Lifecycle Reports

Lifecycle Reports

From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports


A lifecycle report captures and visualises the sequential states that a ticket undergoes across its lifespan. 

For instance, when a customer submits a support ticket for a faulty product, it is initially marked as Open. It transitions to In Progress when an agent begins addressing it, may be placed on On Hold while awaiting confirmation from the warehouse, and ultimately concludes as Completed once the replacement is dispatched. It is then moved to Closed status after the issue is resolved.

The lifecycle report provides details on the duration of each phase, the person responsible for managing it, and the date it advanced to the next stage. It tracks when and how long each ticket stays in a specific status. It can also consider other factors, like the person assigned or the ticket category. Most ticketing systems offer detailed filtering. This lets organizations look at lifecycle metrics by agent and team.

What does it track?

  1. Request ID: Zoho Desk identifies and distinguishes tickets using a unique reference number called a ticket ID.
  2. Event start time: The time when the ticket status begins.
  3. Event end time: The end time of the ticket status
  4. Status updated from: The initial status of the ticket.
  5. Status updated to: The current ticket status.
  6. Duration: The duration between the transition.
  7. Duration (Business Hours): The duration between the transition in business hours.
  8. Modified by: The agent who modified the request.

What are ticket-based reports? 

Ticket-based reports are summaries created from the data collected in a help desk ticketing system. These reports focus on different aspects of ticket management and give insights into how customer support requests are handled and resolved. They usually include metrics like ticket volume trends, response times, resolution times, ticket statuses, agent and team performance, and customer satisfaction scores.

Types of lifecycle reports

Status transition: A simple solution to reduce delays 

In a streaming service company, the status lifecycle report identifies tickets that remain in the Pending Verification status for an excessive amount of time, which can negatively impact user satisfaction. For instance, a user reporting an issue with their subscription may be stuck in Pending Verification while awaiting a response from the billing team. 
 
By analyzing the lifecycle report, the company discovers that the delay arises from inefficient communication between the support and billing departments. To address this, they can implement automated notifications or escalation measures to alert the support team if a ticket remains in the Pending Verification status for an extended period. This approach will expedite resolution times and lead to enhanced user satisfaction.

Agent transition: Enhancing agents' accountability

In a travel agency, tickets concerning flight changes often require collaboration among different agents, such as those handling customer service and ticketing. By using the agent lifecycle report, managers can assess how long each agent spends on flight-related tickets. 
 
For example, if an agent consistently takes longer to resolve these tickets than their colleagues, this data helps identify potential weaknesses in their process. The manager can then provide focused training through an internal knowledge base or redistribute tickets more evenly using assignment algorithms. By optimizing the distribution of work and offering targeted support, agents can improve their ticket handling efficiency, reduce delays, and resolve requests more swiftly.

Team transition: Supporting cross-team collaboration

A food delivery service frequently encounters tickets transitioning between the Customer Support and Delivery teams, especially for order-related inquiries. By analyzing the team lifecycle report, they can identify how long tickets linger with each team and determine whether delays stem from the Delivery team. 
 
To address this, the company can implement time-based automation protocols that activate when tickets move to the Delivery team. This will facilitate quicker acknowledgement and necessary actions, minimize resolution times, and significantly improve the customer experience.

Department transition: Simplifying complex issues

A university admissions office handles support tickets that involve multiple departments, including Admissions, Financial Aid, and Academic Advising. By utilizing the department lifecycle report, they find that tickets regarding financial aid often take longer than anticipated during the transition from Admissions to Financial Aid. 
 
The report uncovers that inefficient handoffs between these departments are contributing to the delays. To enhance this process, the university can establish automation protocols that streamline information transfer between departments, thus minimizing bottlenecks and ensuring that all essential details are passed along seamlessly.

Components

Status transitions

This tracks the movement of tasks, tickets, or items through various defined states, such as New, In Progress, On Hold, and Resolved. Watching these status changes helps managers understand the process flow, identify where delays occur, and confirm that each phase is being handled appropriately.

Time spent per status

This measures how long an item stays in each status before moving on. Calculating the time spent reveals bottlenecks, identifies inefficient stages, and guides efforts to shorten cycle times and accelerate overall resolution or delivery.

Agent and team analysis

This component breaks down performance metrics for individual agents and teams. It provides insights into productivity, workload distribution, and effectiveness. It helps with targeted training, balanced workload allocation, and recognizing top performers within the lifecycle.

