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Category : Zoho CRM

ZBrains Zoho CRM Reports Graph

Maximize Sales with Zoho CRM Reports: Analytics Reporting Guide

Published on: August 3, 2022Category: Zoho Analytics, Zoho CRM, Zoho CRM, Zoho Reports, Zoho ReportsLast Updated: May 8, 2024 Comments: 0

Of all the advantages of using Zoho, one of the most compelling is the platform’s simple, yet in-depth reporting applications. 

Depending on what you need to report on, you may find that the basic reporting options built into Zoho CRM suffice. Alternatively (or, additionally), you can tap into the power of the more advanced Zoho Analytics when you need to get a deeper understanding of how your business functions.

With that in mind, let us explore each in turn, looking more closely at the advantages and disadvantages of Zoho CRM or Zoho Analytics. 

Zoho CRM

As a CRM, Zoho’s offering is well-rounded and user-friendly, offering most businesses everything they need to keep track of customer relationships. 

From a reporting perspective, Zoho CRM comes with its own reporting engine that is customizable and operates in real-time. As a result, the program enables you to run reports on key relationship and sales metrics, as well as email them out on a scheduled basis. Zoho CRM also comes pre-built with a myriad of reports useful for sales, account management, and front office leadership.

Building Your Dashboards

In the Zoho CRM reporting window, you will see a list of records that you can build into tables, including pivot tables and pivot charts:

You can choose a range of components to group into your dashboards, as well as place components on your home screen. 

An example of a group of components

An example of a dashboard

That said, while Zoho CRM allows you to choose the time or table that best represents your data, it does not allow you to change how your query is built. When you choose the type of table you want to use, Zoho writes the query for you. 

Scheduling Your Reports

With Zoho CRM, you can schedule reports to be automatically sent out by email, which can streamline internal progress reporting and status updates. 

Simply go to the left-hand menu, pick Scheduled Reports, and enter the report you want to have emailed out on a regular basis. 

The major advantage Zoho CRM reporting is real-time but limited to CRM data with no drill-down configuration. If you need additional reporting capabilities beyond what Zoho CRM can provide, you may want to look into Zoho Analytics.

Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analytics is Zoho’s business intelligence and analytics platform. Zoho Analytics allows you to review and report on data from a variety of data sources, as well as customize how that data is presented and shared. 

Data Sources

Incorporating data from multiple sources means that Zoho Analytics facilitates a much deeper dive into your data. In addition to Zoho data points, you can also use Analytics to pull in data from external applications, such as Google Analytics, YouTube, Google Ads, or Facebook. 

Within Analytics, simply select your chosen data sources, and pull them into the same workspace. From there, you will be able to query those different tables together to build reports that span across each application. 

Customizing Your Data Drill-Downs

Like Zoho CRM, Analytics allows you to choose from a variety of charts to present your data. However, with Zoho Analytics, you also have the option to customize charts and tables for tailored insights with Zoho Analytics.

Once you have built your table or chart, you can drag and drop them onto your dashboard for enhanced visibility. 

You can also utilize global filters–such as user, team, and date–to drill down into your data. For example, if you wanted to check on an individual team’s performance, you could filter your reports by team. All of the charts and tables that include a team filter would then be updated and displayed accordingly. 

Trend Reporting

One final feature that may make Zoho Analytics a better fit for your organization is its predictive capabilities. Analytics displays trends and projections, enabling informed predictions for future business decisions and investments.  

As a note, this is not an ‘either/or’ situation. You can Embed Zoho Analytics reports into Zoho CRM via the Analytics widget, by inputting the dashboard URL. Overall, Zoho Analytics is valuable for teams needing trend reporting, global filtering, and multiple data sources.

It is worth keeping in mind, however, that Analytics is not a real-time dashboard. The tradeoff for this enhanced functionality is that you will have a three-hour sync to contend with, though this is not likely to be a deal-breaker for most teams.

