Episode III : Powering Automation: Custom Functions in Action

Episode III : Powering Automation: Custom Functions in Action

Hello Everyone,

In our previous episodes, we explored custom functions and the Deluge programming language. If you’ve been wondering why the Episode series have been quiet, here’s the reveal!
On our community, we've been showcasing custom functions integrated with various automation tools on the Automation Series – to perform specific operations. Over the past few weeks, we’ve introduced how custom functions work within different automation types.


In this episode, we’ll explore the five key automations in Zoho Desk that support custom functions:
  • Workflows
  • Macros
  • Schedules
  • Blueprint
  • Guided Conversation
Do you remember how we closed Episode II with this line:
Quote
"To make a custom function work, it must be integrated with Automation"?
The automation tools within Zoho Desk shape your processes to fit your business needs. Now, let’s dive in and explore how they can work your way.

Workflow Rules : Automate with Ease

Workflow rules in Zoho Desk are simple yet powerful tools that trigger actions based on specific execution points like ticket create, edit, customer reply and criteria. With a steady stream of queries from both new and existing customers, automation is key. Depending on customer needs and ticket volume, you may want to:
  • Auto-assign tickets
  • Update fields
  • Add tags
  • Send instant replies
Workflow rules help streamline these routine tasks, boosting both efficiency and response times.
For more complex automation, you can enhance workflows using custom functions, enabling tailored operations that go beyond standard actions.
Here's an example of how custom functions can elevate your workflows and make your support process smarter and more efficient. Automation #4 - Auto Delete Tickets based on Rules  

Blueprint : Define your process

Every organization operates with defined processes and department structures to be consistent, efficient, and offer customers a fulfilling experience. While much of this is documented and shared through verbal training, there can be gaps, especially while onboarding new agents.
That’s where Zoho Desk's Blueprint comes in. It lets you build a structured flow, guiding agents through every step of ticket handling: assigning, resolving, seeking approvals, or escalating, ensuring consistency without overwhelming them.
This workflow framework supports:
  • Clear status transitions
  • Better customer communication
  • Efficient hand-offs between teams
  • Time tracking and compliance
The intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows you to set conditions, actions, and transitions. You can also enhance the process using Custom Functions to automate approvals, share tickets, and perform advanced operations tailored to your needs.
The "After Transition" section in Blueprint helps you trigger tasks, alerts, updates, or custom functions.
Let’s explore how to use Custom Functions with Blueprint in Zoho Desk here: Automation#36: Auto-create time-entry after performing the Blueprint transition  

Macros :Perform Single Action

When you need to update a field, send bulk emails, or create tasks for multiple tickets with a single click, Macros are the go-to solution.
In cases where a group of customers is affected by the same issue or waiting for an update, following up individually can be time-consuming. Macros help you handle these repetitive actions efficiently, saving time and effort.
You can also enhance Macros with custom functions, enabling more advanced, tailored operations beyond the standard actions:

Schedule actions : Schedules in Zoho desk

Schedules let you automate actions at a specific date and time, with the option to repeat them as needed. They are ideal for time-based automation and work seamlessly with custom functions.
You can either link existing custom functions from the gallery or create new ones directly within Schedules to handle tailored tasks.
To learn how to configure schedules, refer Creating and Managing Schedules in Zoho Desk.
To learn to configure custom function with Schedules, try this out: Automation#28 Notify Agents on Article Expiry  

Guided Conversations : Formatter

Self-service empowers customers, and Zoho Desk’s Guided Conversation (GC) feature makes it easy to create interactive, kiosk-style support flows. You can embed these conversations across messaging platforms like WhatsApp, LINE, Messenger, the Help Center, and ASAP, allowing users to find answers from your Knowledge Base.
GC includes blocks to:
  • Connect with an agent
  • Create tickets
  • Integrate with Zoho products
Guided Conversations support Custom Functions within the Webhook block, enabling advanced automation and personalized responses.
Here’s an example of how to configure a Custom Function within a Guided Conversation: Automation#23: Automate Guided Conversations in Zoho Desk with Business Hours  

Let’s wrap things up!

We hope this gave you a clear view of how to configure custom functions within Zoho Desk's automation tools. Whether it's Workflows, Macros, Schedules, Blueprint, or Guided Conversations—each one opens new possibilities for making your support process smarter and smoother.
If there’s a topic you’re curious about or would love to see us cover next on the community, drop your ideas in the comments below. We’d love to hear you speak and write to us.

