Kaizen 228 - Process Large-Scale Migrated Data Using Catalyst Solutions

Howdy, tech wizards!

This week’s Kaizen explores how Catalyst Solutions in the Zoho CRM Developer Hub help import large volumes of data into Zoho CRM while improving data quality and simplifying the migration process.

Why Catalyst Solutions?

Catalyst Solutions provide a library of independent, ready-to-use backend solutions called CodeLibs. The CRM Bulk Data Processor CodeLib helps handle complex data operations on large datasets. Following are the key benefits:

1. Highly Scalable: Processes large datasets efficiently, supporting up to 200,000 records per API call.
2. Automation Made Simple: Automate complex tasks like segmentation, data cleansing and lead scoring with minimal effort.  
3. Effortless Integration: Comes with pre-configured Catalyst resources such as serverless functions and data stores that integrate directly with Zoho CRM.
   

Business Scenario

Zylker, a manufacturing company, migrated over 3 lakh Lead records into Zoho CRM from spreadsheets. 

Post-migration, the Lead data showed the following inconsistencies and challenges:

1. Phone number field did not include country codes, or contained incorrect country codes. This inconsistency made it difficult for sales teams to contact Leads reliably.
2. Identifying potential Leads for follow-up required manual effort and marketing team has to run generic campaigns without lead segmentation. 

Using workflows before record creation to fix phone numbers for this volume would result in 3 lakh individual workflow executions, which can slow imports and cause partial failures.

Solution Overview

Zylker can use the CRM Bulk Data Processor available in Catalyst Solutions to address these challenges at scale.

The solution works as follows:

1. Lead records are fetched in bulk from Zoho CRM using the Bulk Read API.
2. The fetched data is temporarily stored to evaluate the priority and quality of each record. Based on this evaluation, the records are also segmented accordingly.
3. The Country field value is used to identify and append the correct country code to the phone number.
4. The processed records are updated back into Zoho CRM using Bulk Write API.

All operations are executed using pre-configured Catalyst resources provided by the CodeLib. You can explore the Bulk Data Flow in Catalyst help page to understand how each resource participates in the processing pipeline.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure the following:

1. Log into your Zoho CRM and navigate to Setup > Customization > Modules and Fields > Leads.

Create the following custom Single Line fields to map existing record data in Zoho CRM. 

1. Last Activity Days
2. Web Engagement Score

Refer to the Working with Custom Fields help page for detailed guide. 

2. Create the following custom Single Line fields to store the calculated values during bulk processing:

1. Lead Score Value
2. Lead Segment
3. Sales Priority
4. Data Quality Status
   

3. Go to Setup > Developer Hub > Catalyst Solutions > Zoho CRM Bulk Data Processor. 

4. Click Go to Catalyst and create a Catalyst account if required.

5. Refer to the Catalyst CLI Installation Guide and install it on your local system.

6. Create a new folder on your local system, which will act as a local project directory. Use the following command:

mkdir -p <folder_name>

7. Navigate to the project folder in your terminal and execute the following command: 

catalyst init

8. Follow the prompts to select and initialize your desired project from the Catalyst console. 

When prompted to choose a feature, press Enter and proceed without choosing any feature.

9. Run the following command to install the CRM Bulk Data Processor CodeLib.

catalyst codelib:install https://github.com/catalystbyzoho/codelib-zoho-crm-bulk-processor

Step 1: Create a Cron Job

1. Open the Catalyst Console and navigate to the same project in which you have installed the CRM Bulk Data Processor CodeLib.

2. Go to Cloud Scale > Triggers > Cron and click Create Cron.

3. Fill in the following details:

1. Provide a Name and Description for the cron job. 
2. Select Function and choose BulkJobScheduler from the dropdown in the Target Function field.
3. Enter the following parameters and values:
   
   MODULES -> Leads
   FIELDS_TO_BE_PROCESSED -> Last_Name, Company, Mobile, Country, Designation, No_of_Employees, Web_Engagement_Score, Lead_Score_Value, Lead_Segment, Sales_Priority, Data_Quality_Status
   
   Use GET Modules Metadata API and GET Fields Metadata API to get the API names of the required module and fields.
    
4. Choose the Schedule Type as One Time for our use case.
   

Refer to the Implementing Cron Jobs Help Guide for more details.