Zoho CRM vs. Zoho Analytics Reporting

As you explore your different Zoho reporting options, weigh your options within CRM and Analytics carefully. Taking these and other key points into consideration will help you arrive at the right solution for your team.

Any other questions about Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics? Reach out to the team at ZBrains if you have any queries or need clarification.

Marketing team planning a campaign

Choosing the Right Zoho App or Module for Your Marketing Automation

Published on: July 13, 2022Category: Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Campaigns, Zoho CRM, Zoho CRMLast Updated: October 17, 2023 Comments: 0

We get this question all the time at ZBrains: what is the difference between Zoho CRM Campaigns, Zoho Campaigns, and Zoho Marketing Automation? 

Although the names of these apps and modules are all quite similar, each has its own unique strengths. Let us take a closer look at how to use each resource, as well as the situations where it makes sense to use one over another:

What are the Marketing Features Offered by Zoho CRM Campaigns?

The Zoho CRM Campaigns module brings marketing automation features directly into your Zoho CRM to help you track the success of your sales and marketing campaigns. Depending on your business, that might mean measuring the number of deals, sales, or orders generated from a campaign. 

In any case, this module is mostly about marketing attribution, and Zoho gives you 6 algorithm modules to choose from:

U-shaped attribution and the time decay model–which attributes the most ROI to the last campaign someone was active in–are pretty standard choices for B2B businesses, while first-touch attribution is often more appropriate for small sales. Whatever you choose, all you have to do is pick the model, hit ‘Save’, and Zoho does all of the work for you.

As a note, although you can make campaigns manually in Zoho CRM Campaigns, you might not need to if you are using the Zoho Campaigns app or Zoho Marketing Automation. You also should not use Zoho CRM Campaigns to send mass email campaigns. The module does limit sending to 1,000 messages per day, but because the messages are sent from your own domain, you risk incurring penalties from Google for sending that kind of volume.

Zoho Campaigns

The Zoho Campaigns app is an email service provider (ESP) that is built to help businesses send marketing emails at scale, legally. Think of it like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or other similar email marketing tools.

In addition to providing the standard email builder features you would expect from an email marketing solution, Zoho Campaigns gives you the option to create new campaigns in Zoho CRM Campaigns simultaneously. To set this up:

  • Click ‘Advanced Options’ inside your Zoho Campaign
  • Find the toggle labeled ‘Create campaign in Zoho CRM’
  • Toggle it to the ‘on’ position and save your changes

Then, if you log back into your Zoho CRM Campaigns, you should see your email or social campaign in your list. 

You will still need to create phone and direct mail campaigns manually, as Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Marketing Automation focus on top-rated digital marketing company. But once you have your campaigns fully integrated between the 2 apps, Zoho Campaign activities can be recorded in your CRM records, helping your salespeople better understand your contacts’ engagement.

Another key point about Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Marketing Automation is that they do not send from your mail servers (even though you use the authorization to on your DNS). Zoho Campaigns also sends emails in batches–typically smaller batches to warm up the IP of whatever server they are being sent from–so that they have a much higher chance of getting into recipients’ inboxes.

Zoho Marketing Automation

Finally, there is Zoho Marketing Automation. Going beyond the kinds of email, SMS, and social campaigns found in Zoho Campaigns, Marketing Automation adds autoresponder campaign types including:

  • Sign-up
  • Date-field
  • Closed Group
  • Calendar
  • Email-action
  • Smart Series
  • Lead Nurturing
  • Cyclic

These different autoresponder types are based on contact actions and other triggers. For example, a Smart Series autoresponder is like a newsletter–contacts can be added midway through a campaign, and they will receive new messages as they are added. 

With a Lead Nurturing campaign, on the other hand, email addresses are added directly to the autoresponder. Once they are warmed up, they are thrown over the fence into Zoho CRM for follow-up by sales.

The process of working with Zoho Marketing Automation looks very similar to Zoho Campaigns, but when you go to a ‘Journey’ in Marketing Automation, you will see that there are a lot more actions to choose from than with the comparable workflows in Campaigns. There are more entry points, more lead score calculation options, and more end-of-journey actions–it is just a more robust builder overall.

