What's New - November 2024

Hello everybody, 

Discover the latest features and enhancements we've rolled out this month to help you deliver better event experiences and manage your operations more efficiently.

WhatsApp Integrati​on (New feature)

Transform your attendee communication with the power of WhatsApp! With over 2 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp is a preferred platform for instant messaging, delivering unparalleled global reach and engagement. Studies show that messages sent via WhatsApp are read and acted upon faster than emails, making it the perfect choice for time-sensitive updates and event notifications.

Why WhatsApp?

• Global Reach: Connect seamlessly with attendees worldwide on a platform they already trust and use daily.
• Instant Communication: Ensure your messages are delivered and read in real time, ideal for urgent updates.
• Higher Engagement: Boost open rates and attendee actions with notifications that stand out in WhatsApp’s familiar and user-friendly interface.
• Personalized Messaging: Leverage message templates to craft tailored and meaningful communication.

How It Works with Zoho Backstage

Our new WhatsApp integration is designed to streamline event communication and keep attendees informed at every stage. This feature enables you to:

• Send registration details, event updates, reminders, and announcements directly to attendees' WhatsApp accounts.
• Automate communication using triggers for actions such as ticket purchases, reassignments, or cancellations, ensuring messages are sent exactly when needed.
• Customize message templates to fit your event’s tone and requirements. Templates must go through a simple approval process for compliance and quality assurance.
  

A Facebook Business Manager account and a WhatsApp Business Platform are mandatory to use this feature.

Integrate WhatsApp into your Zoho Backstage portal today to elevate your event communication and deliver memorable experiences. Click here to learn how. 

---

New Gallery Settings

We’ve revamped Event Gallery settings to give event organizers complete control over their event galleries. All settings are now grouped under Event Gallery Preferences, making it easier to manage key functionalities, including the newly added NSFW Content Blocker.

Key Updates in Event Gallery Preferences:

• Photo Downloads Control: Disable the Photo Downloads option to prevent images from being downloaded directly or via right-click from the event website.
• Centralized Management: Access all preferences from Manage > Event Library > Event Gallery > Preferences.
• Consistent Settings: The same preferences will also appear in the Design tab for seamless access.
  

NSFW Content Blocker (Early Access)

Powered by Zoho’s AI engine, Zia, this feature automatically blocks explicit images when participants try to upload them. While currently in early access, the NSFW Content Blocker will be fully released in the next update.

---

Exhibitor Enhancements

We've made several updates to improve exhibitor management and booth customization:

• Tailored Booth Display: Choose to display exhibitor logos or names for booked booths. 
  
  
  

• Add Multiple Booths: Quickly create multiple booths within the floor planner editor to improve efficiency. 
  

• Efficient Booth Management: Find booths quickly with the new search function in the booths tab.

• Floor Planner Element Customization: Adjust Fill Color, Stroke Color, Shadow Color, Shadow Offsets, and Stroke Width for a more personalized look.

• New Keyboard Shortcuts: Use shift + arrow keys for swift element adjustments.

• Booth Identification: Booked booths now display the booth name and exhibitor name prominently.
  

---

Other Enhancements 

Ticket Class Registration Links

Generate unique URLs for specific ticket classes, enabling direct registration without navigating through the main page.

Schedule Email Notifications for Purchasers

You can now schedule email notifications for your purchasers! Send timely updates about order status and more at a time that works best for you.

Sign-in OTP Email Delivery Report

Access a comprehensive report on the delivery status of sign-in OTP emails sent to users. This report offers insights into successful deliveries, failures, and potential issues to help you identify and address email delivery concerns.

---

For early access to new features or any product-related questions, contact us at support@zohobackstage.com.

Thank you for choosing Zoho Backstage!

• Topic Participants

• Jithan Raghuraj

  

• Recent Topics

• Is there a way to request a password?

  We add customers info into the vaults and I wanted to see if we could do some sort of "file request" like how dropbox offers with files. It would be awesome if a customer could go to a link and input a "title, username, password, url" all securely and it then shows up in our team vault or something. Not sure if that is safe, but it's the best I can think of to be semi scalable and obviously better than sending emails. I am open to another idea, just thought this would be a great feature.  Thanks,

• Single Task Report

  I'd like a report or a way to print to PDF the task detail page. I'd like at least the Task Information section but I'd also like to see the Activity Stream, Status Timeline and Comments. I'd like to export the record and save it as a PDF. I'd like the

• Auto-response for closed tickets

  Hi, We sometimes have users that (presumably) search their email inbox for the last correspondence with us and just hit reply - even if it's a 6 month old ticket... - this then re-opens the 6 month old ticket because of the ticket number in the email's subject. Yes, it's easy to 'Split as new Ticket', but I'd like something automated to respond to the user saying "this ticket has already been resolved and closed, please submit a new ticket". What's the best way to achieve this? Thanks, Ed

• How to Push Zoho Desk time logged to Zoho Projects?

