Hello everyone! 

August slipped away into a moment in time, so let's take a moment to catch up on all the interesting discussions and exciting announcements that unfolded in the Zoho CRM Community during this past month. We have a few product updates and important conversations to share with you. Let's dive right into the highlights!

Zoho CRM product updates:

> Activity Module Deprecation Update:

By now, most of you would have started seeing the in-product notifications inside CRM regarding the deprecation of the Activities module. This is a positive step forward, as the common Activities module presented its own technical challenges for enhancement handling. As the deprecation is scheduled to take place by November 1, 2023, do ensure you make the required changes before then. Incase you missed it, do check here for more information. 

> Mail Merge Enhancements: 

Discover the latest updates on Mail Merge in Zoho CRM! Based on popular demand, we've extended Mail Merge support to include Inventory modules. Additionally, you can now import PDF files for merging, and add image fields to your templates. Learn more. 

> Template Support for WhatsApp Integration: 

Currently, you can seamlessly integrate WhatsApp Business with Zoho CRM to reply to inquiries, add leads/contacts, and manage messages. The latest enhancement further enhances your experience with personalized templates to automate your messages. Explore these updates in detail in this post.

> CRM Portal Updates:

We have two CRM portal updates to share: Firstly, the pricing for portal user licenses has been updated, applying to all new purchases and transitioning for existing purchases in the next payment cycle. Second, plugin modules are now supported in portals, allowing external users to access plugin module records in the Related Modules section during portal configuration. 

> Streamlined CPQ Enhancements:

Zoho CRM's CPQ system now offers an improved "filter and search" interface. Designed similar to the advanced filters in the list view page, this upgrade helps you select products with ease.. What's more, now you can configure and add free secondary products that complement your primary product and make dynamic quantity adjustments. These enhancements simplify quote creation and enhance efficiency. Learn more

> Updates to Activities Related List:

We're excited to announce enhancements to the Activities-related list, offering three new views for a better organization: Column view for a quick overview, Chronological view for prioritization, and Tab view for customizable sorting based on field attributes. 

> Subform field limit enhancements:

Updates to subform field limits on layouts in Zoho CRM: The field limit for subforms on layouts has increased from 10 to 25, offering more flexibility to capture detailed information. Additionally, the limits for decimal, percentage, and currency data types have been extended from 10 to 20 fields. Learn more.

> Enhanced Sales Forecasting:

Following our earlier announcement about enhancing forecasts with the Strategy Influencer feature, we are pleased to inform you that this functionality is now available in Zoho CRM. With Zoho CRM's forecasting, you can predict sales and set targets, while Strategy Influencer offers trend analysis, anomaly detection, gap identification, predictors, and prescriptive recommendations. The blending of these two features within Zoho CRM provides detailed target predictions and helps create a more refined forecast.Learn more. 

> CRM Motivator Upgrade:

Zoho CRM's Motivator tool has been upgraded to boost productivity with new features: TV channel announcements for important messages, on-track/off-track analysis for targets, individual component refreshing, simplified team creation, hierarchy-based views for users, and additional data granularity for in-depth analysis. To know them in detail, read this post.

> Home page enhancements:

Previously, Zoho CRM facilitated sharing of home page components based on roles only. The new enhancement enables profile-based sharing as a home page customization. This change also lets you share up to ten home pages – five each based on their roles and profiles respectively – with your users. Additionally, using the Copy Customization option, you can now replicate analytics configurations across different Zoho CRM Accounts. Learn more.

> Zia's integration with OpenAI for Zoho CRM:

Introducing the exciting integration of Zia with OpenAI in Zoho CRM, featuring the Smart Prompt functionality. Smart Prompt helps with email composition, email templates creation, apart from refining notes and extracting more information through some of the fields on the record details page. Learn more.

 Early Access: 

Learn more about "Source" and "Previous Values", couple of minor enhancements in Zoho CRM Workflows. Use "Source," to narrow down the trigger source of your workflow, whether the trigger was from regular delete action or a record merger, thereby eliminating guesswork. By enabling access for your Functions code to field's value prior to update, "Previous Values" , helps trigger contextual actions based on the record update. Check out this announcement to learn more and get early access.