For these reasons, Zoho Marketing Automation is more comparable to a platform like Marketo or Pardot, while Zoho Campaigns is really meant for simpler campaigns built around email, social, or SMS.

Choosing the Right Zoho Marketing Solution

While there are plenty of other differences between Zoho CRM Campaigns, Zoho Campaigns, and Zoho Marketing Automation, the features highlighted above should give you a sense of when to use each:

  • Use Zoho CRM Campaigns to monitor campaign performance, but build your campaigns in Zoho Campaigns instead, where possible.
  • Use Zoho Campaigns to automate email, social, and SMS campaigns without compromising deliverability.
  • Use Zoho Marketing Automation when you need more complex autoresponders than can be achieved with Zoho Campaigns alone.

Any other questions about these tools? Reach out to the team at ZBrains if you have questions or need clarification.

Zoho Updates October 2021

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | October 2021

Published on: October 6, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho Bugs, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 10, 2023 Comments: 0

Hello and welcome back to the Zoho Updates October 2021. In the past month, Zoho CRM has released a number of notable updates and improvements. In this digest you’ll find time saving new features, how CRM is making user experience better, and how Zoho Desk is making the ability to relate contacts to multiple accounts simpler!

Keep reading for details about What’s New, Zoho Updates Ocotober 2021. 

New Features & Improvements from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  • Updates to IOS Mobile App for Zoho CRM:

    • User-related lookup fields have been optimized, including the search and selection of users from owner lookup field.
    • “Plotting Leads, Contacts, and Accounts in nearby maps has been optimized for better user experience. Also, nearby pins will be grouped on zooming out a location on maps.”

  • Online instances of Zoho Campaigns offers increased specificity in regards to bounced status. “Soft Bounced” and “Hard Bounced” are now noted instead of just “bounced.”

  • Predictive Analytics utilizing Zia in CRM have been improved to achieve more accurate outcomes.

  • New color-coded picklist values improves data interpretation at a glance. Color-coded values are seen in records, modules, deals pipeline, charts, dashboards, and more.

  • Zoho CRM Sales Motivator admins can now compare the performance of a KPI or Target with other KPIs and Targets. Read more here.

  • Select your theme in Motivator; toggle between the light or dark theme to suit your viewing preference.

  • Zone Analysis is a new Dashboard component in Zoho CRM that helps you understand which data requires attention. This comparative analysis currently allows you to analyze two parameters.

  • If you have questions or need help setting up any of these, ZBrains Support is here for you!

Zoho Creator

  • This month Creator released two new enhancements to help you streamline work.
    • The first are a set of enhancements to export settings which allow you to name a file, select the format, select columns to include, and password protect exported files.
    • Secondly, Creator can now pull and pull data from external apps! Using Widgets you can now configure integration from your external apps, giving more power to the applications you use created on the Creator platform.

Zoho Desk

  • Desk now allows you to add a contact to multiple accounts: “Zoho Desk provides a way to relate a single contact to multiple accounts so your agents can easily track the relationships between the customers and companies they work with. Additionally, contacts can view all the tickets belonging to their account on the help center. When you enable this feature, each contact requires a primary account. The primary account represents a direct relationship. But you can associate additional accounts to the contact in a secondary relationship.”

ZOHO UPDATESApplication Updates from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  • CRM extension for LinkedIn Sales Navigator was sunsetted on September 30th. Affecting all users, the extension can no longer be used by current users or downloaded by anyone.

 

Have a question we didn’t answer here?  If you have questions or would like to connect with one of our consultants, schedule below. We’re also available by phone, just call our offices at (888) 207-4111.

 

Connect with a Consultant

 

Webinar for Zoho Writer

Zoho Writer: How-to & Tips Webinar

Published on: September 23, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRM, Zoho Sign, Zoho Writer AppLast Updated: November 13, 2023 Comments: 0

Master the Art of Zoho Writer: Join Our How-to & Tips Webinar Today!