  I am on the last leg of my journey of finally automating time tracking, payments, and invoicing for my minutes based contact center company - I just have one final step to solve - I need time logged in zoho desk to add time a project which is associated

• Cannot access KB within Help Center

  Im working with my boss to customize our knowledge base, but for some reason I can see the KB tab, and see the KB categories, but I cannot access the articles within the KB. We have been troubleshooting for weeks, and we have all permissions set up, customers

• Export to excel stored amounts as text instead of numbers or accounting

  Good Afternoon, We have a quarterly billing report that we generate from our Requests. It exports to excel. However if we need to add a formula (something as simple as a sum of the column), it doesn't read the dollar amounts because the export stores

• why my account is private?

  when i post on zohodesk see only agent only

• Getting ZOHO Invoice certified in Portugal?

  Hello, We are ZOHO partners in Portugal and here, all the invoice software has to be certified by the government and ZOHO Invoice still isn´t certified. Any plans? Btw, we can help on this process, since we have a client that knows how to get the software certified. Thank you.

• 500 Internal Server Error

  I have been trying to create my first app in Creator, but have been getting the 500: Internal Server Error. When I used the Create New Application link, it gave me the error after naming the application. After logging out, and back in, the application that I created was in the list, but when I try to open it to start creating my app, it gives me the 500: Internal Server Error. Please help! Also, I tried making my named app public, but I even get the error when trying to do that.

• Client Script | Update - Client Script Support For Portals

  Dear All! We are excited to announce the highly anticipated feature: Client Script support for Portals. We understand that many of you have been eagerly awaiting this enhancement, and we are pleased to inform you that this support is now live for all

• Professional Plan not activated after payment

  I purchased the Professional Plan for 11 users (Subscription ID: RPEU2000980748325) on 12 September 2025, and the payment has been successfully processed. However, even after more than 24 hours, my CRM account still shows “Upgrade” and behaves like a

• how to edit the converted lead records?

  so I can fetch the converted leads records using API (COQL), using this endpoint https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v5/coql and using COQL filter Converted__s=true for some reasons I need to change the value from a field in a converted lead record. When I try

• Auto Update Event Field Value on Create/Edit

  Hi there, I know this question has been posted multiple times and I've been trying many of the proposed similar scripts for a while now but nothing seems to work... what might I do wrong? The error I receive is this: Value given for the variable 'meetingId'

• Pre-orders at Zoho Commerce

  We plan to have regular producs that are avaliable for purchase now and we plan to have products that will be avaliable in 2-4 weeks. How we can take the pre-orders for these products? We need to take the money for the product now, but the delivery will

• Constant color of a legend value

  It would be nice if we can set a constant color/pattern to a value when creating a chart. We would often use the same value in different graph options and I always have to copy the color that we've set to a certain value from a previous graph to make

• Zoho Pagesense really this slow??? 5s delay...

  I put the pagesense on my website (hosted by webflow and fast) and it caused a 5s delay to load. do other people face similar delays?

• Payroll and BAS ( Australian tax report format )

  Hello , I am evaluating Zoho Books and I find the interface very intuitive and straight forward. My company is currently using Quickbooks Premier the Australian version. Before we can consider moving the service we would need to have the following addressed : 1.Payroll 2.BAS ( business activity statement ) for tax purposes 3.Some form of local backup and possible export of data to a widely accepted format. Regards Codrin Mitin

• Problem with Email an invoice with multiple attachments using API

  I have an invoice with 3 attachments. When I send an email manually using the UI, everything works correctly. I receive an email with three attachments. The problem occurs when I try to initiate sending an email using the API. The email comes with only

• Page Layouts for Standard Modules like CRM

  For standard modules like quotes, invoices, purchase orders, etc, it would be a great feature to be able to create custom page layouts with custom fields in Zoho Books similar to how you can in Zoho CRM. For example, and my current use case, I have a

• Non-depreciating fixed asset

  Hi! There are non-depreciable fixed assets (e.g. land). It would be very useful to be able to create a new type of fixed asset (within the fixed assets module) with a ‘No depreciation’ depreciation method. There is always the option of recording land

• Fixed asset management

  I want to know if there is any individual module for fixed assets management

• One time sale item in billing automatically detects as service

  if i have some items which i don't want to add in my "item" list because its sold only for one time. but when i type item name in invoice, it (system) automatically takes it as a service and despite of HSN , it shows SAC code to be entered. if its selectable i.e. either item or service , it would be very helpful and a must have feature.