Work schedule adjustments

Using lifecycle data, this part checks if current staffing and schedules match workload patterns. It helps optimize shifts and resource availability. This helps avoid both over-staffing and under-staffing, ensuring demand is met and wait times are reduced.

Report and visualization

This presents the collected data through detailed reports and graphs, such as charts and dashboards. This makes complex lifecycle information easy to understand and share. Visuals help identify trends, issues, and opportunities for improvement quickly and effectively.

Benefits

Identify workflow bottlenecks

Lifecycle reports reveal the stages or processes where delays or inefficiencies occur. By pinpointing these bottlenecks, organizations can investigate causes and implement targeted improvements to keep work flowing smoothly and avoid stagnation.

Measure team performance

These reports provide precise data on how teams or individuals are performing against defined metrics such as ticket resolution, project progress, or task completion rates. They enable team leads to assess productivity objectively, identify high performers, and address performance gaps with evidence-based insights.

Improve resolution time

Tracking the lifecycle of tasks or tickets highlights opportunities to shorten turnaround times, such as by automating repetitive steps, reallocating workload, or streamlining approval chains. Accelerating resolution improves customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Support continuous improvement

Lifecycle reporting creates a feedback loop where ongoing data collection drives iterative refinement. Organizations use insights from past performance to refine processes, adopt best practices, and innovate workflows that adapt to changing demands and evolving goals.

Optimize resource allocation

With clear visibility into workload distribution, resource utilization, and process timing, lifecycle reports enable managers to assign the right people, apply the right technology, and allocate their budget where those resources are needed most. 

Takeaway

Using a lifecycle report in a help desk ticketing system is essential for operational success. It offers a clear, data-driven view of each stage in the ticket process, from issue intake to resolution. This enables teams to identify delays and reduce resolution times. 

The insights from the report support better resource allocation and enable help desks to provide faster and more consistent support experiences. This leads to higher customer satisfaction and boosts productivity and efficiency in a scalable way.

 

Stay tuned for more articles in our Desk Reports series.

 

Regards,

 

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team

​

InfoManaging a help desk involves complex responsibilities, such as identifying bottlenecks, minimising errors, and evaluating team performance for seamless service delivery. To do this effectively, access to comprehensive analytics and real-time insights is crucial. Zoho Desk streamlines these tasks by also providing detailed analytics and live reports through the Radar app, allowing managers to make informed decisions anytime, anywhere. Download now!

    • Sticky Posts

    • Zoho Desk Partners with Microsoft's M365 Copilot for seamless customer service experiences

      Hello Zoho Desk users, We are happy to announce that Zoho Desk has partnered with Microsoft's M365 to empower customer service teams with enhanced capabilities and seamless experiences for agents. Microsoft announced their partnership during their keynote

    • WhatsApp pricing changes: Pay per message starting July 1, 2025

      Starting July 1, 2025, WhatsApp is shifting from conversation-based pricing to per-message billing. That means every business-initiated message you send will count. Not just the first one in a 24-hour window. Pricing updates on the WhatsApp Business Platform

    • Live Webinar - Work smarter with Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace integration

      Hello customers! Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace are coming together for a webinar on 14th May, 2024. Zoho Workplace is a suite of productivity apps for email, chat, docs, calls, and more at one single place. Zoho Desk is closely integrated with a few tools

    • Apple iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 updates for Zoho Desk users

      Hello Zoho Desk users! Apple recently announced the release of iOS 17 and iPad OS 17. These latest OS updates will help you stay productive and efficient, through interactive and seamless user experiences. Zoho Desk has incorporated the updates to help

    • Zoho Desk Cheat Sheet For The Year-End

      Check out these Zoho Desk best practices to end this year on a high and have a great one ahead! #1 Set Business (Holiday) Hours - If you have limited working hours, please make sure you restrict your business hours or set them as holidays for the coming days. Let your customers know when you will, and won't, be available. #2 Update the Annual Holiday List - Check the holidays for the new year and update the holiday schedule. Usually, holidays from the current year will be carried over for the next

    • Recent Topics

    • STOCK history in zohosheets

      is it possible to get historical stock value using stock function in zoho sheets? i could not see from and to period in the helper document.

