Zoho Creator Developer Console | Improved Distribution and Lifecycle Management for apps

Zoho Creator Developer Console | Improved Distribution and Lifecycle Management for apps

Hello everyone,

We're excited to introduce new enhancements now in the Zoho Creator Developer Console. These updates strengthen private app distribution through licensing controls and extend environment support across all installed apps, helping teams test changes safely before going live.

What is private sharing?
Private sharing of apps gives you the flexibility to distribute your apps directly to specific clients using their Zoho email address. This is especially useful for developers and Partners who want to deliver tailored solutions to select customers.

Why this matters
Many of our Partners would like to distribute applications directly to clients and manage payments offline. Until now, Zoho Creator had no in-product mechanism to enforce app validity based on your payment or agreement status with clients. This meant that even if a client stopped renewing their license, the application remained fully functional in their account.
This new enhancement solves that issue by allowing Partners to define a clear validity period. Once expired, the app automatically becomes disabled, and the Partner gains the ability to block access fully. This protects your IP and ensures fair usage of your apps.

Additionally, there was previously no way to share apps for evaluation purposes. With this update, the Trial License feature enables developers to offer a time-bound preview before subscription.

While Developer Console already supported private sharing, we recognized that the existing flow was limited and didn't fully address the diverse requirements of our Partners. That’s why we've rolled out this new update to make the flow more robust and professional.

Here's how the new flow works:
  1. Evaluation: You can now offer your client a Trial License for your app. Once the client is added and the app is shared with a trial license, they'll receive an installation email. After they install the app using the provided link, it becomes available in their Creator account for the trial period.

  2. Post-evaluation: If an agreement isn't reached, the application will be disabled after the evaluation period ends. This means the app will switch to read-only mode, where the client would have access to existing data but won't be able to add new entries. At any point after the trial period expired, the developer will have the option to delete the disabled application (along with its data) from the client's account.

  3. Subscription: Following the evaluation, if the client decides to proceed with a purchase, you can offer them a Subscription License after completing the transaction through your preferred channels. Based on your agreement, the subscription can be granted for as little as one month or set to lifetime validity.

    Once the subscription period ends, the application is automatically disabled and moved to read-only mode, allowing clients to view existing data but not perform any actions. If required, developers can further restrict the application, completely blocking client access. If the client and developer agree to extend the subscription, the app can be unblocked and access restored. 

    These safeguards ensure clients can't continue using your app beyond your agreed terms with the client, giving you complete control, since payments are handled outside Zoho Creator. 
 
To share applications with your clients:
  1. Navigate to the Clients section. Click the horizontal ellipsis icon next to a client and select Share Application.

  2. In the popup, you can choose the Application and the version to be shared with the client.
  3. Next, you can choose from two license types:
    Trial License: Provide your client with a trial period to evaluate the app. You can set the duration to 15, 30, or 60 days.

    Subscription License: Once you've finalized the subscription terms with your client, you can issue a subscription license. You have the option to set a fixed validity period in months (from 1 to 36) or grant lifetime access to the app.


Consequently, with the introduction of this new flow, we've implemented automated email reminders to keep clients informed about their subscription status and expiry timelines. Developers will be proactively notified about client subscription activity and upcoming license expirations. This ensures both parties stay in sync throughout the subscription lifecycle.

Documentation
To help you better understand these changes, we've provided comprehensive resources to assist you with the private sharing of applications. They can be accessed at the Understanding private distribution of apps help page.

Environment support for installed apps  
Along with the above enhancements, we're also introducing environment support for apps you've distributed. Your clients will now be able to add installed apps to environments and thoroughly test them in the staging environment before publishing them to production. This ensures the changes to apps are validated before they become accessible to end users.

This enhancement removes the earlier limitation that prevented distributed apps from being added to environments. Please note that while your clients can add distributed apps to environments, they will not have access to development. This continues our policy of protecting intellectual property and ensuring that developers remain in control of their apps.

For more information, visit the Installing and managing distributed apps help doc.

Timeline
These enhancements have already been rolled out and are now accessible to users in all DCs.

We believe this new enhancement to the private sharing feature will provide you with greater control and flexibility when distributing your Zoho Creator applications. We hope you love it!

We'll be back soon with more exciting updates, so stay tuned.

Regards,
The Zoho Creator Team

    • Sticky Posts

    • Introducing Zoho Creator's 2025 Release Projection 2

      Hello Creators! I'm Prakash, from the Creator product management team, and today I'm delighted to unveil our next set of features as part of Release Projection 2 for 2025. With thoughtful analysis and planning, we've curated powerful new capabilities

    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 1

      Hello everyone! A very Happy New Year to you and your family. Hope you're all good and having a great time using Zoho Creator to make your lives easier and your businesses prosper. 2022 was an action-packed year for us at Creator, and we hope to continue

    • Zoho Creator User Group meetups in a city near you! - Oct - Nov, 2023

      Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! We're hosting a series of Zoho Creator meetups in various cities across the globe, and we'd love to meet you there! Our meetups are a great opportunity to network with industry peers, exchange ideas and best practices,

