First Insight - Find your Fields

First Insight - Find your Fields

The Wheels of Ticketing - Desk Stories

Find your Fields

What are fields?

Fields are crucial in ticketing modules that capture information about Tickets, Customers, Organizations, Products, and more. Depending on the kind of data being stored, users can choose from various types of fields, including Date, Date/Time, Picklist, Single-line, and Multiline. 
 
Desk offers standard fields that cater to everyday business needs, such as Company name and Email address. It also allows the addition of custom fields based on specific business requirements. A layout is comprised of both standard and custom fields.

Types of fields

Standard Fields

Organizations can display or hide standard fields within each module according to their needs. Notably, mandatory fields defined by the system, such as Departments and Contact Name, cannot be modified or removed. Any alterations made to the standard fields within a layout will apply organization-wide.

Custom Fields

Alongside the standard fields, Desk provides the opportunity to add custom fields tailored to specific industry needs, including types like string, decimal, integer, currency, and checkbox. For instance, a custom field titled "Referred By" can be created to track customer referrals. However, it's worth mentioning that these custom fields will only be available within the department where they were made. Custom fields can be added to various modules, including Contracts, Time Entry, Agents, Tickets, Contacts, Accounts, Products, Calls, Tasks, and Events.

A story for better comprehension of using fields

The Ticketing Turnaround at Crazy Fitness

Crazy Fitness, a popular fitness studio chain, was struggling to keep up with its rapidly growing customer base. The support team was inundated with tickets, and response times were suffering.

Rachel, the support team lead, knew they needed a better system. She implemented a new ticketing system by choosing the right fields and creating the necessary custom fields, focusing on:
  • Multi-channel support: Rachel configured the system to manage requests from multiple channels, such as email, social media, and live chat.
  • Knowledge base: She developed a thorough knowledge base, enabling customers to find solutions to their queries independently.
  • SLA management: Rachel set up well-defined service level agreements (SLAs) to guarantee prompt responses and resolutions.

With the new ticketing system, Crazy Fitness:

  • Reduced ticket volume: By 20%, as customers found answers in the knowledge base.
  • Improved response times: By 50%, thanks to automated routing and SLA management.
  • Increased customer satisfaction: By 30%, as customers received timely and personalized support.
As Crazy Fitness continued to expand, Rachel's team used the ticketing system to identify trends and optimize their support process. They even launched a customer feedback program, using ticket data to inform product development and improve the overall customer experience.

Crazy Fitness's commitment to customer support helped the company maintain its reputation as a leader in the fitness industry.

Overview of fields

In the newly set Crazy Fitness ticketing help desk system, fields typically refer to the different pieces of information that can be captured or displayed for each support ticket. Here are some standard fields you might encounter:

Ticket Fields

  • Ticket ID/Number: A unique identifier is assigned to each ticket
  • Subject: A summary of the issue or request
  • Description: A detailed account of the problem or question being addressed
  • Category: The type of issue (e.g., technical support, billing questions, general inquiries)
  • Priority: The urgency level of the ticket
  • Status: The current state of the ticket (e.g., open, in progress, resolved)
  • Assignee: The agent or team designated to handle the ticket
  • Requester: The individual who submitted the ticket

Contact Fields

  • Name: Customer's full name
  • Email: Customer's email address
  • Phone: Customer's phone number
  • Organization: Customer's company or organization

Custom Fields

  • Age - Age of the fitness enthusiast
  • Height - Height of the fitness enthusiast in centimetres
  • Weight -Weight of the fitness enthusiast in kilograms
  • Diet Plan - A balanced diet plan prescribed to the fitness enthusiast  for a healthy lifestyle

Additional Fields

  • Tags: Keywords or labels to categorize and filter tickets
  • Attachments: Files or screenshots added to the ticket for context
  • Conversation History: Record of all interactions related to the ticket
  • Custom Fields: User-defined fields to capture specific information relevant to a business

Reporting and Analytics Fields

  • Created Date: Timestamp when the ticket was created
  • Resolved Date: Timestamp when the ticket was resolved
  • Resolution Time: Time taken to resolve each ticket
  • Agent Performance: Metrics to evaluate agent efficiency and effectiveness

Takeaway

These fields help you manage, track, and analyze customer support requests efficiently, ensuring timely resolutions and improved customer satisfaction. 

These fields can vary depending on the help desk software being used, and some systems offer customizable fields to suit specific organizational needs better.

Please stay tuned for more Desk Module stories.

Cheers,
 
Kavya Rao
The Zoho Desk Team

    • Recent Topics

    • Ask the Experts 27: Onboarding and managing agents

      Hello everyone, We are back with our Ask the Experts (ATE) series for 2026. This year, we bring experts to help you address customer support challenges using Zoho Desk. For our first ATE, we are getting into the human side of customer support. "Every

    • Retainer invoice in Zoho Finance modlue

      Hello, Is there a way of creating retainer invoices in the Zoho Finance module? If not can I request this is considered for future updates please.