Step 2: Configure Zoho CRM API Credentials 

1. Create a self-client application in Zoho's API Console.

2. Generate a Grant Token with the following scopes:

1. ZohoFiles.files.ALL
2. ZohoCRM.bulk.ALL
3. ZohoCRM.modules.ALL
4. ZohoCRM.settings.ALL
5. ZohoCRM.org.ALL
   

3. Follow the OAuth Help Section for a step-by-step guide to generate Access and Refresh tokens for your Zoho CRM organization.

Store all the API credentials securely for later use.

4. To allow Catalyst to access Zoho CRM data, configure the stored API credentials as environment variables in the catalyst-config.json file within the BulkDataProcessor function.

For detailed guidance, refer to the Configure Function Components help guide in CRM Bulk Data Processor. 

These environment variables are used by Catalyst Connectors to create access tokens for establishing secure connection between Zoho CRM and Catalyst.

Step 3: Add Business Logic

1. Go to com.processor.record.ZCRMRecordsProcessorImpl.java file of the BulkDataProcessor in the functions directory.

2. Override the ZCRMRecordsProcessor method with the business logic.

The complete code sample for this use case is available on GitHub for reference.

Following is the major custom logic used here:

Use the GET Fields Metadata API to fetch the API names of the fields required throughout the custom logic.

Phone Number Normalization:

This can be implemented in two stages, Country standardization and Phone Number formatting. 

For country standardization, CountryStandardizerUtil maps different variations of the Country field in records to a single standardized country identifier. These variations may include, 

1. Country Names (India, Unites States, United Kingdom)
2. Abbreviations (Ind, IN, USA, US, UK)
3. Calling Codes (+91, +1, +44)
   

With this, we can ensure different interpretations of the same country are interpreted consistently during the process. 

Once the country is standardized, Phone Numbers are formatted to E.164 format in the PhoneNormalizerUtil. 

It removes all non-numeric characters and converts the Phone input to E.164 format with the respective country codes. 

public class PhoneNormalizerUtil {     private static final Pattern NON_DIGIT = Pattern.compile("[^0-9]");     public static Optional<String> normalizeToE164(String rawPhone, String countryCode) {         if (rawPhone == null || rawPhone.trim().isEmpty()) {             return Optional.empty();         }         String digits = NON_DIGIT.matcher(rawPhone).replaceAll("");         if (rawPhone.startsWith("+") && digits.length() >= 10) {             return Optional.of("+" + digits);         }         switch (countryCode) {             case "IN":                 return normalizeIndia(digits);             case "US":                 return normalizeUS(digits);             case "UK":                 return normalizeUK(digits);             default:                 return Optional.empty();         }     }     private static Optional<String> normalizeIndia(String digits) {         if (digits.length() == 10) {             return Optional.of("+91" + digits);         }         if (digits.startsWith("91") && digits.length() == 12) {             return Optional.of("+" + digits);         }         return Optional.empty();     }     private static Optional<String> normalizeUS(String digits) {         if (digits.length() == 10) {             return Optional.of("+1" + digits);         }         if (digits.startsWith("1") && digits.length() == 11) {             return Optional.of("+" + digits);         }         return Optional.empty();     }     private static Optional<String> normalizeUK(String digits) {         if (digits.startsWith("44") && digits.length() == 12) {             return Optional.of("+" + digits);         }         if (digits.length() == 10) {             return Optional.of("+44" + digits);         }         return Optional.empty();     } }

Lead Priority and Segmentation

The lead priority is calculated using the Title, No of employees, Last Activity Days and Web Engagement Score fields in the record.  

Each field value contributes a predefined number of points:

1. If the job title indicates a senior role such as CEO, CTO, Director, or VP, 25 points are added.
2. If the company size is 200 employees or more, 20 points are added.
3. If the Lead has been active within the last 7 days, 15 points are added.
4. If the web engagement score is 70 or higher, 10 points are added.

The sum of all applicable factors is returned as an integer and based on this score the lead's priority and segmentation is assigned as follows:

1. High (Hot): score ≥ 70
2. Medium (Warm): score ≥ 40
3. Low (Cold): score < 40
   

public static int calculateLeadScore(             String jobTitle,             Integer companySize,             Integer lastActivityDays,             Integer webEngagementScore) {         int score = 0;         // Decision Maker         if (jobTitle != null) {             String title = jobTitle.toLowerCase();             if (title.contains("ceo") || title.contains("cto")                     || title.contains("director") || title.contains("vp")) {                 score += 25;             }         }         // Company Size         if (companySize != null && companySize >= 200) {             score += 20;         }         // Recency         if (lastActivityDays != null && lastActivityDays <= 7) {             score += 15;         }         // Engagement         if (webEngagementScore != null && webEngagementScore >= 70) {             score += 10;         }         return score;     }     public static String deriveSegment(int score) {         if (score >= 70) return "Hot";         if (score >= 40) return "Warm";         return "Cold";     }     public static String derivePriority(String segment) {         switch (segment) {             case "Hot":                 return "High";             case "Warm":                 return "Medium";             default:                 return "Low";         }     }

Lead Quality:

Lead quality is evaluated based on the validity of the Mobile and Country fields in the records.

