Kaizen #107 - Field Trackers in ZOHO CRM

Hey folks! Welcome to a fresh week of Kaizen. 

In this post, we will be looking at the Field Trackers in ZOHO CRM APIs. Currently, this support is provided to all the picklist fields (system-defined and custom) and is available by default for a picklist field (Stage) in the Deals module and a datetime field (Rescheduled_To) in the Appointments module. 

Field Trackers 

Field trackers in ZOHO CRM help you to monitor the changes made to a specific field. It ensures data integrity and compliance as it helps in maintaining the history of changes applied to the critical data. 

It captures the details such as who made the change, when the change occurred, the previous and current values of the field. Users can use this data to analyse how a field's value evolved and identify the important patterns/trends in the business. 

Picklist Field Trackers 

Both system-defined and custom picklist fields support Field Tracker. The history details of the field will be available in a related list with five default fields - picklist values, duration, modified time, modified by, and moved to.

To enable this support for a picklist, follow these steps. 

• Go to Setup > Customization > Modules and Fields in your ZOHO CRM account. 
• Select your desired module in which you want to create a picklist field tracker. 
• Select the settings icon (...) of the required picklist field and click Edit Properties.
• In the Picklist properties page, select the Enable history tracking for picklist values checkbox.

Refer to this help guide to learn more about picklist trackers and how to add additional fields that you want to view in the picklist history related list. At most, only one picklist field can be tracked within a module.

Consider you are a Manager and you have enabled field tracking for the Lead Status picklist field within the Leads module to trace the timeline of your leads' status changes. Now, take the following steps to obtain the picklist history details:

STEP 1: Make a GET Fields Metadata API call to the Leads module.  

STEP 2: In the response, check for the history_tracking key in the Lead Status field. 

In the history_tracking key, 

• the module key, provides both the api_name and id of the new module responsible for tracking picklist history details. As a result, it naturally establishes a relationship with the Leads module, and it will be accessible as a new related list within the same module.  
•  the duration_configured_field key provides the field api_name and id of the key which contains the duration of the picklist values in that picklist tracking module. 

STEP 3: With the api_name of new picklist tracking module, you can fetch the history details in two ways. 

(i) Fetching picklist changes of all the leads records from that new module

As we already know that picklist tracking details are maintained in a new module, make a GET Records API call with the following details. 

Replace the module_api_name with the api_name of the picklist tracking module(Lead_Status_History), which is obtained from the fields metadata of the Leads module.

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/{module_api_name} 

For our case, it will be provided as https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v5/Lead_Status_History. 

Request Method: GET

Possible Parameters: fields, page, per_page, sort_by and sort_order.

For our case, make a GET Fields Metadata API call to the related list (Lead_Status_History). The response will give you the list of fields available in the related list. 

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.ALL (or) ZohoCRM.modules.{module_name}.READ 

Sample Response:

To fetch individual history records, use this {api-domain}/crm/{version}/{module_api_name}/{record_id} request url and replace the record_id with the id fetched in this response.

(ii) Fetching the history details of a particular lead

This approach fetches the related list data of a particular record in a module (here it is Leads). 

Make a GET Related Records Data API call with these details. 

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/{module_api_name}/{record_id}/{related_list_api_name}

For our case, it will be given as https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v5/Leads/5545974000004023008/Lead_Status_History.

Request Method: GET

Possible Parameters: fields, page, per_page, sort_by and sort_order.

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.ALL (or) ZohoCRM.modules.{module_name}.READ 

Sample Response:

To fetch individual history records, use this {api-domain}/crm/{version}/{module_api_name}/{record_id}/{related_list_api_name}/{related_record_id} request url and replace the related_record_id  with the id fetched in this response.

Stage History

In the Deals module, a picklist field called Stage acts as a default field tracker. The history details of this picklist are recorded in a new module called DealHistory. In this module, there are four default fields followed from the Deals module which cannot be unfollowed. They are Expected Revenue, Amount, Probability and Closing date. You can add additional fields from the Deals module to this list based on your requirement. 

The module's relationship with the Deals module identifies it as a related list within the Deals module as Stage History.  You can retrieve the history details of this default picklist field tracker in those aforementioned two ways. 

Let us show you a sample of each way for better understanding.

(i) Fetching picklist changes of all the deals records from DealHistory

Make a GET Records API call to the DealHistory module with the following details.

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/Stage_History or {api-domain}/crm/{version}/DealHistory/{record_id} 

Request Method: GET

Possible Parameters: fields, page, per_page, sort_by and sort_order.

Make a GET Fields Metadata API call to DealHistory to get the list of fields. 

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.ALL (or) ZohoCRM.modules.DealHistory.READ

Sample Response:

(ii) Fetching the history details of a particular deal

Make a GET Related Records Data API call with these details. 