In less than 15 minutes, join the Zoho CRM webinar with ZBrains Founder, James Converse, to learn about Zoho Writer and its integration with Zoho CRM. The session covers key features and tips to boost productivity.

  • How to use Writer and Zoho Sign to collect signatures on your quotes and other business documents.
  • You’ll see how to relate your Zoho Writer templates to modules.
  • Document storage best practices and tips on where to find the docs you create.
  • We’ll also review Writer templates: how to create them, using themes to coordinate with your brand, incorporating images, mapping fields from CRM, and the uses of sub-forms in Writer documents.

Our Zoho Writer How-to & Tips Webinar is just around the corner, and we can’t wait to share all the juicy insider tips with you. Have questions? Don’t be shy, leave them in the comments below!

Register for this on-demand webinar now, or at any time! and learn how to maximize your CRM’s potential. Our experts will share tips and tricks to help you improve your sales, marketing, and customer service processes. Don’t miss this opportunity to take your business to the next level with Zoho CRM. Sign up now!

Register for the Webinar

Is Zoho CRM working for you?

CRM Adoption: What It Is and Why Your Business Needs It

Published on: September 16, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: June 13, 2023 Comments: 0

Is Your CRM Working for YOU?

Here’s what you should know about CRM adoption, to ensure that you are maximizing this tool. 

[caption id="attachment_5440" align="alignleft" width="400"]Planning A CRM Project It’s not uncommon to spend months planning a CRM implementation project. If you’re already down that road make sure the CRM adoption rate is high, this survey can help![/caption]

It can be difficult, overwhelming, and time consuming for users to learn a new CRM system, and sometimes that’s even after training. Most organizations spend months or longer researching and planning to bring on a new CRM or software. Then they begin to ramp up, perform initial training, and finally send their users out into ‘the wild.’ Your hope is everyone in your organization will be wildly successful with this new tool, and business operations will be better than ever!

With highly proficient teams, this shouldn’t be a concern, but we all know that every team is not highly proficient.  

In the real world where capabilities across teams vary, it is inevitable that different users will use the new systems in different ways – and to varying degrees of success. 

Some members of your team will not take to the new CRM at all!

This is low user adoption.

You might think, “well, that’s their problem if they don’t use the tools provided to make their work easier. We gave them training!” But trust us, we know you’ve probably made a decent investment in time and resources to implement this tool. You deserve to get the most out of it. You likely had the intention of equally balancing the goals of making your staff the best they can be, AND giving yourself and business operators the essential insights based on CRM data. 

But perhaps your CRM  just hasn’t taken hold.

If you suspect this might be the case in your organization, it’s time to take a closer look.

What is User Adoption?

[caption id="attachment_5441" align="alignright" width="400"]CRM Users Adoption What is CRM Adoption? A high level of CRM user adoption means that users are successful in their goals by using a software product. [/caption]

This is really straightforward, so we’ll share it quickly. 

User adoption is the process of ensuring that a system user can be successful in their goals by using a software product. 

In this case, we’re talking about how successful your teams are in being able to attain their objectives using your current CRM. This includes how quickly it becomes a routine tool, and how much users like it and want to keep utilizing it.

Consider your teams across Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Leadership when observing for user adoption.

Then consider if all teams used the tool to its full potential, and fully adopted the CRM.

What does great user adoption look like? With that data at hand, you have the power to create accurate dashboards and better forecasts, and you can empower your businesses’ leaders with the information they need to grow and make their teams successful. Win – Win!

Using Your CRM to its Full Potential

Curious if your CRM users on the teams we mentioned above are in a murky area of user adoption? You can make sure you’re getting the most of your CRM investment with this quick CRM User Adoption Checklist – it’s just 20 questions!

Take a look and get the info you need in order to assess whether or not it’s time to take action and realign around your CRM.

