We’ve encountered a serious and recurring issue that poses a massive data integrity risk for any Zoho Analytics customer using Zoho CRM integration.

When a field is deleted in Zoho CRM — even an unused one — Zoho Analytics automatically deletes every query, report, and dashboard that depends on that module once the next sync occurs.

This happens even when the field in question is not explicitly referenced anywhere in the queries. For example, if a query uses SELECT * FROM "Deals (Zoho CRM)", the deletion of a single field from the Deals module causes Zoho Analytics to treat the query as invalid, resulting in the automatic deletion of all related query tables and dependent reports.

We’ve confirmed this twice over the past year, and Zoho Support has repeatedly stated this is “intended behavior.”

Why This Is a Major Problem

• It creates an unacceptable risk of catastrophic data loss.

• It discourages normal CRM maintenance — we can’t delete unused fields without risking our Analytics environment.

• It breaks the fundamental expectations of how any modern BI or database system should handle schema evolution.

• It’s completely unrealistic to expect organizations with hundreds of SQL queries and thousands of dependent reports to manually rewrite every query just to avoid using SELECT *.

What Every Modern BI Tool Does Instead

Every other analytics platform (Power BI, Tableau, Looker, etc.) simply:

• Flags missing columns as invalid or null.

• Keeps queries, dashboards, and relationships intact.

• Allows users to remap or ignore deleted columns without destroying downstream assets.

Zoho Analytics’ current approach — deleting entire data models — is an outlier and a serious design flaw.

What Needs to Change

Zoho should immediately:

1. Stop destructive deletions of queries and reports when schema changes occur.

2. Preserve query definitions and allow users to repair or remap missing fields.

3. Introduce schema change notifications or safe sync modes to prevent automatic data loss.

This behavior is unacceptable for production systems and must be escalated to the Zoho Analytics product and engineering teams.