the moment the increments are 30 minutes. How can I change these to be 15 minutes? Thanks

• Read, View, Access, or Open an OST File Without Outlook

  Have you at any time needed to open an old OST file only to find that Microsoft Outlook is not installed on your computer? It is very annoying, particularly in the case where the file includes important emails, attachments, contacts, or calendar items.

• What's new in Zoho Workplace | August 2026

  Hello Zoho Workplace community! Here's a roundup of all the new features and announcements that went live across Zoho Workplace applications in August. Zoho Mail Zoho Mail is now available in AWS Marketplace! AWS Marketplace users can access and subscribe

• Read, View or Open MBOX File without Any Email Clients

  Since email messages are stored in a single file by MBOX files, they are useful for keeping email data in one location. Many email programmes, such as Thunderbird and other mail clients, support this format. However, if you have an old MBOX file and the

• What's new in Zoho Social - Q3 recap

  Hello everyone, We've rolled out a bunch of exciting updates in Q3, and we're thrilled to walk you through them. Here's a quick look at everything we released in July, August, and September to help you experiment with content, automate engagement workflows,

• The Social Wall: September 2026

  Hello everyone! This month, we’re bringing Snapchat to Zoho Social. You can now connect your Snapchat account and manage your content alongside your other social channels. Whether you want to reach a wider audience through Spotlights or share quick updates

• How to Convert Apple Mac Mail to PST for Outlook for Free?

  Apple Mail is a widely used email program among Mac users, but what do you do if you want to transfer your emails to Microsoft Outlook? In such a situation—for example, when you are moving from a Mac to a Windows computer or when you need to use Outlook

• Turning off the recorded welcome in Zoho Webinar

  Is there a way to turn off the recorded voice that comes up at the beginning of every webinar session? It devalues the experience for attendees from feedback, interrupting their connection with our brand and delaying webinar start unnecessarily.

• Option to Disable Knowledge Base Section in Feedback Widget Popup Hello Zoho Desk Team

  Hello Zoho Desk Team, How are you? We are actively using Zoho Desk and would like to make more use of the Feedback Widget. One of the ways we implement it is through the popup option. At the moment, the popup always displays the Knowledge Base section,

• Losing description after merging tickets

  Hello, We merge tickets when they are about the same topic from the same client. It happens sometimes. We recently noticed that after the merger only the description from the master ticket is left in a thread. And the slave-ticket description is erased.

• Next Page