I went to make some changes today in a flow that's been running fine for a while, and was unable to do so as a result of ZohoCRM permissions restricting access:

So I then head over to CRM and find the corresponding automation, only to be confronted with the following message:

It appears that there's a "migration" that's being imposed on customizations (functions, flows, etc) that essentially now inhibits the ability to perform any action programmatically that would modify the Call Information data stored in the Call Module.

For me personally, I can only say that this new update undermines my ability to apply phone number formatting and corrections that I make every effort to maintain across every area, module, contact, etc. This is for two main reasons...

The first is to overcome certain limitations and quirks that can vary from one VOIP provider to the next.  For example, one VOIP provider under certain circumstances likes to at 0001 as a prefix to all dialed calls.  Some add a + at the beginning of the number. Others don't.  Some like to add other prefixes to the extension for the destination number in ways that is usually unnecessary at the user-level, and is rarely standardized.  This might, for example, include the account number specific to me so that the voip provider can maintain my extensions distinctly from its other clients. But within my organization, these numbers are hidden and only the two or three digits are needed. 

By removing my ability to modify the Call Information Data, I'm disempowered from being able to manage my data as I see fit for my business.  What's the reason we as end users seemingly can't be trusted with the tools we need to perform administrative maintenance on the very data we work so hard to acquire.  So long as we take reasonable steps to ensure that the information is being used in a way that ensures common sense data security and is being used in an ethical manner, should we not be afforded the autonomy to manage such data as we should reasonably and rightfully expect?

My point ultimately is to say that every business has a set of unique needs and preferences in how certain data is handled and formatted.  This is usually with the idea in mind that to not do so will end up resulting in a trashed unusable contact database, an eyesore of several slightly, yet annoyingly varied formatting styles in your customer and vendor records in Books, etc., and ending up with the database equivalent a patchwork quilt, seemingly without much consistency from one record to the next.

So if this is indeed eminent, then I'd like to ask what's the benefit, as it would seem that this is not so much a migration, but rather a newly imposed limitation that only serves to cripple my ability to manage my data, and to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place.

If the intention here is to standardize certain data into a single fixed format, I should say that I'm not entirely opposed to such an initiative, but this has neither been stated as an overarching initiative to justify this change, nor have the specifications been provided (at least not that I've seen) to state what this specification is.  Furthermore, such an effort would really be of little use if only limited only the Call Information Data in the Calls Module in CRM, and would not likely be able to universally address the needs or preferences to suit everyone.

If the idea is one geared toward security and to prevent modification of this data in order to protect it from those who otherwise might have other more nefarious intentions, then these should be limitations that are imposed within an organization who owns the data and to properly arbitrar within the organization who should should have the assigned permissions and who should not.  This should be determined by each individual business, rather than applying a blanket one-size-fits-all policy applied by their SaaS provider.

Of course it may be possible that there's something here that I've misunderstood, and haven't fully grasped. If there's a workaround that isn't apparent, then please provide some guidance or further insight as to what that might be.  All in all, I'm otherwise really struggling to see the real benefit here, and am not thrilled with the reduced functionality that will result.

-Bryan