Set up Zoho Desk for your support team

Connecting Zoho Desk takes a few minutes, and most of the value comes from where the alerts land. Here’s the order that works, from connecting the help desk to the first week.

Before you start

• Connect as a Zoho Desk administrator. Freesbe adds a webhook to your help desk so ticket changes reach it, and only administrators can add one. Freesbe also works as the person who connects it and sees only the tickets they can see.
• No need to know your data center. Zoho sends you to your own (the United States, Europe, India, Australia and so on) when you sign in, and Freesbe keeps to it.

Connect the help desk

1. In Freesbe, open Workspace settings → Integrations → Support and find Zoho Desk.
2. Click Connect Zoho Desk.
3. Sign in to Zoho as the administrator and click Accept.
4. Back in Freesbe, Zoho Desk shows Connected, your help desk’s name and its data center.

Send alerts where people act on them

Add one alert for each conversation a ticket should start:

Channel	Alerts to post	Department
#support	New tickets, Customer replies	Support
#billing	New tickets, Customer replies	Billing
#support-team	Status changes, closed and reopened, Priority	(all)

Under Zoho Desk alerts, click Add alert, pick the channel, the alerts and the department. Then use Send a test alert from the alert’s ⋯ menu to see where it lands.

Zoho Desk sends Freesbe each change as it happens, so alerts arrive within seconds. They start with what happens after you add them.

Decide on link previews

Previews show a ticket’s status, priority, contact and assignee under any Zoho Desk ticket link someone posts. They’re on by default. Everyone in the conversation sees them, guests included, so if your team shares channels with customers, consider turning Show a preview under Zoho Desk ticket links off.

Show your team Create Zoho Desk ticket

Post this in #support on day one:

Zoho Desk is in Freesbe. When a customer question comes up in a channel, choose ⋯ → Create Zoho Desk ticket on the message. Put in the customer’s email and the department, and the ticket’s card shows up in the thread, with a link back to the message in the ticket.

After the first week

• Ask the team which alerts they skim past, and narrow those alerts to one department or move them to a quieter channel.
• Check Last alert under each alert: one that never posts usually points at a department nobody uses or a channel nobody needs.

See Zoho Desk for every option. Something not working? See Zoho Desk alerts aren’t posting.