    • Auto sync Photo storage

      Hello I am new to Zoho Workdrive and was wondering if the is a way of automatically syncing photos on my Android phone to my workdrive as want to move away from Google? Thanks

    • Agent password reset

      Hi Zoho support, I would like to ask if there is a way the admin can reset a password of an agent? Regards

    • Can receive but not send messages in Zoho Mail

      Hello! I was able to configure my email client successfully in that I can receive messages just fine. However, when I send messages out, they seem to go out fine (I don't receive any errors or anything), but the recipient does NOT receive those messages.

    • Mail is sent twice!

      Been using Zoho for a while now. Installed Zoho for someone else and some weird things are happening. Mails are being sent twice. He is using Thunderbird as an email client. I already read about email being duplicated in the sent folder. But in my case

    • Can't login IMAP suddenly

      Since this evening I'm getting the error: You are yet to enable IMAP for your account. Please contact your administrator... IMAP always been enabled in my account and was workign fine for the past 7 years. Already tried turning IMAP off and on again.

    • Sending of username did not succeed: Mail server pop.zoho.com responded: User already specified

      I am having issues receiving emails from Zoho in Thunderbird. I am getting the above error. The first error tells me Authentication failed, and prompts me to enter in my password. Then I get the above error. I can receive emails when I log in online to

    • Bug tracking

      Hi, does anyone know how to track errors during picking or packing? This way I can keep track and see how to improve and prevent errors in this area.

    • Migration of corporate mail environment from Yandex 360 to Zoho mail

      I have to migrate a corporate mail environment with an existing domain from Yandex 360 to Zoho mail. It is vital to migrate all users with all the data. I have read the article on this topic using MacMister Email Backup Software just now and have some

    • I'm unable to send mail pthrough Zoho SMTP programmatically

      This has been working for years, but today it's been offline all day long. I see nothing anywhere on your site about this. I'm not the only one experiencing this. Downdetector has a spike of reports today

    • Can no longer send email via Django site

      This was working fine as of 11/7/25. Now I am unable to send user verification emails from a Django site on a AWS lightsail sever. When a user attempts to register the following error occurs. I have also attempted to send a test email via the shell and

    • unable to send email but able to receive email

      my email address is info@securityforceservices.ca

    • Login to server failing

      When trying to retrieve my mail, I am getting this error message -- Login to server pop.zoho.com with username (my email address) failed. It gives me the option to retry, enter password, or cancel. Then I get this message -- Sending of username did not

    • Configuration failed: 200 response not received for POST request.

      Hello, I am trying to set up a webhook to connect with an Salesforce but I receive the following error from Zoho: Configuration failed: 200 response not received for POST request I have tried testing it on webhook.site as well and receive the same error

    • Zoho Migration Assistant not working

      Hello, I am trying to use you Migration assistant to migrate emails from Rediff to Zoho. I am stuck in the first step. After downloading the migration tool, I copied the link to verify user credentials, however, after pasting the link in the browser,

    • Scheduled Reports - Do not send empty report

      Hello, We are intensively using reports in the CRM, especially for sales managers.  When data is empty, they still receive an email. Can you add an option to avoid sending the report when data is empty?

    • Contacts Missing — PeopleSync/Zoho Mail

      English: In our company we use ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager (MDM), Free edition, to manage corporate mobile devices. Our usage policy does not allow personal Google accounts on these devices; therefore, Google account sync is blocked through MDM.

    • Best way to integrate Zoho with mobile app for managing customer requests with real-time notifications?

      Hello, I'm building a solution for a travel company where customers submit requests through a website, and the sales team manages these requests through a mobile app. The Requirement: Customers fill a form on the website (name, email, number of children,

    • Kaizen #57 - Mass Update API in Zoho CRM

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to yet another post in the Kaizen series. This week, we will discuss the Mass Update API in Zoho CRM. In this post, we will cover the following: 1. Introduction 2. Mass Update Records API  3. Schedule Update and Get Status

    • Getting Attachments in Zoho Desk via API

      Is there a way to get attachments into Zoho Desk via an API?      We have a process by which a zoho survey gets sent to the user as a link in a notification.    The survey has several upload fields where they can upload pdf documents.    I've created

    • Multiple currencies - doesn’t seem to work for site visitors / customers

      I am trying to understand how the multiple currency feature works from the perspective of the website visitor who is shopping on my Zoho Commerce site. My site’s base currency is US Dollars (USD) but my store is for customers in Costa Rica and I would

    • Pincode based Product Restriction

      we have different types of products. 1) Very bulky items like plywood. 2) Too delicate items like glass These type of products we want to sell to local customers. Other products we want to supply all over India. There should be an option to restrict products

    • Can multiple agents be assigned to one ticket on purpose?