 Functions: 

• @Paweł Ordziniak attempeted to copy the value ofa picklist field from the Accounts module to the Deals module using Functions. @Bhoomi Joshi made the relevant changes to the code and got it to work for Pawel!. Check that in this post. 

• @Paweł Ordziniak wanted a button function for his CRM to create a deal record from a contact view page but faced issues with populating fields correctly. @ Hugh Marshall suggested removing a problematic line of code and provided a corrected version of the code, which solved the issue. Check out this conversation here.
  
  
• @Guy had an existing function to create a note in Zoho CRM based on call information but wanted to add a condition to prevent note creation when there was no text in the call description. In the original code, a note was created even when the description was empty, resulting in "NULL" in the note. Check the recent conversations for  the code suggested by @Pheranda in this post that worked perfectly. 
  
  
• @Mathew Farr was seeking assistance in automating the creation of a calendar entry based on departure and return dates from a custom module in Zoho CRM. @Bhoomi Joshi suggests correcting code to create a calendar event using Deluge scripting, properly defining event details, including start and end times, and associating it with the "Bookings" module. 
  
  
• @CRM wanted to populate a custom field with the creation date/time in lead records using a custom function. They've already set up a workflow for new records but need assistance with updating 400 existing records. @Sunderjan has provided the code to update existing records in the Leads module to achieve this.
  

 Dev's Corner: 

• @Mark wanted to create a button in the "Booking" module to display a mini-form with specific fields based on the record's data, such as showing different fields for different client names. He wanted this form to update relevant record fields and initially considered using Deluge scripting. @Hugh pitched in and suggested creating a Zoho Form with field rules and integrating it with the CRM, which solved his problem. Read more.

• Take a look at this troubleshooting discussion where @f.sommerhuber was facing an issue with a Lookup Field for Leads while using the PHP SDK to retrieve related records. @Praveen chimed in with valuable advice, suggesting that when fetching converted Lead record details, you can use the parameter "converted=both" or "converted=true," although this method doesn't apply to related records. Following this guidance, he was able to resolve their problem successfully. Read this post. 

 Useful Discussion : 

• @Helene was struggling to convert percentages to letter grades in a subform and sought assistance. @Nik pitched in and provided a solution using a formula field with specific assumptions and criteria that work efficiently. Learn more.
  
  
• @Shanon wants to add a field to Deals that tracks the count of times a Deal's Closing Date is extended, excluding instances when it's moved earlier. @Wassim Sayerh suggests creating two fields, 'Closing Date Ref' and a counter field. The logic involves comparing the 'Closing Date' and 'Closing Date Ref,' incrementing the counter if the date is pushed out, and updating the 'Closing Date Ref' accordingly. Also, @Nik provides the code for implementing this as a function. Read more 

• If you are looking to involve your customer/prospects to validate and update their Contact records in Zoho CRM, do check the solution proposed by @Hugh Marshall in this post. Hugh explains how this can be done seamlessly using Zoho Forms integration and included a video demonstrating the same. 

• @Jay The First Williams wanted to bulk edit contacts in their CRM where "UAE" should be changed to "United Arab Emirates." @Wassim chips in and suggests a solution to achieve it. Check here 

• Did you know that you can automatically create a folder structure when a Deal reaches a certain stage using Zoho Flow or custom functions in Zoho CRM? Check out the comments by @Michael and @Hugh Marshall. @Hugh has even provided a helpful video tutorial for this process that helped @Adrianna achieve her requirements. 

 Kaizen: 

• (Kaizen #97) - Leverage the power of APIs to manage and interact with emails within the Zoho CRM platform.  

• (Kaizen #98) - This post, dives deep into using Query API with Zoho CRM PHP SDK, specifically focusing on version 5 of Zoho CRM APIs.

• (Kaizen #99) - In this post, let's learn how to render Widgets with Client Script.
  
  
• Kaizen Triumphs: Celebrating the Journey of 100 Posts! Thank you for being a part of our journey. 
  
  
• (Kaizen #100) - In this special post, we have answered some of your questions.

Thanks for taking the time to read this month's round-up. Keep tabs on the digest every month for the latest ideas and discussions. Stay tuned and engage in the forums to be included in the next month's digest. Have a wonderful month!

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