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/Deals/{record_id}/Stage_History or {api-domain}/crm/{version}/Deals/{record_id}/Stage_History/{related_record_id}

Request Method: GET

Possible Parameters: fields, page, per_page, sort_by and sort_order.

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.ALL (or) ZohoCRM.modules.Deals.READ

Sample Response:

Appointments' Rescheduled History

In the Appointments module, a datetime field named Rescheduled_To acts as a default field tracker. The history details of this particular field are stored in a separate module with the API Name Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s. It is also accessible as a related list under the Appointments module with the same module API name as the related lists API name. Only the recent 20 rescheduled data of an appointment will be available in this tracker module.  

This module has six default fields - Appointment_Name, Rescheduled_Time, Rescheduled_By, Rescheduled_From, Rescheduled_To, Reschedule_Note and Reschedule_Reason. You cannot remove the existing fields or add new fields to this module. The lookup field with display label Appointment Name and API name Appointment_Name points to the corresponding appointment to which the history data belongs. 

Apart from fetching the rescheduled history data, Zoho CRM also helps you to CREATE, UPDATE and DELETE the history records for this field. This helps you to synchronise the rescheduled history when importing the Appointments records from a third party application. 

Let us look into a few scenarios in which the use of each of the Appointments Rescheduled History CRUD operations.  

Scenario 1  

As a Manager, you might want to retrieve all the rescheduled appointment history data to determine the most common reasons for rescheduling. 

Use the GET Appointments Rescheduled History API with the following details. 

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s (or)

{api-domain}/crm/{version}/Appointments__s/{appointment_id}/Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s

Request Method: GET

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.appointments_rescheduled_history.READ

Possible Parameters: fields, page, per_page, sort_by and sort_order

Sample Response:

The '204 - No Content' response will be thrown if the reschedule count of the specific appointment is 1. This response will not include the current appointment time, which is the last rescheduling of the appointment. You can retrieve it only using the GET Appointments API.  

Scenario 2

For instance, you are using a third party application for booking appointments and have decided to move to ZOHO CRM. But, losing the rescheduled history data for "not completed" appointments can be a major concern. In such a scenario, you can seamlessly transfer and incorporate the rescheduled data for these appointments with the help of Add Appointments Rescheduled History API. 

In this context, we are just adding new records of rescheduled data to the tracking module(Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s), which records the details of the Rescheduled_To field. Given that Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s is a module, it also allows us to execute UPDATE and DELETE operations, as elaborated in the forthcoming scenarios.

Following are the details of the API:

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s

Request Method: POST

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.appointments_rescheduled_history.CREATE

Sample Request Body:

{     "data": [         {             "Rescheduled_From": "2023-09-19T15:00:00+05:30",             "Rescheduled_To": "2023-09-22T10:30:00+05:30",             "Appointment_Name": {                 "name": "AC Service - Leota Dilliard (Sample)",                 "id": "5545974000004330038"             },             "Rescheduled_Time": "2023-09-19T15:30:00+05:30",             "Rescheduled_By": {                 "name": "Patricia Boyle",                 "id": "5545974000000393001"             },             "Reschedule_Note": "Customer unavailable",             "Reschedule_Reason": "By Customer"         }     ] }

You can add up to 100 records in a single API call, with a limit of 20 rescheduled history records allowed for a single appointment.

Scenario 3

To ensure accuracy and completeness, you may want to update the reason and other details for rescheduling the appointment. At times you would even want to insert additional information to the existing history data. In situations like these, use the Update Appointments Rescheduled History API. 

Following are the particulars about this API,

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s (or) {api-domain}/crm/v5/Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s/{record_id}

Request Method: PUT

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.appointments_rescheduled_history.UPDATE

Sample Request Body:

{     "data": [         {             "id": "5545974000004365002",              "Reschedule_Note": "Team unavailable",             "Reschedule_Reason": "By Team"         }     ] }

You can update all the POST request JSON keys except the Appointment_Name key. Using this API, you can update a maximum of 100 rescheduled history records per API call. 

Scenario 4

As a Manager, you may want to delete certain history entries that contain sensitive or outdated information to comply with the data privacy regulations. You can use the Delete Appointments Rescheduled History API to remove sensitive/outdated and even duplicate entries. 

Following are the details of this API: 

Request URL: {api-domain}/crm/{version}/Appointments_Rescheduled_History__s/{record_id}

Request Method: DELETE

Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.appointments_rescheduled_history.DELETE

Sample Response:

You can delete only one rescheduled history record per API call. The rescheduled history records of an appointment in the recycle bin will still be available in the related list. To remove them, you have to delete the appointment from the recycle bin. 

We trust you found this post both beneficial and informative!

Your thoughts and perspectives matter to us. If there is a topic you would like us to delve into or if you have any questions, please feel free to drop a comment below or send us an email at support@zohocrm.com.

Stay tuned until we circle back to you on next Friday! 

Cheers!

---

Previous Post: Kaizen #107 - Functions and Invoke URLs

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