    • Spotlight #27: Embed visual collaboration Spaces in your presentations using the Vani add-on

      Hello everyone! This month’s spotlight feature is the Vani add-on for Zoho Show. Every time you pause your presentation to open another tab or pull up supporting material, you lose a bit of momentum. At Zoho Show, we design features that keep everything

    • CRM

      Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Our company is not moving out of using Gmail's web app. It just has more features and is a better email program than Zoho Mail. Gmail has an extension (Zoho CRM for Gmail) that we're using but we've found some serious

    • Good news! Calendar in Zoho CRM gets a face lift

      Dear Customers, We are delighted to unveil the revamped calendar UI in Zoho CRM. With a complete visual overhaul aligned with CRM for Everyone, the calendar now offers a more intuitive and flexible scheduling experience. What’s new? Distinguish activities

    • Global Search / Command Palette in Live App

      Zoho Creator applications can contain many forms, reports, pages, and dashboards. While navigation inside the app is smooth, users still need to move through multiple menus or screens to find specific records or open particular modules. Currently, in

    • New 2026 Application Themes

      Love the new themes - shame you can't get a little more granular with the colours, ie 3 different colours so one for the dropdown menu background. Also, I did have our logo above the application name but it appears you can't change logo placement position

    • Smarter appointment allocation with round-robin distribution

      Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce the Appointment Distribution feature, a new way to decide how appointments are assigned among users. By default, appointments are distributed evenly across all event types, but this enhancement

    • A2P 10DLC Opt-in Rejection Issue with Zoho Creator Public Form

      Hi everyone, I’m working on an A2P 10DLC SMS campaign and running into repeated rejections due to opt-in issues. I’m using Zoho Creator for the registration flow. The form is public (no login required). Users enter their phone number and there is an unchecked

    • Make Quick Edits to Images Before Attaching

      Hello everyone, We have enhanced how attachments are handled in tickets to help agents preview and share files more efficiently in Zoho Desk. Agents can preview image attachments before adding them to tickets and edit them using attachment annotator.

    • 3/18 オンライン勉強会のお知らせ Zoho ワークアウト （無料）

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 3月開催のZoho ワークアウトの開催が決定しましたのでご案内します。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 ▶︎参加登録はこちら（無料） https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/BoNTN7zYR8OvOPGShqBY0A ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは？ Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目指すイベントです。

    • Incorrect Functioning of Time Logs API (Version 3)

      We need to fetch the list of time logs for each task for our company internal usage. We are trying to achieve it by using the next endpoint: https://projects.zoho.com/api-docs#bulk-time-logs#get-all-project-time-logs Firstly, in the documentation the

    • Extend color coding to custom picklist fields

      Objectively, Projects has the best UI of any Zoho app — clean, intuitive, and never feels bloated. Big props to whoever owns the design. Feature request: color coding for custom picklist field values in field customization. You've already done it in two

    • New in Office Integrator: In-sheet text translation

      Hi users, We're pleased to introduce translation capability in the spreadsheet editor in Zoho Office Integrator. This allows you to translate the text in your spreadsheet's cells into 70+ languages from within your web app. Office Integrator's spreadsheet

    • Streamline email communication with Out of Office configuration

      Managing user communication effectively is the key to ensuring timely responses and consistent messaging. However, when users are unavailable, the absence of an Out of Office response can lead to delays and missed expectations. Managing these settings

    • Changing settings for auto logoff

      I've noticed that when I haven't used Cliq for a while, I have to re-enter my password. That is really clumsy, especially if you have a complicated password. Because it won't be filled in automatically. Is there a way to change that behaviour? We are

    • A few Issues when using "Pay Bill via Check"

      We have quite a bit of issues with how paying for Bills via Check works. Would love some feedback from the Zoho team in case we are doing something incorrectly. 1. When we go from a vendor and select "Pay Bill via Check" option, we see ALL the outstanding

    • Issue with "Send Email" from Quotes not loading Email Template data

      Hi everyone, I'm currently experiencing an issue when using the "Send Email" option from a Quote record in Zoho CRM. What’s happening: When I go to the Quotes module and select a record, then click Send Email, the attached file (Quote) correctly pulls

    • Prevent tracking users from specific countries

      Currently, I’m receiving many bot visits from the United States and Malaysia. I would like these visits not to be recorded in SalesIQ. I already enabled the option to exclude traffic from cloud service providers, but I’m still receiving bot visits. Ideally,

    • My client requires me to have custom pdf file names to except payment for invoices, how can I customize this before emailing.

      Hello! I love the program so far but there are a few things that are standing in the way. I hope you guys can code them in so I can keep the program for years to come. My client requires I customize the pdf file names I send in for billing. Can you please

    • Edit Project Number?