1. Clean: Both field values are valid.
2. Critical: Both field values are invalid.
3. Needs Review: Only one of the field values is invalid.
   

Write Back to Records:

The processed data is written back to Zoho CRM as follows:

1. Mobile: Formatted phone numbers.
2. Lead Score: Total score calculated from all applicable fields.
3. Lead Segment: Segment derived from the lead score.
4. Sales Priority: Priority assigned based on the lead segment.
5. Data Quality Status: Overall quality of the Lead record.
   

if (normalizedMobile.isPresent()) { data.put("Mobile", normalizedMobile.get()); } data.put("Lead_Score", leadScore); data.put("Lead_Segment", leadSegment); data.put("Sales_Priority", salesPriority); data.put("Data_Quality_Status", dataQualityStatus); }

Step 4: Deploy to Development

Run the following command to deploy your local customizations to the Development Environment of Catalyst.

catalyst deploy

You can find the complete code sample on GitHub for reference.

Try it Out!

With the changes deployed to the Development environment, let us now test the solution.

We hope this Kaizen helps you import large volumes of data into Zoho CRM while improving data quality and lead intelligence using the CRM Bulk Data Processor.

Have questions or suggestions? Drop them in the comments or write to us at  support@zohocrm.com. 

We will circle back to you next Friday with another interesting topic. 

On to Better Building!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Previous Kaizen: Client Script Support for List Page (Canvas) | Kaizen Collection: Directory

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Topic Participants

• Kiruthiga G

  

• Sticky Posts

• Kaizen #198: Using Client Script for Custom Validation in Blueprint

  Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – 1 More to the Big Two-Oh-Oh! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

• Kaizen #226: Using ZRC in Client Script

  Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. In today's post, lets see what is ZRC (Zoho Request Client) and how we can use ZRC methods in Client Script to get inputs from a Salesperson and update the Lead status with a single button click. In this

• Kaizen #222 - Client Script Support for Notes Related List

  Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. The final Kaizen post of the year 2025 is here! With the new Client Script support for the Notes Related List, you can validate, enrich, and manage notes across modules. In this post, we’ll explore how

• Kaizen #217 - Actions APIs : Tasks

  Welcome to another week of Kaizen! In last week's post we discussed Email Notifications APIs which act as the link between your Workflow automations and you. We have discussed how Zylker Cloud Services uses Email Notifications API in their custom dashboard.

• Kaizen #216 - Actions APIs : Email Notifications

  Welcome to another week of Kaizen! For the last three weeks, we have been discussing Zylker's workflows. We successfully updated a dormant workflow, built a new one from the ground up and more. But our work is not finished—these automated processes are

• Recent Topics

• All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

  Availability Update: 29 September 2025: It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition exclusively for IN DC users. 2 March 2026: Available to users in all DCs except US and EU DC. Latest

• Manage Testing Process in Zoho Sprints

  Agile framework supports a robust quality assurance system that incorporates continuous testing throughout the development lifecycle of the product. The agile testing team focuses on planning the testing around the development, identifying defects early

• Announcing the Zohotshots of the ZDC Hackathon 2025

  Hey everyone, The wait is finally over! After weeks of building, experimenting, and pushing creative boundaries, we’re excited to announce the winners of the second edition of the ZDC Hackathon. This edition brought together an incredible community of

• ZOHO CRM Button Integration

  Hi Team, I’m currently working with Zoho CRM along with a custom application where I fetch deal details from the CRM and use them based on my requirements for each deal. Now, I want to enhance this setup. I plan to create a button on the Deal Detail page

• Zoho Books | Product updates | February 2026

  Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From Advanced Reporting Tags to the ability to mark projects as completed, explore the latest updates designed to improve your bookkeeping experience. Introducing Advanced Reporting