• Project template after project creation

  How can I apply a project template AFTER the project has been created?

• convert the project to templet

  i have some deployment ME product for different customer , i need to create a fixed template for use it rather then keeping creating this template every time

• Seriously - Create multiple contacts for leads, (With Company as lead) Zoho CRM

  In Zoho CRM, considering a comapny as a lead, you need us to allow addition of more than one contact. Currently the Lead Section is missing "Add contact" feature which is available in "Accounts". When you know that a particular lead can have multiple

• Related Module in Sharing Rules

  Zoho CRM team recently added the feature to filter records by Related Records It will be really beneficial if we can have this feature for Sharing Rules as well

• Assignment Thresholds Resetting After Lead Conversion

  Hello everyone, We're facing an issue with Zoho CRM's lead assignment thresholds that makes them unsuitable for our workflow. I'm hoping to find a potential workaround or solution from the community. Here’s our current process: A new lead is created automatically

• Zoho CRM Analytics - Allow To Reorder Dashboards

  I would like to suggest that you add the ability to reorder dashboards in the Analytics Module. I can see that this has been requested some time ago, the latest 9 years ago. I am not sure if this is a big or small endeavor, but such a small fix can go

• Territory view for custom modules?

  I have recently activated territories however I can't seem to find how to use territories for custom modules? These modules have territories:  Contacts /  Accounts / Opportunities These modules don't have territories:   Buildings (custom module) and 

• Zoho Books - How to Invoke a Custom Function in Schedulers

  We have multiple schedulers that send emails to customers in batches. Currently, we are maintaining the same code across several schedulers. Is it possible to use a custom function inside a scheduler script? If yes, how can we invoke the custom function

• Approval Process Comments

  Is it possible to view the comments entered during the approval or rejection of a record in the approval process? If not, is there a way to require a field to be completed upon approval or rejection?

• Login for test case

  Had a few questions regarding authentication test cases and couldn't find an answer in the the docs. 1. If an app like Zoho Creator requires authentication before providing access, do I need to create a login function and add it to each test case? 2.

• Zoho / Outlook Calendar sync

  The current Marketplace -> Microsoft -> Meetings integration needs 2 changes. 1. The current language for the Two-Way sync option should be changed. It currently states, "Sync both your Zoho CRM Calendar and Office 365 Calendar meetings with each other."

• Please make it easier to Pause syncing

  right now it takes 3 clicks to get there. sounds silly, but can you make it just 2 clicks to get it done instead? thats how dropbox does it, 2 clicks to pause instead of 3.

• Customer members area

  Does FSM support a customer members area? If not what do you propose we use if we want the data used in FSM for customers to give them an area / login to see past orders, create new orders and general announcements.

• Zoho Books-Accounting on the Go Series!

  Dear users, Continuing in the spirit of our 'Function Fridays' series, where we've been sharing custom function scripts to automate your back office operations, we're thrilled to introduce our latest initiative – the 'Zoho Books-Accounting on the Go Series'.

• Desktop app doesn't support notecards created on Android

  Hi, Does anybody have same problem? Some of last notecards created on Android app (v. 6.6) doesn't show in desktop app (v. 3.5.5). I see these note cards but whith they appear with exclamation mark in yellow triangle (see screenshot) and when I try to

• Notes created in mobile can no longer be accessed in desktop

  Working with a 2013 Mac running OS 10.14.6; Desktop Notebook version 4.5.3. Using Motorola Moto G Power 5G - 2024; Android app version 6.7 I have been using Notebook for some years. Starting several weeks ago, the notes newly created ion the phone can

• Function #49: Manage varying installment payments using Zoho Books

  . Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series! Last week, we discussed automating the collection of fixed installment payments in Zoho Books. But what if your payment structure involves charging varying percentages of the invoice total as installments?

• Zoho Writer - Option to Export as .zdoc format

  I've noticed that it's not possible to export a Zoho Writer Document in the .zdoc format. Isn't zdoc, Zoho Writer's own format? My use case is that I sometimes need to create quite complex documents with floating elements, which sometimes need to become

• Next Page