Is there potential for your CRM to work better for your organization? Take the CRM Adoption Survey and find out where you stand.

Take the CRM Adoption Survey

Zoho August 2021

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | September 2021

Published on: September 2, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho Bugs, Zoho CRMLast Updated: July 20, 2023 Comments: 0

Welcome back again to your Zoho Updates September 2021. In the past month, we’ve seen a number of improvements across Zoho Books and Zoho CRM. In this digest you’ll find time saving new features, how CRM is making user experiences even more customizable, and how Zoho Desk is making the ability to relate contacts to multiple accounts simpler!

Discover Zoho’s Latest: What’s New – September 2021

New Features & Improvements from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  • New feature in CRM allows you to assign the record owner through a Workflow. You may now define conditions in Workflows, and the owner will be assigned when the condition is met. Zoho says, “Records can be assigned to users, roles, users who create or modify records, or to those mentioned in the Assignment rule criteria.” Additionally, “owner assignment will be triggered ONLY from the first workflow rule that it matches. For the subsequent workflows, all other actions except owner assignment will be executed.”

  • Adding Users to Zoho CRM just got easier with the ability to import up to 1000 users at a time. Admin profiles and those with Manage User permissions can now import users into their organizations account using .xls, .xlsx, or .csv file types. Learn more from Zoho’s help article on this topic.

  • Webform Analytics in CRM has new metrics and charts available. Metrics for time spent on fields, field correction rate, drop rate, and the order that fields are filled can be put to use in your analytics. You now also have access to device source for form submissions. Individual form analytics now display average time spend and the abandon rate in submissions. Having this information available helps in analyzing your form success rates and adjusting forms for better engagement.

  • Expanded capabilities including Subform Fields now exists when you map dependency. Previously only fields from the layout were available to be mapped.

  • Zoho introduced their new CRM designer called Canvas, calling it “the industry’s first CRM design studio. “This no-code, drag-and-drop design studio is built into Zoho CRM and allows users to create contextual, immersive experiences for their teams.” Learn more about it from Zoho.

  • Email status updates make filters more straightforward so finding who responded to your messages possible. The Latest Email Status filter now includes “Responded” as an option. Use this and “Opened and Not responded” to segment your contacts for better communication messaging, for example positioning follow ups.

  • If you have questions or need help setting up any of these, ZBrains Support is here for you!

Zoho Desk

  • Have you ever needed to associate a contact with multiple accounts? Now you can select to enable this Accounts feature in Zoho Desk, and select to relate a single contact to multiple accounts. You can learn more here.

Zoho Books

  • Custom Reports in Books gives you the capability now to save your customizations. Find them instantly and use them again and again. There’s increased flexibility around user control, for example, who can view, export, or schedule custom reports.

  • New from Zoho Books, “Once you reconcile an account, you can now print the reconciliation details as well. You can print the the transaction details, transaction type, deposits and withdrawals.”

  • Increased capabilities to select the customer advance accounts for tracking and recording excess payment, and configure the default account for tracking excess payments.

ZOHO UPDATESApplication Updates from Zoho

Zoho Desk

  • The Community module in Zoho Desk has three updates this past month including:
      • Assigning category visibility to “agents only.” This makes topics in these categories internal and visible to agents only.
      • New key category metrics are now available including: # of forums, @ of topics and comments received, % of topics created under each topic type, and more.
      • Increased functionality around controlling the ability to choose who can post and reply to topics in a category.

Zoho BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

  • Creator rolled out a set of minor fixes product-wide including: bugs related to adding and deleting fields in forms, issue with record detail view in blueprint, a minor issue in file preview, and several additional minor issues.

Have a question we didn’t answer here?  If you have questions or would like to connect with one of our consultants, schedule below. We’re also available by phone, just call our offices at (888) 207-4111.