• CRM x WorkDrive: File storage for new CRM signups is now powered by WorkDrive

  Availability Editions: All DCs: All Release plan: Released for new signups in all DCs. It will be enabled for existing users in a phased manner in the upcoming months. Help documentation: Documents in Zoho CRM Manage folders in Documents tab Manage files

• Dynamic image in form works in the app but not on the customer portal.

  img = frm_Fichas[ID == input.Nombre].Foto; imgno = Nophoto[ID2 = 1].Image; if(len(img) > 1) { img = img.replaceAll("/sharedBy/appLinkName/",zoho.appuri); img = img.replaceAll("viewLinkName","Fichas_de_personal_public"); img = img.replaceAll("fieldName","Foto");

• Uplifted homepage experience

  Editions: All editions. Availability update: 17th February 2026: All editions in the CA and SA DC | JP DC (Free, Standard and Professional editions) 23 February 2026: JP (All Editions) | AU, CN (Free, Standard, Professional editions) 27 February 2026:

• Candidate Assessments, no workflows.

  I have an issue where I would like to trigger a workflow based on a candidate assessment being completed. Sometimes a returning candidate will complete a second assessment, on completion the status of the candidate will be updated to "Unqualified" if

• Mail Merge in Zoho Desk

  Hello Team, Do we have an option of mail merge within Zoho Desk like we have in Zoho CRM? We have a requirement to generate some pdf file in the form of mail merge doc from the ticket.

• Workdrive backup and default storage selection

  Hi community, I have been informed by Zoho that workdrive will be the default storage mechanism for crm and projects. These 2 Apps seem to have different design on how they interact with workdrive for storage. 1. Crm: seems to have files saves at the

• Introducing Radio Buttons and Numeric Range Sliders in Zoho CRM

  Release update: Currently out for CN, JP, AU and CA DCs (Free and standard editions). For other DCs, this will be released by mid-March. Hello everyone, We are pleased to share with you that Zoho CRM's Layout Editor now includes two new field formats—

• What is a realistic turnaround time for account review for ZeptoMail?

  On signing up it said 2-3 business days. I am on business-day 6 and have had zero contact of any kind. No follow-up questions, no approval or decline. Attempts to "leave a message" or use the "Contact Us" form have just vanished without a trace. It still

• Sync your CRM Tasks with Zoho Projects

  Zoho Projects integration with Zoho CRM helps you manage your tasks more efficiently. You can create all project related activities right inside your CRM using this integration. Create new portal or associate an existing portal, add projects to the portal,

• Tax in Quote

  Each row item in a quote has a tax value. At the total numbers at the bottom, there is also a Tax entry. If you select tax in both of the (line item, and the total), the tax doubles. My assumption is that the Tax total should be totalling the tax from

• Zoho vault filling in a form it's not supposed to fill in

  Hey there, I have a problem with ZOHO Vault autofill. In a software package, we have these options: For some reason zoho vault always replaces what's in the top option and fills a 2fa password in there, and then saves that value.. Meaning whatever was

• Zoho Booking Integration with Desk

  Just wanting to share something in case it helps someone else who may run into a similar use case as we did. Issue: Currently, the Zoho Booking integration with desk will drop a comment into the ticket when a customer books a time, however it won't change

• Let us view and export the full price books data from CRM

  I quote out of CRM, some of my clients have specialised pricing for specific products - therefore we use Price Books to manage these special prices. I can only see the breakdown of the products listed in the price book and the specialised pricing for

• WorkDrive issues with Windows Explorer Not Responding

  We are using WorkDrive to collaborate on editing video content. We have a lot of files and quite a few are a few gigs. Recently anytime I try and work with the files Explorer freezes for a couple minutes whether it's dragging the files into Premiere or

• Syncing calendar with Google Calendar doesn't work when events are sent to auto repeat

  Hi... The ZOHO CRM -- GOOGLE CALENDAR sync is broken. If I create a single event on either side, sync works, but if I create an event with auto repeat on either side it doesn't work. Furthermore, events created before the sync don't show up in the calendar.

• Organization wide Account and Contacts Visibility/Sharing Capabilities?

  Has anyone figured out a way to make visibility or sharing of Accounts and Contacts to be available across the entire organization without having to have every individual user edit their Sharing permissions? For our sales folks they need to be able to

• When Does WorkDrive integrate with Books?

  When Does WorkDrive integrate with Books?

• Quickbooks Integrations Stopped Working

  All of our Quickbooks integrations have stopped working. I am checking in to see if: a) this is a known issue b) if anyone else is having this issue. As usual, Zoho support is unavailable.

