How to be productive with zoho

I am looking for ideas as to how others are productive with this suite of applications. I am currently an avid Gmail user, and I keep most of my contact information on Outlook at home. I have no CRM or PM tools so I am evaluating the tools here as well as the planner.

What do you do all day long to be productive with your contacts and email without having to be signed into 5 different places? Ideally I'd like to be signed into the CRM all day to deal with the calendar and send/receive email. But I did not see a way to receive email - only send. And it looks like the calendar does not send SMS reminders (ala Google Calendar).

If I want to use todo lists I have to be signed into the planner. It looks like Tasks over in CRM might handle this. But there I could not see away to group tasks.

And if I want to do anything with PM of course I have to be signed into the planner. I hear integration with CRM is coming in the future.

So again I am just curious as to how others use their zoho web tools all day long and manage their contacts, email, to dos and projects?

Thanks,
Patrick