Co-Owners documentation

Documentation for Co-Owners, an extension for Zoho Desk users. It describes the extension as it exists today and will be extended as the extension changes.

Requirements

A Zoho Desk organisation on a plan with custom fields and API access (Standard, Professional or Enterprise) in one of the supported data centres: US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA or SA. The China data centre is not supported.
An administrator to install the extension, authorise its Zoho Desk connection and create the Co-owners field.
Agents use the extension with their own Zoho Desk permissions: an agent who cannot edit a ticket cannot change its co-owners.

Set-up for administrators (about 3 minutes)

Install Co-Owners from Zoho Marketplace and authorise its Zoho Desk connection when Zoho asks.
In Zoho Desk go to Setup, Customization, Layouts and Fields, Tickets, and add a Single Line field named Co-owners to your ticket layouts. Its API name is usually cf_co_owners; if it differs, enter it in the installation parameters.
Optionally set the installation parameters: the maximum co-owners per ticket (1 to 5, default 3), who may change co-owners (every agent who can edit the ticket, or only the ticket owner and named agents), and whether followers, tasks, @mentions and the Bulk tab are used.
For strict control, make the Co-owners field read-only for profiles that should not change it. The extension writes with each agent's own permissions, so Zoho Desk refuses their changes.

Using it

Open a ticket and the Co-Owners panel on the right. Choose an agent, optionally a note and a task due date, and choose Add co-owner.
The agent is written to the Co-owners field, becomes a follower, gets a task linked to the ticket and is @mentioned in a private note. Remove (or Leave, for yourself) undoes the follower and the task.
Notify co-owners sends everyone one private note. If followers or tasks are out of sync with the field, Repair fixes them.
When you move to another ticket in the ticket list, the panel reloads for that ticket.
Open Co-Owned Tickets in the top band to see your co-owned tickets, overdue tasks first. You can also create a Zoho Desk view with the criterion Co-owners contains your name.

Bulk changes

In Co-Owned Tickets, open Bulk. Enter up to 100 ticket numbers, or leave the box empty and choose a department and, optionally, a status. Zoho Desk ticket numbers have at least three digits.
Choose Add or Remove, the agents and an optional note, then Preview. Nothing changes yet.
Type the phrase shown, for example ADD 12, and choose Apply. Each ticket is read again before it is changed; tickets already in the target state are left alone.
Download results saves a CSV of the run. Undo this run reverses it.
Every agent sees the Bulk tab unless an administrator hides it in the installation parameters; the same rules on who may change co-owners apply.

Limits you should know

The extension makes at most 40 Zoho Desk API calls a minute, one at a time. Adding one co-owner takes about seven or eight calls, so a bulk run on 100 tickets takes roughly 18 minutes.
The Co-owners field holds up to 255 characters, which limits how many co-owners with long names fit on one ticket.
Notifications for followers, tasks and mentions are sent by Zoho Desk according to each agent's notification settings.