Connect with a Consultant

Zoho Updates from ZBrains

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | August 2021

Published on: August 4, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho Bugs, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 10, 2023 Comments: 0

This month, we saw just a handful of new features and improvements in our Zoho Updates August 2021. These are primarily for Zoho CRM and Books, and there were a few bug fixes in Creator. We think you might be interested in the update regarding Zoho CRM attachments, and its integration with tools like Google Drive and OneDrive.  Additionally, if you’re a Books user, hopefully you’ve seen the addition of in-app messaging from Cliq.

Get all the details for What’s New, Zoho Updates August 2021. 

New Features & Improvements from Zoho

Zoho CRM

Zoho Books

  • Zoho Cliq chat bar is now available in Books. Enjoy even more seamless communication with your colleagues in the app you’re using, without having to switch tabs.
  • You can now set tax preferences for your vendors and customers in Books. “A major update in the customers and vendors module is the ability to assign tax rates. You can assign these tax rates while creating or editing existing customers or vendors. So, the next time you create a transaction for them, the tax rate will be automatically applied to your line items.”
  • Books improvement lets you create and associate budgets to individual branches or regions of your organization. To associate budgets to your branches: Go to Accountant > Budgets > New Budget > Select a branch. If you have questions or need help setting up this function, ZBrains Support is here for you!

 

Zoho BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

  • The Creator team shared many bug fixes this past month ranging from “minor bug fixes related to pivot chart and table sync issues,” to transition and highlight issues in Blueprint.
  • Another change in place for the maximum length of decimal fields. The field type used for decimal, percent and currency will now max at 16, versus 19 digits in Zoho Creator. Technical limitations are the reason for this updated, and once the change is in place, values longer than 16 digits will be rounded off.
  • Previously, Count as a Percentage or Fraction in Creator pages would not display as anticipated when a record was empty. A recent bug fix resolves this issue.
  • Finally there were minor bug fixes performed, related to subform workflows and pivot reports.

 

General Zoho Ecosystem Updates

In case you missed it during prior months: Important information from Zoho regarding price changes can be found here. If you have questions about this change or wish to schedule a consultation to discuss, please contact us using the form at the end of this article.

Have a question we didn’t answer here?  If you have questions or would like to connect with one of our consultants, schedule below. We’re also available by phone, just call our offices at (888) 207-4111.

 

Connect with a Consultant

 

july 2021 updates from zbrains

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | July 2021

Published on: July 1, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho Bugs, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 10, 2023 Comments: 0

Welcome to Q3, and your Zoho Updates for July 2021! With the first half of the year at a close, we are sharing just a few notable updates this past month from Zoho including on-premise Zoho Creator options, Microsoft-BI Integration, and multi-org sign in for CRM.

Get all the details for What’s New, Zoho Updates July 2021. 

General Zoho Ecosystem Updates

In case you missed it last month: Important information from Zoho regarding price changes can be found here. If you have questions about this change or wish to schedule a consultation to discuss, please contact us using the form at the end of this article.

New Features & Improvements from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  • Good news for multi-org Zoho CRM users! “Zoho CRM allows users to access multiple organizational (CRM) accounts using the same email address. This is especially useful for organizations who maintain different CRM accounts to manage their business, such as a franchisee or a subsidiary.”
  • A CRM improvement now searches for similar records using unique fields, plus system-defined fields in the Leads module when converting Leads to Contacts and Accounts. Then, based on whether a value is available or not available for these fields the system will either ask to create a new record or merge with existing record.
  • You can now copy Campaign Member status from from CRM account to another while copying customizations.
  • Introducing Zia Reasoning in Assignment Rules! Zia now determines a pattern from your existing data to automatically assign the most appropriate owner for a record. Of course, admins can disable or enable the contributing fields to enhance Zia’s owner suggestion skills, too.