      Is it possible to assign one ticket to two or more agents at a time? I would like the option to have multiple people working on one ticket so that the same ticket is viewable for those agents on their list of pending tickets. Is something like this currently

    • Related Lists filter

      I have Contacts showing in our Accounts module. I customized the Contacts module with an Employment Status field, with the following picklist options: "Primary Contact", "Secondary Contact", "Active Staff(not a main contact)", and "No longer employed".

    • Standalone custom function not generating logs

      Why dont't standalone custom functions generate logs when the're called from another function? I have some functions (workflow, buttons and blueprint) that have common parts, so I put that part in a standalone function which is called from the others.

    • Add "Reset MFA" Option for Zoho Creator Client Portal Users

      Hello Zoho Creator Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement related to Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for client portal users in Zoho Creator. Currently, Creator allows us to enforce MFA for portal users,

    • Support Bots and Automations in External Channels

      Hello Zoho Cliq Team, How are you? We actively use Zoho Cliq for collaboration, including with our external developers. For this purpose, external channels are a key tool since they work seamlessly within the same interface as all of our other channels

    • Urgent Security Feature Request – Add MFA to Zoho Projects Client Portal Hello Zoho Projects Team,

      Hello Zoho Projects Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to submit an urgent security enhancement request regarding the Zoho Projects Client Portal. At this time, as far as we are aware, there is no Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) available

    • Creator HTML page refresh

      Hi, I have added around 5 different html snippets in single creator page. I understand, I can refresh the entire page from page script using Navigational URLs https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/creator/developer-guide/others/url-patterns/articles/navigational-urls

    • Zoho Desk - Custom Module Related List Columns on Tickets

      I have a custom module in Zoho Desk called Asana Tasks, each task has a lookup to a Ticket. On the Ticket I want to see the columns of the Asana Tasks in the related list . Is there a way to do this? Right now it just has the name of the record and I

    • What is your opinion of the new UI?

      Hi Everyone, I would like to see what everyone thinks of the new Zoho One Dashboard. I don't get it, but perhaps I'm missing something. What are your thoughts?

    • What are the OAuth scopes needed to access the Zoho MCP server?

      I think I'm authenticating with the MCP server endpoint successfully using a bearer token but I can't successfully initialize an MCP session. I'm using the official MCP Python sdk (https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk). I get as far as here

    • cant upload images in signature- urgent help needed. ta!

      HI, I have been trying to insert the company logo in the signature. i have tried it several times since yesterday, the longest I waited was 1 hour and 12 minutes for the pop up window to upload a 180 KB .jpg file. what am i doing wrong..  an urgent reply will be appreciated,  Ta

    • Account blocked for IMAP use

      Hello, My email client (Evolution) can't sync mail anymore. It gives the error: "Your account is temporarily blocked for IMAP use. This may happen if you exceed the maximum number of simultaneous IMAP connections allowed. Kindly try again after some time."

    • Is SMTP included in the free plan?

      My client has a Zoho Mail Free 14 day trial that ends tomorrow. She has set up a domain email address with SMTP on a third party app and is wondering if it will continue working once her plan downgrades to the free forever plan. Thanks

    • Zoho mail issue.

      I have verified my domain ohhoexpress.online by adding necessary TXT and MX records. But when I am sending email to any external email id, it is showing as zohomail.com. Also while I am sending mail to internal mail id, it is saying user not found whereas

    • My email is blocked from sending

      I get this message when I try to send any message .. > Unable to send message, Reason 554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked We have urgent emails to send and the issue continues to persist from yesterday. Please help us with this issue as soon as possibl

    • [WEBINAR] Smooth year-end closure with Zoho Books (KENYA)

      Hello there, This webinar is for all Kenyan businesses looking to wrap up their financial year smoothly! Join our free session to learn how Zoho Books can simplify your year-end process. What to expect from this webinar: - All the latest updates in Zoho

    • cannot recieve or send emails

      we are not recieving or cannot send emails.Shows sysytem error

    • Zoho Sites - contact us form

      I have added a contact us form to my website. I wanted to change the layout so I deleted the section of Contact Us form. When I again try to add the section of Contact Us form, it shows error that "This form already exists on this page."  I am unable

    • Next Page