Zoho Desk

The Zoho Desk app brings your help desk into the conversation. Once an admin connects it:

• Alerts post new tickets, status changes (including closed and reopened tickets), customer replies, and priority and assignment changes into the channels you pick, as they happen.
• Link previews show a ticket’s subject, status, priority, contact and assignee under any Zoho Desk ticket link someone posts.
• Create Zoho Desk ticket turns any message into a ticket, with a link back to the message.

Zoho Desk posts as its own member, Zoho Desk, so its cards are easy to tell apart from people. It works with every Zoho data center: the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia and China. Freesbe talks to your help desk in its own data center, so your tickets stay there. It’s the same Zoho sign-in as Zoho CRM, but each connects on its own, so you can use one without the other.

Connect Zoho Desk

Only owners and admins can connect it.

1. Open Workspace settings → Integrations → Support and find Zoho Desk.
2. Click Connect Zoho Desk. Zoho asks you to sign in. Zoho finds your account’s data center on its own, so sign in as you usually do.
3. Zoho lists what Freesbe asks for. Click Accept.
4. You’re back in Freesbe with Connected next to Zoho Desk, your help desk’s name and its data center.

A workspace connects one help desk: your default Zoho Desk organization, if you belong to more than one. Freesbe works as the person who connected it, so it sees the tickets they can see. Connect as a Zoho Desk administrator: only administrators can add the webhook that sends ticket changes to Freesbe. If someone else connects, previews and Create Zoho Desk ticket still work, but Zoho Desk shows a note that alerts can’t arrive yet. Freesbe tries adding the webhook again every hour, or reconnect as an administrator.

Freesbe reads tickets and departments, makes tickets when someone chooses Create Zoho Desk ticket, and adds one webhook, named Freesbe, under Setup → Developer Space → Webhooks in Zoho Desk. It doesn’t change or delete anything else.

Alerts

Under Zoho Desk alerts, click Add alert, then pick:

• Post to channel. Any channel, public or private. Alerts in a private channel are only visible to admins who are in it.
• Alerts to post:
  • New tickets, from any channel: email, web form, phone or chat.
  • Status changes, closed and reopened tickets.
  • Customer replies, when a customer writes on a ticket. Your agents’ answers and comments aren’t posted.
  • Priority changes and Assignment changes.
• Department. Only tickets in one department, or in all of them.

Zoho Desk sends each change to Freesbe as it happens, so alerts arrive within seconds. Add more alerts to send different things to different channels: Billing tickets to #billing, customer replies to the team that answers them. Each card shows the ticket’s number and subject, status, priority, contact, assignee, department and channel, a customer’s reply quoted under it, and an Open in Zoho Desk button.

From an alert’s ⋯ menu:

• Send a test alert posts a sample card, marked Sample alert, so you can see where alerts land.
• Edit changes the channel, the kinds of alerts or the department.
• Turn off pauses it, and Delete removes it.

Last alert under each one says when it last posted. Alerts start with what happens after you add them: Freesbe doesn’t post older tickets.

Link previews

When someone posts a link to a ticket in your connected help desk, Freesbe adds a preview under the message, for example desk.zoho.eu/agent/northwind/support/tickets/details/1234000000101001. Up to three links in a message get a preview.

Everyone in the conversation sees the preview, including guests, so turn Show a preview under Zoho Desk ticket links off under Zoho Desk link previews if your ticket details shouldn’t be shared that way. Links to other help desks are left alone.

Create a ticket from a message

Hover over any message, click ⋯ and choose Create Zoho Desk ticket.

1. Check the Subject and Description. They start as the message’s first line and its text.
2. Type the Customer’s email, who the ticket is for. When the message is from a guest, their email address is already filled in. Leave it empty to make the ticket yours.
3. Pick the Department, and a Priority if you like.
4. Click Create.

The ticket’s card is posted in the message’s thread, so everyone there sees it was made, with an Open in Zoho Desk button. The ticket’s description ends with who made it, the channel and a link back to the message in Freesbe. Zoho Desk adds the customer as a contact if they’re new.

Disconnect

In Integrations → Support, click Disconnect next to Zoho Desk. Freesbe removes its webhook from Zoho Desk, Freesbe’s access is removed in Zoho, alerts and previews stop, and Create Zoho Desk ticket leaves the message menu. Your alerts are kept, so connecting again picks up where you left off.

If someone removes Freesbe in Zoho first (My Account → Connected Apps), or the person who connected it leaves the help desk, the Zoho Desk app shows Needs reconnecting: click Reconnect to bring it back.

Privacy and security

• Freesbe signs in to Zoho with OAuth, keeps Zoho’s access encrypted, and only asks Zoho Desk for what it shows. It doesn’t copy your tickets: alerts and previews are made from the ticket when they’re posted.
• Your Zoho account’s data center is kept: Freesbe calls Zoho Desk in that data center only.
• The webhook’s address has a long random secret that only Freesbe and Zoho Desk know, so nobody else can post alerts into your channels, and Freesbe only takes changes for your help desk. Each change is posted once, even if Zoho Desk sends it twice.
• Disconnecting deletes Freesbe’s access straight away.

Setting it up for a support team? See Set up Zoho Desk for your support team. If something isn’t working, see Zoho Desk alerts aren’t posting.

Using Zendesk? See Zendesk. For other help desks, use an incoming webhook or build an app.