    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 2

      Hello everyone! Time truly flies when you're having an incredible journey, and today we mark the completion of an eventful and action-packed six months. It feels like just yesterday when we embarked on this adventure together with the launch of our new

    • Upcoming Updates - August 2022

      Hi all, Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! Today we've got news for you on some exciting updates. And rest assured— there’s more to come! In this post, we'll be going over the upcoming features and improvements for this month as mentioned below. A

    • Recent Topics

    • Kaizen #223 - File Manager in CRM Widget Using ZRC Methods

      Hello, CRM Wizards! Here is what we are improving this week with Kaizen. we will explore the new ZRC (Zoho Request Client) introduced in Widget SDK v1.5, and learn how to use it to build a Related List Widget that integrates with Zoho WorkDrive. It helps

    • Remove Powered by Zoho at the footer

      Hi, I've read two past tickets regarding this but it seems that the instructions given are outdated. I assume the layout keeps on changing, which makes it frustrating for me to search high and low. Please let me know how exactly do I do this now? Th

    • Error AS101 when adding new email alias

      Hi, I am trying to add apple@(mydomain).com The error AS101 is shown while I try to add the alias.

    • No Need To Fix Something That Is Working

      Zoho Books is a great financial tool which helps businesses to become more efficient and productive with day-to-day operations. As such, every change, upgrade, improvement needs to be carefully thought before implemented in the software and I'm sure Zoho

    • Using email "importance" as workflow-criteria

      I'd like to set up a workflow that triggers if an incoming email has been flagged as "high importance" but I'm not seeing any way to do that. Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious...?

    • This domain is not allowed to add. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

      I am trying to setup the free version of Zoho Mail. When I tried to add my domain, theselfreunion.com I got the error message that is the subject of this Topic. I've read your other community forum topics, and this is NOT a free domain. So what is the

    • What is Resolution Time in Business Hours

      HI, What is the formula used to find the total time spent by an agent on a particular ticket? How is Resolution Time in Business Hours calculated in Zohodesk? As we need to find out the time spent on the ticket's solution by an agent we seek your assistance

    • Check & Unchecked Task Segregation in Export

      It must have a feature to represent checked and unchecked tasks as [ ] and [✅] respectively when exporting it to Arratai or WhatsApp ; as Keep Notes by Google contains…

    • WorkDrive Download Issue

      My client has been sending me files via WorkDrive, which generally has worked fine. Recently files won't download at all. If you try and individually select and download a file, a popup will appear in the bottom right saying it's preparing and then it

    • Resolution Time Report

      From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports What are time-based reports? Time-based reports are valuable tools that help us understand how well things are going by breaking down key metrics over specific periods. By tracking, measuring,

    • Support Custom Background in Zoho Cliq Video Calls and Meetings

      Hello Zoho Cliq Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the video background capabilities in Zoho Cliq, specifically the ability to upload and use custom backgrounds. Current Limitation At present, Zoho Cliq allows

    • Add RTL (Right-to-Left) Text Direction Button in Zoho Cliq

      Greetings Zoho Team, We would like to request the addition of an RTL (Right-to-Left) text direction button in Zoho Cliq, similar to what is already available in other Zoho apps like Zoho Desk. Currently, while using Zoho Cliq with the English interface,

    • Enable Backgrounds and Video Filters for 1:1 Cliq Calls Across All Zoho Entry

      Hello Zoho Cliq Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement related specifically to 1:1 video calls in Zoho Cliq. Current Behavior Zoho Cliq currently provides background and video filter options in the following scenarios:

    • Proposal: Actionable API Error Messages to Reduce Support Ticket Volume

      I've encountered a long-standing frustration with how Zoho Creator's API communicates errors to developers, and I'm hoping the Zoho team can address this in a future update. This issue has persisted for over 9 years based on community discussions, and

    • Zoho Flow: Stripe a Zoho Marketing Automation

      Hola! Quiero hacer un flujo con Zoho Flow, para que cuando se haga un pago en Stripe, añada el lead en Zoho Marketing Automation. Lo he configurado, configurando el disparador como "Payment created" y mapeando el campo de Stripe "Receipt email address".

    • Not able to delete a QC nor able to revert or create a cycle of manufacturing for QC failed Jobs

      Not able to delete a QC nor able to revert or create a cycle of manufacturing for QC failed Jobs

    • Need Customer Item Inward Module along with QC

      Need Customer Item Inward Module along with QC 1. Using Transfer Orders hit the item balance sheet 2. Items without inventory it becomes difficult for tracking purpose. 3. Custom Modules become tedious to capture multiple items, item subforms are not

    • LESS_THAN_MIN_OCCURANCE - code 2945

      Hi I'm trying to post a customer record to creator API and getting this error message. So cryptic. Can someone please help? Thanks Varun

    • Zoho email

      I need a list of email addresses of all contacts on my zoho

    • Shift-Centric View for Assigning and Managing Shifts in Zoho People

      Hello Zoho People Product Team, Greetings and hope you are doing well. This feature request is related to Zoho People - please don't move it to zoho one! We would like to submit a feature request regarding the shift assignment and management view in Zoho

    • Zoho Sheet for Desktop

      Does Zoho plans to develop a Desktop version of Sheet that installs on the computer like was done with Writer?