​
Happy automating!
See you in the next post,
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

    • Recurring Invoices

      I'm looking to set up recurring invoices on a monthly basis, using GoCardless as a payment gateway. I've done this successfully, however there's a big problem with the Invoice Date and Due Date. We prefer to provide sufficient notice of collection (10

    • Recurring Events Not Appearing in "My Events" and therefore not syncing with Google Apps

      We use the Google Sync functionality for our events, and it appears to have been working fine except: I've created a set of recurring events that I noticed were missing from my Google Apps calendar. Upon further research, it appears this is occurring

    • Vorrei disdire l'abbonamento

      Vorrei disdire l'abbonamento, ma non trovo il modo. Mi assistete?

    • Add multiple users to a task

      When I´m assigning a task it is almost always related to more than one person. Practical situation: When a client request some improvement the related department opens the task with the situation and people related to it as the client itself, the salesman

    • Service line items

      Hello Latha, Could you please let me know the maximum number of service line items that can be added to a single work order? Thanks, Chethiya.

    • Has anyone successfully gotten conditional rendering to work in Zoho Books Sales Order HTML PDF templates?

      I’m trying to hide a custom field box when the custom field is blank. The value placeholder itself works perfectly: ${salesorder.cf_distribution_reference_numb} If the Sales Order has a value, it renders correctly. Example: 45488045. But when I wrap that

    • What's New in Zoho Inventory | April & May 2026

      Hello users, We're excited to roll out the latest Zoho Inventory updates for April and May 2026. These enhancements are designed to make your daily operations smoother and more efficient, from advanced inventory management and flexible pricing to automated

    • Latest updates to Zia in Office Integrator

      Hello Zoho Office Integrator users! We’re pleased to share exciting updates to the proofing capabilities of Zia, our AI-driven writing assistant, in Office Integrator. With these updates, you can now get spell and grammar check in Brazilian Portuguese,

    • How To Invoice Immediately for Future Subscription

      Hi, When a new subscription is created that has a future start date, Zoho Subscriptions does not invoice the customer until the start date of the subscription. Is there a way to immediately invoice the customer as soon as the subscription is created,

    • Implementing Back Button Navigation in Zoho Creator

      Zoho Creator does not currently support a native Back button within forms, so implementing backward navigation requires a workaround. We recently implemented this in an application that was split into 9 modular forms. Since users needed to move between

    • Deleted User Emails

      I need to delete a user as I need to re-use their license, but I'd like to keep all their emails that are attached to various contacts in the CRM. Their emails are hosted externally on an M365 license. Anyone any idea how best to engineer this? TIA

    • In wiki editor, dragging an image fails

      Expected behavior: Within the WYSIWYG editor, we have been able to select and drag an image (that is already inserted in the page) to move it to a different position on the page. Current behavior: For a few days recently (possibly longer and I didn't

    • Not able to see appointements when the territory permission is activated

      Hello, I created different territories to separate the various departments within the company that will be working on different projects. The issue I am currently experiencing is that when I enable territory-based permissions, I can see the work order

    • Print multiple uploaded images in an HTML snippet in a Page

      I have a Form: Job_Preparation It stores details of each new item that must be built by the fabricators in our workshop. The form has a field: Documents I upload 4 image files to the Documents field. I want to print a sheet for our workshop staff with

    • Quotes Module - import data

      Hello Zoho, is it possible to import Quotes records? I was trying and i have no results. Raport shows no data imported. Could you help me please how to do it?

    • Introducing the new Zoho Announcements Hub

      Hello, Enterprise Support Community! We are excited to announce a new way to keep up to date with recent product releases and announcements for the Zoho apps you use on a regular basis. Introducing our new centralized location to bring together all Zoho

    • Introducing Custom Columns in Forecasts in Zoho CRM

      Hello all, Forecasts in Zoho CRM help sales representatives, managers, and business stakeholders evaluate performance and plan future sales activities. While standard metrics such as Target, Achieved Amount, and Pipeline Amount provide a baseline view,

    • Can Zoho CRM Emails be used in Zoho Analytics in any capacity?

      We're wanting to display details about Lead Activity in regular reports through Zoho Analytics but we're having difficulty integrating Emails at all. We'd like to be able to note when an email is received and when it is sent somewhere other than just

    • Related list view for Assets

      We first set up all our parent assets in FSM and now we are adding child assets which are the parts for the parent assets. When under the customer related list, since it only displays 5 rows of data, I have to click through many assets to locate the parent

    • Zoho Books - France

      L’équipe de Zoho France reçoit régulièrement des questions sur la conformité de ses applications de finances (Zoho Books/ Zoho Invoice) pour le marché français. Voici quelques points pour clarifier la question : Zoho Books est un logiciel de comptabilité

    • Smart URL Determination

      I would like to see Vault implement some sort of "smart" URL determination. When one starts to add a new username-password combination from a new site, Vault brings in the exact URL of the page from which this is happening. All too often, it looks something

    • Project Statuses

      Hi All, We have projects that sometimes may not make it through to completion. As such, they were being marked as "Cancelled". I noticed that these projects still show as "Active" though which seems counter intuitive. In fact, the only way I can get them

    • Composite Services and Account Tracking

      I am looking to garner support/request the ability to make composite services. A quick search in the forums brings up multiple requests for this feature. I fail to see why an item is mandatory while services are optional. I also would like to see the

    • Marketer's Space: Lists vs. segments—what's the difference?

