On a schedule

Find tickets with no owner

Tickets left unassigned for over an hour land in your inbox.

Runs: On a schedule
Apps: Zoho Desk
AI: Not needed
Access: Desk.tickets.READ

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 30 minutes, email me Zoho Desk tickets that have had no owner for more than an hour.

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

Tickets come in through email and the help center, and unless an assignment rule catches them, they land in Zoho Desk with no owner. Everyone assumes someone else will take it. A ticket from a key customer can sit there for most of a day while five agents each think it belongs to a colleague. The customer, of course, does not know about the confusion and just sees silence.

On each scheduled check, tickets without an assignee are listed from Zoho Desk and filtered by age, so brand new ones are given a little time to be picked up. Those that have waited beyond your limit are emailed as a list with subject, department and how long they have waited.

Useful for teams that use a shared queue rather than strict assignment.

What you get out of it

Nothing is owned by no one
A list of unowned tickets turns a shared assumption into a visible gap. Someone takes each one, and the afternoon no longer includes a ticket that everybody thought was somebody else's.
Key customers are protected
A ticket from an important account that sits unassigned is the worst case. The alert catches it before the customer escalates, so the first reply arrives while goodwill remains. Escalations decline.
Assignment rules get tested
If many unassigned tickets appear, your routing rules have gaps. The list shows which kinds of tickets slip through, so you know which rule to write next. Gaps in the rules show up.
The age filter reduces noise
Giving agents a short window to claim tickets themselves avoids alerts about every new arrival. Only tickets that really waited are reported, which keeps the email worth reading. The email stays useful.
Fair distribution of work
When unassigned tickets are handed out from a list, a lead can balance the load. Nobody ends up with all the hard cases, and quiet agents are not overlooked. Everyone gets a fair share.
A cleaner shared queue
Teams that rely on a shared queue need a way to know when it has gone stale. The email is that signal, sent without anyone having to watch the queue. Shared queues work better when the gaps are visible.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 30 minutes ClickRuntime checks Zoho Desk for open tickets with no one assigned.
It keeps the ones that have been waiting for more than an hour and skips any it has already told you about.
You get an email listing each ticket's number, subject, when it came in and a link to open it.

Before it runs live

Connect Zoho Desk

What you get

RunsOn a schedule

Find tickets with no ownertoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · 3 Zoho Desk tickets with no owner#20412 Can't log in after reset (since 09:14 UTC)

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
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
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.

unassigned_ticket_alert.pyexample

from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify, report_fetched

ORG_ID = "712345678"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    h = {"Authorization": f"Zoho-oauthtoken {credentials.connection('zoho', 'work')}", "orgId": ORG_ID}
    tickets = http.get("https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/tickets",
                       params={"assignee": "Unassigned", "status": "Open", "limit": 100}, headers=h).json()["data"]
    cutoff = datetime.now(timezone.utc) - timedelta(hours=1)
    sent = set(state.get("sent") or [])
    old = [t for t in tickets if t["id"] not in sent
           and datetime.fromisoformat(t["createdTime"].replace("Z", "+00:00")) < cutoff]
    report_fetched(len(old))
    if not old:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    notify.email_me(f"{len(old)} Zoho Desk ticket(s) with no owner",
                    "\n".join(f"#{t['ticketNumber']} {t['subject']} (since {t['createdTime'][11:16]} UTC)\n{t['webUrl']}" for t in old))
    state.set("sent", list(sent | {t["id"] for t in old})[-1000:])
    return {"sent": len(old)}

FAQ

Common questions

How long does a ticket wait before it is reported?

The age limit is set in the automation, such as 30 minutes or two hours. Tickets younger than the limit are skipped, which gives agents time to pick up work without being nagged. The age limit is a number you set.

Does it matter which department the ticket is in?

Tickets from all departments are listed unless you filter. The email shows the department so the right team can respond, and one email per department is possible if you prefer. The department is shown so the right team responds.

Will it keep emailing about the same tickets?

Each check lists tickets that are still unassigned, so a ticket that nobody takes can appear again. Remembering IDs to alert once can be added if you prefer one notice per ticket. Each check lists tickets that are still unassigned.

What permissions does it need?

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

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's 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