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Zoho Desk: Auto-Assign Tickets to Departments by Keyword — Direct Assignment

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Updated
ByNiels Przybilla

When your support inbox receives requests from different areas — billing questions, technical issues, WordPress tickets — manually assigning each ticket to the right department wastes valuable time. Zoho Desk has a dedicated feature for this: the Direct Assignment under Assignment Rules. It automatically moves tickets to the correct department based on keywords.

The Right Way: Direct Assignment

The feature for keyword-based department routing in Zoho Desk is called Direct Assignment and is located at:

Settings → Automation → Assignment Rules → Direct Assignment

Click + New Direct Assignment to get started.

Step-by-Step: Setting Up Direct Assignment

The “Add Target for this Rule” form has three sections:

1. Ticket Comes To

Select the source department — which department the ticket comes from before routing. Choose “Any Department” to check all incoming tickets.

2. Criteria

Define the keyword condition:

  • Field: Subject
  • Operator: Contains
  • Value: your keyword (e.g. “WordPress”, “Invoice”, “Error”)

Use the + button to add more criteria (OR logic for multiple keywords).

3. Move Ticket To

Select the target department — where the ticket should be routed, e.g. “WordPress”, “Finance”, or “Tech Support”.

4. Assign Ticket To (Optional)

Optionally assign a specific agent at the same time. Otherwise the ticket stays “Unassigned” in the target department.

Click Save — the rule is immediately active.

Practical Example: Three Departments, One Inbox

Rule 1 — WordPress Tickets:

  • Criteria: Subject contains “WordPress” OR “Plugin” OR “Theme” OR “WP”
  • Move ticket to: WordPress

Rule 2 — Finance:

  • Criteria: Subject contains “Invoice” OR “Billing” OR “Payment” OR “Refund”
  • Move ticket to: Finance

Rule 3 — Technical Support:

  • Criteria: Subject contains “Error” OR “Bug” OR “not working” OR “broken”
  • Move ticket to: Tech Support

Tips

  • Order matters: Zoho Desk evaluates Direct Assignment rules top to bottom — put more specific keywords first
  • Multilingual: Add keywords in all languages your customers use
  • Subject AND description: You can add multiple fields as criteria, not just subject
  • Test: After creating, send a test ticket with the keyword and verify the routing works

What’s the Difference from Workflow Rules?

Workflows (under Automation → Workflows) are designed for other actions: sending emails, adding comments, setting tags, creating tasks. For moving tickets between departments based on keywords, Direct Assignment is the correct and direct approach.

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