How to list all time zones in Zoho Desk

Retrieving the full list of available time zones in Zoho Desk is a single authenticated API call that returns every supported time zone your organisation can use for scheduling and localisation settings.

Why this matters

When configuring agent profiles, business hours, or SLA policies in Zoho Desk, you need to supply a valid time zone identifier. Rather than guessing the exact string Zoho Desk expects, you can query the time zones endpoint to get the authoritative list. This is especially useful when building integrations or automations that programmatically set time zone fields on behalf of users.

Step-by-step

Step 1. Ensure your OAuth token includes the correct Zoho Desk scopes before making any API call. At minimum you will need Desk.basic.READ in your scope list, which covers organisational and reference data such as time zones. ^[2]

Step 2. Authenticate your client using the standard Zoho OAuth flow. If your access token has expired, the client should automatically refresh it using the stored refresh token before proceeding. ^[5]

Step 3. Send a GET request to the Zoho Desk time zones endpoint:

GET /api/v1/timeZones

This operation — internally identified as listalltime_zones — accepts an optional query-parameter dictionary (p) if you need to pass any filter or pagination hints, though no parameters are required for a basic listing. ^[1]

Step 4. If you are working in Python and already have a ZohoDeskApi instance set up (see Step 2), you can call the method directly:

time_zones = api.list_all_time_zones()

Pass a dictionary to the p argument if you want to include optional query parameters; otherwise leave it empty. ^[1]

Step 5. Parse the response. The returned payload will contain the time zone records your Zoho Desk organisation supports. Store or display the relevant identifier strings so they can be reused when creating or updating records that require a time zone field. ^[1]

Common pitfalls

• Missing scope. If your OAuth token was generated without Desk.basic.READ, the API will reject the request with an authorisation error. Double-check the full scope string in your environment configuration and regenerate the token if needed. ^[2]
• Missing orgId. Zoho Desk's API requires a valid organisation ID to be passed with most requests. If your client has not yet discovered the orgId, it will attempt to fetch it automatically from the organisations endpoint on the first call — but if that also fails (e.g. due to a scope gap), subsequent calls including the time zones request may also fail. Confirm the deskorgid is stored and non-empty before calling. ^{[4] [5]}
• Wrong base domain. Zoho Desk is available across multiple data-centre regions (US, EU, AU, IN, etc.). Make sure the api_domain used by your client matches the region where your Desk portal is hosted, or the endpoint will return a redirect or error rather than data. ^[5]

What to check

• Verify that Desk.basic.READ (and any other required scopes) appear in your active OAuth token's scope list before calling GET /api/v1/timeZones. ^[2]
• Confirm that a valid deskorgid is available to your API client so the request is routed to the correct Zoho Desk organisation. ^[4]
• Inspect the response payload to ensure it contains a non-empty list of time zone entries before using any identifier in downstream record creation or update calls. ^[1]

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*Beam Help provides independent expert support for Zoho products and is not official Zoho support. Always refer to the latest Zoho Desk API documentation for any changes to endpoint behaviour or OAuth scope requirements.*