    • Introducing parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk [Early access]

      Hello Zoho Desk users! We have introduced the parent-child ticketing system to help customer service teams ensure efficient resolution of issues involving multiple, related tickets. You can now combine repetitive and interconnected tickets into parent-child

    • cant upload images in signature- urgent help needed. ta!

      HI, I have been trying to insert the company logo in the signature. i have tried it several times since yesterday, the longest I waited was 1 hour and 12 minutes for the pop up window to upload a 180 KB .jpg file. what am i doing wrong.. an urgent reply

    • Add Ticket button in Home view

      When I go to the My Tickets or the Knowledge Base view in our Help Centre, the Add Ticket button is available, but not in the Home view. I would really like for it to be displayed in the Home view as well. Is this possible? Thanks.

    • Problem using Zoho Desk API

      Goodmorning, I am trying to use the Zoho Desk API to create a dashboard in Grafana, but I am having a problem. Following the instructions in the API documentation, I created the API Console application (server-based application). Then I created the string

    • Add zoho calendar to google calendar

      Hi I keep seeing instructions on how to sync Zoho CRM calendar with google calendar but no instructions on how to view Zoho calendar in my google calendar.

    • How to print a label from zoho creator app?

      Hello, I would like to print a label from zoho creator app record similar to attached one. Size 74mm x 102mm. I tried record template. It leaves plenty of space around the content and also I couldn't set the height of the page. So it is not printing properly. Could someone please direct me to right direction for this requirement?

    • City field suggestion in Zoho Books

      Hi team, We are using Customers module in Zoho Books. In the Address section, we want to understand whether the City field can show suggestions while typing using any API or built-in feature. For example, if a user types “Mum”, can the system suggest

    • Non-responsive views in Mobile Browser (iPad)

      Has anyone noticed that the creator applications when viewed in a mobile browser (iPad) lost its responsiveness? It now appears very small font size and need to zoom into to read contents. Obviously this make use by field staff quite difficult. This is not at all a good move, as lots of my users are depending on accessing the app in mobile devices (iPads), and very challenging and frustrating. 

    • How can I check all announce?

      Hiii, May I ask how can I check all the announce based on broadcast date instead of reply date based So that I will not will miss out any new function

    • What are the create bill API line item requiered fields

      While the following documentation says that the line items array is requiered it doesn't say what if any files are requiered in the array. Does anyone know? API documentation: https://www.zoho.com/inventory/api/v1/bills/#create-a-bill I'm trying to add

    • This user is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

      Hello, Just signed up to ZOHO on a friend's recommendation. Got the TXT part (verified my domain), but whenever I try to add ANY user, I get the error: This user is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details I have emailed as well and writing here as well because when I searched, I saw many people faced the same issue and instead of email, they got a faster response here. My domain is: raisingreaderspk . com Hope this can be resolved.  Thank you

    • Cannot connect to imap.zoho.eu on iOS26

      Hey, I recently migrated to another iPhone and since then use iOS26. Every since then, I was not able to connect to "imap.zoho.eu" from Apple Mail. I tried deleting the account and adding it again, did not work. I tried creating an app password, didn't

    • Personalize your booking pages with Custom CSS

      Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re introducing Custom CSS for Zoho Bookings, designed to give you complete control over the look and feel of your booking pages. With this new feature, you can upload your own CSS file to customize colors, fonts,

    • Marketer's Space: Plan smarter with Zoho Campaigns' Calendar

      Hello Marketers, Welcome to another post! Today, we'll talk about a discreet yet significant feature that's neatly tucked inside Zoho Campaigns: the calendar. It might look like an optional but somewhat unnecessary feature that you can use occasionally,

    • User

      If user is already part of manage engine endpoint central , what hapens when i try to add them to another Zoho org / directory? Are these users added as external users?

    • Create static subforms in Zoho CRM: streamline data entry with pre-defined values

      Last modified on (9 July, 2025): This feature was available in early access and is currently being rolled out to customers in phases. Currently available for users in the the AU, CA, and SA DCs. It will be enabled for the remaining DCs in the next couple

    • Outlook - Zoho CRM Calendar Integration

      I'm facing an issue integrating Outlook with Zoho CRM. Has anyone successfully connected their Outlook to Zoho, and are all your meetings and emails being captured correctly in the CRM? Any insights or troubleshooting tips would be appreciated

    • 【Zoho CRM】ポータル機能のアップデート

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、ポータル機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 ポータル管理の新機能「自動招待」により、Zoho CRMからポータルへの招待を自動化できるようになりました。これまで必要だった、ユーザーごとの手動設定は不要になります。設定した条件に基づいて、対象ユーザーに自動で招待が送信されます。 ポータルの新機能 条件に基づく自動招待：指定した条件を満たすユーザーに、自動で招待を送信 招待設定：招待メールの言語を選択し、言語ごとに条件を設定可能

    • Contact data removes Account data when creating a quote

      Hi, Our customer has address fields in their quote layout which should be the address of the Account. They prefill the information, adding the account name - the address data is populated as per what is in the account - great. However when they then add

    • Next Page