 

Zoho Creator

  • Creator Reports embedded in the Pages component have been enhanced. They will not appear as a larger window in Pages, and helps standardize the appearance of the detail view when embedded. Additionally, the user interface is improved, and several minor bug fixes were rolled out with this set.
  • Notable announcement from the Creator team says that “Zoho Creator On-Premise was launched recently to help businesses host their apps on their own servers.”  If you’re interested in this solution, please don’t hesitate to let us know, we’d be glad to help you determine with On-Premise is a fit for your organization.
  • Microsoft Power BI desktop app connection is now available in Creator. It “brings together multiple software services, apps, and connectors to convert data from different sources into a collective, meaningful combination of information to obtain visually insightful data.” 
  • Good news for app creators! After several months in the works, Creator’s V2 upgrade is now in place, and brings Improvements including improved security, better error handling, improved performance compared to V1, and more. 
  • With this new enhancement, you can import data from a live app and update existing records while importing. This includes the addition of “Smart Suggestions” to provide intuitive recommendations while importing data.

 

Zoho BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

  • Creator bug fixes addressed this month include those that address: downloading page as PDF, visibility permission in subform field, editor popup in notes field, and localization in rich text field.
  • Creator Android app Version 6.4.8 subform fix addresses issues with dropdown field and OCR field in subform.

 

Have a question we didn’t answer here?  If you have questions or would like to connect with one of our consultants, schedule below. We’re also available by phone, just call our offices at (888) 207-4111.

 

Connect with a Consultant

 

Zoho Updates June 2021

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | June 2021

Published on: June 3, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho Bugs, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 10, 2023 Comments: 0

Welcome back to your Zoho Updates June 2021. Lots of action the past month across Zoho applications. In this digest you’ll find information on Zoho’s pricing updates, the application that’s changed its name, and some great new enhancements to CRM and Zoho finance applications.

Keep reading for the What’s New, Zoho Updates June 2021. 

General Zoho Ecosystem Updates

** Important information from Zoho regarding price changes can be found here. If you have questions about this change or wish to schedule a consultation to discuss, please contact us using the form at the end of this article.

About the Zoho changes to MarketingHub: “Effective May 21, 2021, we are renaming Zoho MarketingHub to Zoho Marketing Automation. This change will not affect any features or functionality of the product. You can continue to use the product as you usually do.” Learn more 

New Features from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  • Zoho announced the release of SalesIQ 2.0! If you haven’t already seen it, the release features a new user interface, and features for: Codeless bot, Resources, Answer bot, B2B Relationship, Profanity library, and several others. Take a look here.

 

Zoho Books & Inventory

  • Zoho finance including Books and Inventory teams shared a handful of updates this month, most notable is that now you can record payments while creating an invoice.
    • For example, if you received a payment before issuing their invoice, you don’t have to create a draft invoice and record a payment for it later. Simply mark the “I have received the payment” option while creating the invoice, it automatically creates a payment. Invoices are created as a “Paid” status, and the payment for it is created with the “Invoice Date.” This option is available if your user role allows “Customer Payments”, and if Sales Approval is disabled.
    • To enable: Go to Invoices > Create an invoice and select the customer > Scroll down and mark the “I have received the payment” option.
  • They have also added a new template called “Retail-Premium” found in the Retail category in templates. This template accommodates almost all the information that can be included on other templates, and fits it in a compact design between 3 and 4 inches wide.

 

ZOHO UPDATESApplication Updates from Zoho

Zoho CRM 

Zoho CRM updates and improvements this month include the following:

  • You can now use a scheduled action to automatically create a record through a workflow rule. (This was previously an instance action only.)
  • You’ll now find a common holiday list that is applied to all users in an organization. This is called “Business Holidays.”

Zoho Creator

  • This month Zoho Creator team shared, “We have rolled out a set of default character length for form fields. This will help in effectively using the available space. For instance, you might have fields with large values that contain too many characters. These can be substituted with values of fewer characters. This in turn facilitates the form to include more fields. Users will be able to modify the default length for Single Line, Email, Dropdown, and Radio button fields.”
  • Blueprints are now available in Creator. This allows you to replicate your business processes online and enjoy the benefits of streamlining process management. Why is that important? Zoho says it best, “The blueprint enables you to customize every detail of every process you design in your Creator application.”