      Hello Marketers, Welcome back to another post in Marketer's Space! In email marketing, reaching the right audience is just as important as crafting the right message. Yet many marketers often confuse lists and segments, using them interchangeably without

    • Building a Multi-Step Form Experience in Zoho Creator Using Standard Forms

      Zoho Creator does not currently provide native multi-step form functionality. For applications with a large number of fields, a common requirement is to split data collection into manageable sections while maintaining a single application record. In this

    • Add Video link to interview record

      Hi Team, we are having team members consistently go to the interview record to find the link for their upcoming meeting and have been confused that they have not been able to find them. When the interview is created can you please upload the link to the

    • Zoho projects dependancies is a joke

      About to cancel our Zoho One subscription because Zoho Projects is a mess. Can't build a proper progream in it because the dependancies doesn't work properly. Can't believe this software is promoter as a project program when one can't even build a proper

    • Wiki Add Attachment upload fails at about 15.3 MB

      I am seeing consistent "Error in uploading file" for files larger than about 15,430 kB. For 15,300 kB or smaller, no problem, but 15,430 kB or larger always fail. This is over numerous trials. My test files, to examine this problem, were generated by

    • Stop Wasting Clicks: Let Us See All Notes in Quick View

      Hi Zoho Recruit team, I would like to suggest an improvement to the candidate/application experience in Zoho Recruit. Today, it is difficult to get a full picture of a candidate when working from the Quick View, since notes are split between: Notes related

    • Zoho Books | Product updates | June 2026

      Hello users, Welcome to this month's roundup of what's new in Zoho Books! We have an exciting line-up this time. The highlight is the launch of the all-new France Edition with full ISCA compliance. We're also introducing features such as Layout Rules

    • issue invoice for future subscription

      Hi, I selected the invoice at the date of subscription from the setting (since the alternative is to pre-set a date of a month) which is not my case. So, my question : Some times I need to create a subscription that will start at a future date but I need

    • Associate emails from both primary and secondary contacts to deal

      We need to associate emails from multiple contacts to a deal. Please advise how this can be achieved. At present, only emails from primary contacts can be associated. Thanks

    • How to set default reply email address depending on receipt email address

      Hi, I have a number of different customer support email addresses (info@XYZ.com, retuns@XYZ.com etc.) and want to set Zoho Desk so that the email address from which an agent replies is automatically defaulted to a predetermined address depending to which

    • Writer is horrible

      Form filling is about unusable for complex forms! I am so tired of it.

    • How to Migrate from MDaemon to Zoho Mail Account?

      Hi there, Zoho Mail is one of the most popular as well as leading competitor for several cloud email service providers. It is It provide cloud email service as well as desktop based email client. In recent years people are migrating from third party cloud servers to Zoho Mail. The reasons are plenty, i.e. the user interface, security, high performance and many countless amazing features. On the other hand MDaemon Mail (aka WorldClient) is also popular among cloud email servers. But there are some

    • Trigger workflows from SLA escalations in Zoho Desk?

      Hey everyone, I’m currently working with SLA escalation rules in Zoho Desk and ran into a limitation that I’m hoping someone here has solved more elegantly. As far as I can tell, SLA escalations only support fairly limited actions (like changing the ticket

    • CRM Portal Lookup Linkage and Related Fields

      hi, if someone can give me the right path, would be greatly appreciated. we want to do a customer portal for our partners who we issue work orders for our customers, the linkage via lookup fields Partner -> Work Order -> Customer in our portal, the primary

    • HOW TO: Searching a thread (email body/text) with a custom function, allowing filtering and specific actions

      We are still trialing out Zoho at this time, but have found a major expected feature to be missing - the ability to search within the text of an email for automation/workflows. NOTE: You need to create a connection for zohodesk under settings -> Developer

    • Cold emails not allowed?

      I planned to use Zoho Mail to send businesses some cold emails to offer my freelance writing services, but I noticed that the anti-spam policy is very strict -- no commercial emails whatsoever without prior permission from the recipient? I would be very

    • Zoho Team Inbox - roadmap

      Hi, would be good to understand the Teaminbox roadmap, in particular: 1. API / Zoho Deluge connections. We have a process where the each email needs to be either tagged or assigned daily. It would be great if we could automate a 5pm alert for any exemptions

    • Next Page