• Notification of Interaction Assignment

  If a user is assigned an interaction, they should be notified via email. These are almost useless because if I assign an interaction for someone to respond to, they dont know that I assigned it to them without me telling them or them logging in and discovering

• Countries List Global Set- Complete with Phone Country Code and Continent.

  Dear Zoho Team I saw your recent addition to the Global Sets regarding the Countries list and states. While working on it, why didn't you also add things like Continent and Phone Country Code? Also, some ISO codes from some Countries/regions are mis

• Custom Display Field for Lookup Dropdowns in Zoho CRM

  Could Zoho CRM support changing the display field in lookup dropdowns, like Zoho Creator does? This would make it much easier to select the right record by showing a more useful field instead of only the default one. It would improve speed, clarity, and

• Message as bot

  I would like to be able to send a Cliq message truly as a bot. the current implementation of this function, while it sends the message as a bot it sends that message inside a chat from the user how authenticated the flow cliq connection instead of directly

• Custom Button makes scroll bar go down in report

  I have a report with a Custom button called Completed. A colleague mentionned to me that when he pressed this custom button it scrolled down the page which is annoying since he want to stay at the same space on the repoort. There is no reload linked to

• CRM x WorkDrive: We're rolling out the WorkDrive-powered file storage experience for existing users

  Release plan: Gradual rollout to customers without file storage add-ons, in this order: 1. Standalone CRM 2. CRM Plus and Zoho One DCs: All | Editions: All Available now for: - Standalone CRM accounts in Free and Standard editions without file storage

• See a list of all records enrolled in a cadence?

  I am looking for a way to see a list of all leads or contact currently enrolled in a cadence. I do not see any way to do this through the cadence UI.

• Books <-> CRM synchronisation with custom Fields

  Hello, We are synchronising Books Customers with CRM Accounts. In CRM Accounts I set up last year a "segments" multiselect field shown below In Books, I set up a custom multi-select field with the same value as in the CRM And set up the synchronisation inside Books. Want to synchronise the Books Segments with the CRM Segments, but the later doesn't exist, and another non-existing is there ?! First, I don't understand where the field Segmentation is coming from. Second, I set CRM Segmentation to sync

• Trouble with using Apostrophe in Name of Customers and Vendors

  We have had an ongoing issue with how the system recognizes an apostrophe in the name of customers and vendors. The search will not return any results for a name that includes the mark; ie one of our vendors names is "L'Heritage" and when entering the

• Recording overpayment?

  So a customer just overpaid me and how do I record this? I can't enter an amount that is higher than the invoice amount. Eg. Invoice is $195 and he sent $200. He's a reccuring customer so is there a way to record so that he has a $5 advance for future invoice?

• Introducing the New Zoho Assist Quick Support Plugin

  We are thrilled to announce the new Zoho Assist Quick Support Plugin, the upgraded and enhanced version of the Zoho Assist Customer Plugin. This new plugin allows organizations and IT administrators to deploy it directly onto their customers’ devices,

• Automate your signing workflows with Zoho Sign + n8n

  Hello! We're excited to announce that Zoho Sign is now available as a community node on n8n, a popular open-source workflow automation platform used by tens of thousands of teams worldwide. n8n lets you connect apps, APIs, and services through a visual

• Ask the Experts 27: Onboarding and managing agents

  Hello everyone, We are back with our Ask the Experts (ATE) series for 2026. This year, we bring experts to help you address customer support challenges using Zoho Desk. For our first ATE, we are getting into the human side of customer support. "Every

• Retainer invoice in Zoho Finance modlue

  Hello, Is there a way of creating retainer invoices in the Zoho Finance module? If not can I request this is considered for future updates please.

• Can we rely on order of returned ids when inserting multiple records?

  Hello! API https://www.zoho.com/crm/developer/docs/api/v8/insert-records.html does not mention that the response array will match the input array*, keeping this important information implicit and someone might have doubts to rely on it. (*the response

• Spotlight #27: Embed visual collaboration Spaces in your presentations using the Vani add-on

  Hello everyone! This month’s spotlight feature is the Vani add-on for Zoho Show. Every time you pause your presentation to open another tab or pull up supporting material, you lose a bit of momentum. At Zoho Show, we design features that keep everything

• CRM

  Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Our company is not moving out of using Gmail's web app. It just has more features and is a better email program than Zoho Mail. Gmail has an extension (Zoho CRM for Gmail) that we're using but we've found some serious

• Next Page