On a schedule

Label new tickets by category and urgency

Untagged tickets get a category tag and a priority within 10 minutes.

Runs: On a schedule
Apps: Zoho Desk
AI: Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access: Desk.tickets.ALL

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 10 minutes, read new untagged Zoho Desk tickets, tag each as billing, bug, how-to or other, and set its priority to High, Medium or Low.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A Zoho Desk support queue mixes billing disputes, bug reports, feature requests and password resets. Agents read each new ticket to decide its category and how urgent it is, then set the fields by hand. With 150 tickets a day, that is hours of reading before any answering, and an outage report from an enterprise customer can sit behind a pile of routine requests because nobody has judged its urgency yet.

On each check, new tickets are listed from Zoho Desk and the built-in AI classifies the subject and description into a category and an urgency level. Those values are written back to the ticket's fields, so views, assignment rules and escalations can act on them. No separate AI key is required.

A good match for help desks that route work by category or priority.

What you get out of it

Urgent problems rise to the top
An outage report is labeled urgent as soon as the AI reads it, so escalation rules fire within minutes. It no longer waits behind routine requests until an agent happens to reach it in the queue.
Routing becomes reliable
Billing questions go to billing and bugs go to technical support. Handoffs between teams drop because the first assignment is right, and customers stop being bounced between departments. Customers stop being bounced around.
Agents start with context
Opening a ticket that already carries a category and an urgency level saves the first minute of every case. Over a day of 150 tickets, that adds up to real hours returned to answering.
Reports have clean categories
Every ticket carries a value in the category field, so volume by topic is accurate. Planning for training, staffing and help articles is based on facts, not on which tickets agents remember.
Consistent urgency judgments
The same words get the same urgency, whoever happens to see the ticket first. Customers are treated equally, and urgency no longer depends on whether an agent was tired or rushed.
A cleaner start for new agents
Seeing consistent categories on every ticket teaches newcomers how your team thinks about requests. They learn the vocabulary by reading it, which shortens training. Newcomers also see how requests are grouped.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 10 minutes ClickRuntime checks Zoho Desk for new tickets it hasn't sorted yet.
AI reads each ticket's subject and description and picks a category (billing, bug, how-to or other) and a priority (high, medium or low).
The ticket is updated in Zoho Desk with that priority and tagged with the category, so it is already sorted when your team opens it.

Before it runs live

Connect Zoho Desk

What you get

RunsOn a schedule

Label new tickets by category and urgencytoday, 9:00Succeeded

Zoho Desk · Ticket #20433Tag: billing · Priority: High

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Zoho Desk steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

ai_ticket_classification.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, ai, report_fetched

ORG_ID = "712345678"
BASE = "https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1"
SCHEMA = {"type": "object", "properties": {
    "tag": {"enum": ["billing", "bug", "how-to", "other"]}, "priority": {"enum": ["High", "Medium", "Low"]}},
    "required": ["tag", "priority"]}

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    h = {"Authorization": f"Zoho-oauthtoken {credentials.connection('zoho', 'work')}", "orgId": ORG_ID}
    done = set(state.get("done") or [])
    tickets = http.get(f"{BASE}/tickets", params={"sortBy": "-createdTime", "limit": 50}, headers=h).json()["data"]
    new = [t for t in tickets if t["id"] not in done]
    report_fetched(len(new))
    if not new:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    for t in new:
        detail = http.get(f"{BASE}/tickets/{t['id']}", headers=h).json()
        r = ai.generate(f"Classify this ticket.\nSubject: {t['subject']}\n{(detail.get('description') or '')[:2000]}",
                        json_schema=SCHEMA, max_output_tokens=30).json
        http.patch(f"{BASE}/tickets/{t['id']}", json={"priority": r["priority"]}, headers=h).raise_for_status()
        http.post(f"{BASE}/tickets/{t['id']}/associateTag", json={"tags": [r["tag"]]}, headers=h)
        done.add(t["id"])
    state.set("done", list(done)[-2000:])
    return {"classified": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does the AI use my existing category names?

Yes. You give it the list of categories and urgency levels that your Zoho Desk uses, and it picks from those. That keeps the values compatible with your views and rules. Agents can still change any value afterward.

Can an agent override the classification?

Yes. The AI writes the field values, and agents can edit them like any other. The automation does not reapply classification to a ticket it has already handled. Values are written as ordinary field data that agents can edit. Agents keep full control of the fields.

Is the customer notified when classification happens?

No. Updating a category or priority field is an internal change. Whether the customer is emailed depends on your Zoho Desk workflow rules for those field changes. Whether a customer is notified depends on your own Desk rules.

What permissions does it need?

Desk.tickets.ALL. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

On a schedule