New capabilities for custom buttons: Elevate UX and CX with just a click!

New capabilities for custom buttons: Elevate UX and CX with just a click!

-------------------------------------------------Post moderated on 24th May--------------------------------------------------------------

Dear all, The feature is now available for all users in all DCs. 


Dear Customers,

We hope you're well!

We're happy to announce enhancements we've made to buttons.

Buttons in Zoho CRM are a simple yet versatile customization tool. It offers great usability for CRM users, enabling them execute important actions as required. It was originally designated for use within modules. Realizing its importance in users' productivity, we opened the ability to configure buttons inside records, Wizards, Canvas, and related lists as well. Also, you can bridge your CRM to a third party software.

Now, to provide context and convenience, we are expanding the scope of buttons even more.
  • Layout-specification: We've added the ability to choose layouts while configuring buttons, which helps provide more context to your data organization efforts.
  • Portal accessibility: We enabled buttons for portals to offer exclusivity for customers and also to extend these UX capabilities to CX.
  • Kiosk accessibility: We also have a value-adding use case with regard to Kiosk.

Let's go in detail!

Buttons are now layout-specific

Layouts in Zoho CRM are customizable data templates that help you collect, store, process, interpret, and manage data to manifest your business processes. You can also run automations based on layouts. These layout-specific capabilities help align your CRM to your business processes.
However, until now, any button placed in record detail, create, or clone pages was invariably displayed for all layouts. This generic prevalence of a button irrespective of the layout or the process lacked context.

The screenshots below feature two buttons on the record details page. The button Send to events for leads from trade shows and the other, push to WFS for leads coming in via online store. Both the buttons help push data to different applications.

You can see, how two buttons irrespective of their relevance, are displayed in the record details page invariably.

Now, to provide clearer context and, more importantly, to make buttons more process-specific, we've introduced the ability to select which layout(s) a button should appear in before selecting its position. In fact, you can select one or more layouts, or choose all layouts (but this time it's your choice!).

In the screenshots below, you can see leads with different layouts—each with buttons specific for its layout.


Note: Layout choices will be available only where they're applicable. If you choose to place buttons in the list view (module view), then you won't be able to select the layouts.

UI update: Separate links and buttons tab

In line with this layout selection update, we've also split the former Links and Buttons tab into two distinct tabs: Links and Buttons. With this split, you'll not only have a dedicated list of links and buttons, but also get the benefit of managing each of them individually.


Empower portal users with more accessibility

Portals are a self-service channel Zoho CRM offers. By extending access to certain modules to portal users, you can enable them to create, view, and update records all by themselves. Click here to learn more about portals in Zoho CRM.

Now, to give Portal users, accessibility and a great experience that CRM users have had thus far, we've also developed the ability to create/extend buttons to records shared via portals.

Moving forward, admins create buttons exclusively for portal users or extend existing buttons to them. 

What does this mean for your business?

Building or extending custom buttons in portals opens up a lot of possibilities. In addition to the standard record buttons, by providing access to custom buttons in Portals, your Portal users will be able to do what CRM users can do, such as send SMS notifications, save records as offline files, push information to on-premise tools, and more. The possibilities with custom buttons are endless, and they offer the following benefits: 
  • Curb their dependence on CRM users
  • Add convenience
  • Elevate the user experience
  • Minimize effort required for manual tasks
But wait—this update to custom buttons does lead to another interesting use case. Let's talk about Kiosk Studio!

Kiosk Studio is one of our latest and most anticipated releases. It's a no-code customization tool that CRM users can use to get quick service at the click of a button. You can quickly display a screen, retrieve information from your database, or save information to it. Click here to learn more about Kiosk.

Summoning a Kiosk is one of many custom actions you can configure for custom buttons. If you've already configured Kiosk for your organization, you can associate it with a custom button as an action and initiate designated tasks.

Let's look at an example of how a Portal user can schedule a car service all by themselves:

KM is a premium car care center that deals with its correspondence online. All the customer has to do is to schedule a service on their portal, and they will be contacted. This is a classic example of a Kiosk inside a Portal.

This way, custom buttons can serve a larger purpose for your business. We hope these enhancements provide a lot more flexibility and convenience as you work with Zoho CRM. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to drop a comment.
That's all, folks!

Availability: These updates are available for all users in US DC as of now. It will be opened in the rest of the DCs in a couple of days.

Thanks and have a good one!

Kind regards,
Saranya Balasubramanian
Zoho CRM - Marketing

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