Zoho Books

  • Advanced Search in Zoho Books introduces filtering options, and now also includes Zia Search so you can search for “any information across different Zoho apps from within Zoho Books.” See all new updates from Books.

 

Zoho BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

Creator bug fixes recently implemented include: timezone in audit export and admin username in account setup.

 

Need more answers or have a question we didn’t answer here?  If you have questions or would like to connect with one of our consultants, schedule below. We’re also available by phone, just call our offices at (888) 207-4111.

 

Connect with a Consultant

 

Zoho Monthly Updates from ZBrains

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | May 2021

Published on: May 1, 2021Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho Bugs, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 10, 2023 Comments: 0

It’s been another busy month at ZBrains, and a number of Zoho updates May 2021 along with new features were shared with us from Zoho Corp. We’ve done our best to condense it all to the need-to-know basics.

Most notably this month, beginning May 1, 2021, all functions that use authtokens while making calls to other Zoho services will fail. (More details in the article below.) Hopefully, you’re already prepared, but remember that the ZBrains team is here to support you – just let us know how we can help.

Keep reading for the What’s New, Zoho Updates May 2021. 

 

New Features from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  1. “Automatic transitions in blueprint: Use automatic transition to prevent delays and discontinuity of a process. The automatic transition will ensure that records move to the destination state after a specified Wait time has elapsed.”
  2. “Blueprints now supports widgets: Perform custom actions, such as locating an address on a map, blocking a date on a calendar and more via Blueprint using Widgets. Widgets can be used in the During Transition settings.”
  3. “Multi-user and multi-select lookup fields supported in blueprints: During Transition you can use multi-select lookup fields as well as multi-user fields. These fields can be mandated but cannot be validated.”

 

Zoho Books

This month, we’ve seen two notable improvements in Zoho Books that now allow you to do the following: 

  1. Beyond invoices, now you can execute an advanced search for all transactions.
  2. In the Banking modules, you are now able to add comments and view transaction history. 

 

Zoho Inventory

The Zoho Inventory team shared some great news for online sellers and drop shippers with the new third party billing feature for UPS users. It’s available for all editions and all subscription plans. The Zoho team says, “This feature is targeted at drop-shippers who work with other vendors to supply goods to end customers.”

 

ZOHO UPDATESApplication Updates from Zoho

General Zoho Ecosystem Updates

We’ve shared about the OAuth authentication upgrade, and deprecation of authtokens across all Zoho systems the past few months. Beginning May 1, 2021, all functions that use authtokens while making calls to other Zoho services will fail.

If you’ve noticed system issues, and require support, please contact us. You can schedule any time that works for you here Connect with a Consultant

What is OAuth2.0? This industry-standard protocol specification that enables third-party applications (clients) to gain delegated access to protected resources in Zoho via an API. 

OAuth 2.0 is a benefit for these reasons and more:

    •  Increased security and easier user/credentials management,
    • Improvement to industry standard protocol for easier communications between Zoho apps,
    • Access tokens expire, limiting data exposure in the instance of a security breach.

 

Zoho CRM 

Two alternate solutions provided for CRM Plug-in for Microsoft Office are:

 

Zoho BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator has published messages about a few improvements and fixes this month, including to the iOS app.

    1. “The record owner property that was previously available in the user’s field properties section is now moved to form properties. You can find it in Form Properties under Role Hierarchy section. Added user will be the default setting for record owner. The dropdown list will display the list of user fields for you to select from.” – source 
    2. The iOS v 2.5.2 of customer portal quick filter in maps is repaired, in addition there have been some overall performance improvements and minor fixes for version 5.26.13 of Creator iOS app.

 

Finding what you need in these updates?  Or are you looking for something additional? Drop a line in the comments to let us know what info helps you most! 

 

If you have questions or would like to connect with one of our consultants, schedule below. We’re also available by phone, just call our offices at (888) 207-4111.

 

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