      Hi all: We just signed up for a trial of zoho one, which includes ZoHo Projects. We've noticed there was a 'dummy project' preloaded in projects to help familiarize yourself with the software. We've created a couple of our own projects now but noticed since the dummy project was preloaded, our projects start with number 2 then 3, sequentially. Since it seems we will be keeping zoho past the trial, If we delete the dummy project, how do we get our own projects renumbered, beginning with 1? We'd like

    • Download pricebook products & details - not just pricebook creation date & name

      We're looking to download a copy of a pricebook and its associated products & book prices (as we have several offices in different countries selling the same products), however, when using the export feature under Data administration it only gives me

    • Assign Meeting in records

      It would be nice to be able to "call and assing" meetings from a record, for example from a Deal. Right now - calendar is synced with CRM - meetings show in calendar - you can go in each meeting and assign it to a record It would be nice to be able to

    • Allow Global Admin to access/edit all forms without changing owners

      Hi there, Please consider adding a feature where the Global Admin of the account an automatically access/edit any form in the Company Account. I'm the Global Admin on our Zoho One plan, and we have multiple users that use/create forms. But for me to access

    • ERROR: "Please enter a valid Phone"

      WHAT IS THE PHONE FORMAT? There is nothing ANYWHERE to define the format. At least the error should either show the correct format or provide a link to the help file I enter a valid phone number in as many formats as I can think of and none of them allow me to save the number to CRM Nothing works! No matter what format I enter I keep getting a red error "Please enter a valid Phone" The international format for MY mobile is +61414652366 (or +61 414 652 366) Local format is 0414652366 I call all over

    • How to create a boxplot chart in Zoho Analytics?

      Hi, I'm looking forward to making a boxplot in Zoho Analytics, either with all my data or with a time segmentation. No documentation or YouTube video explaining that was found. I guess this is a feature gap. How feasible would it be to add this to Analytics?

    • Introducing Zoho Sprints 3.0

      Zoho Sprints is consistently evolving in steady increments. The introduction of the latest version, with its enterprise level solutions, brings to you advanced capabilities that propel your agile efforts in the right direction. Here's a quick glimpse

    • Transaction Rules & Customer Payments

      So I have a situation as follows. We have many clients who are all invoiced on the 1st of each month on a recurring invoice for 1 of 10 plans. This means that almost all payment dates are the same (some people pay late) and that a lot of the amounts are

    • Customize Sign-out Button

      Are there some url parameters I can use to make a form button sign-out the user from the app? The sign-out link on the top right is small. Here's and example of the url for the top right sign-out: https://creator.zoho.com/logoutpage.jsp?sharedBy=niskypto&appID=212085000006568003&appLinkName=MYAPP&signOutUrl=niskypto/MYAPP/view-login/SOMEPAGE Note: In my account, the sign-out is set to redirect users to my website. Can I also override this with some url parameters? John M. Whitney

    • Please can the open tasks be shown in each customer account at the top.

      Hi there This has happened before, where the open tasks are no longer visible at the top of the page for each customer in the CRM. They have gone missing previously and were reinstated when I asked so I think it's just after an update that this feature

    • Tip #65 - Exploring Technician Console: Short Keys - 'Insider Insights'

      Hello Zoho Assist Community! Have you ever been in the middle of a remote support session, trying to pass a key combination onto the remote machine, only to find it's reflecting on the technician's computer. The Short Keys feature in Zoho Assist is here

    • Reading from and writing to Zoho Projects Custom Module with Deluge

      Does anyone know if there is a way to read from and write to the Custom Modules that Zoho now supports. I would love to be able to loop through a set of data and create the entities I need to for this new custom module I'm looking to put together.

    • Disappointment with Zoho Payments

      Dear Gowdhaman, I am writing to inform you that I am removing Zoho Payments from my website. I cannot continue to disappoint my customers due to the lack of UPI support, as has been the case with my experience so far. Please note that the 0.5% transaction

    • Evolução do modelo de ambientes: Dev, Homologação e Produção com pacotes versionados

      Hoje o Zoho CRM já oferece Sandbox, o que é um avanço importante para organizações que trabalham com customizações mais complexas. No entanto, na prática, o modelo atual ainda apresenta limitações significativas quando múltiplas equipes ou consultorias

    • Permissões granulares por usuário além do modelo baseado exclusivamente em perfis

      Atualmente, o modelo de segurança do Zoho CRM é fortemente baseado em perfis. Embora funcional, esse modelo apresenta limitações quando equipes possuem variações individuais de acesso dentro do mesmo grupo operacional. Em cenários reais, é comum que usuários

    • Add or update lookup field values during Blueprint transition

      Hello everyone, During blueprint transition users can add or modify the value of a lookup field. For instance, if the Tickets module includes a lookup field that connects it to records in the Assets module, agents can link the ticket to the correct asset

    • Can you limit SEO penalties by delaying the appearance of a pop-up?

      Google is not keen on pop-ups and has got even less keen on them with the new Core Web Vitals updates. But I like using pop-ups. If you delay the pop-up so it only appears 10 seconds after the page loads, do you avoid Google’s penalties? 

    • Adding bank details to the contact through API

      How to add bank-related information to the contact while creating it using API? The account number needs to be encrypted before sending it through API but not sure how to encrypt and get those values. Please guide me in this.

    • Restrict Payment Methods

      Allow us to restrict certain payment methods specific for each customer.

    • Clone Banking Transaction

      Why is there no option to CLONE a Transaction in the Banking module?? I often clone Expenses (for similar expense transactions each month) so I would also like to clone Income transactions. But there is no option in Banking to clone an existing Income

    • Next Page