Zoho Developer Community Monthly Digest – April 2025

Zoho Developer Community Monthly Digest – April 2025



Hello everyone,

Welcome to this month’s Zoho Developer Community Digest! We’ve lined up an exciting series of technical sessions, product deep-dives, and community conversations to keep you informed and inspired. Don’t forget to check out our resource hub and join the ongoing discussions in the new developer space (More on this under Community Discussions section!). 

Let’s dive in!

Upcoming Events

Creator Tech Connect:

Title: Building Data Relationships using Lookups in Zoho Creator
Date: May 15, 2025
APAC & ANZ: 11 AM to 12 PM IST – Registration Link
EMEA: 4 PM to 5 PM IST – Registration Link
Americas: 9 PM to 10 PM IST – Registration Link

Creator's tech connect series would comprise of technical sessions that provide immersive training on the key essentials and technical nuances of building a solution in Zoho Creator. This is a great opportunity for our developer community to stay informed about Creator's new feature releases, product roadmap, best practices to follow while scripting in deluge, new deluge concepts, and cloud functions. In our previous session, we discussed the recent product release updates in Zoho Creator. In the upcoming session, we will explore building data relationships using Lookups in Zoho Creator.

Zoho Developer Hangout – Episode 22

Date: May 14, 2025
Time: 8 PM IST – Registration link

Join @Onur Gülay, CEO of Smile Center Turkey and Zoho CRM Custom Functions category winner at ZDC Hackathon 2024, as he shares how he built Quoter—an AI-powered quoting system using Zoho CRM and Zoho Cliq. His solution slashes quote creation time from request to approved deal in under 30 seconds! Learn how real-time product matching, dynamic data mapping, and user-validated CRM record creation can drastically improve efficiency and streamline operations. He'll walk you through the full automation journey—from receiving a user’s initial request to finalizing a deal, while revealing the scripts, best practices, and future enhancements, all rooted in the belief that "Time is a Golden Key."

Catalyst 101

Title: Part 4 – User Authentication and Application Security
Date: May 20, 2025
Time10:00 AM IST & 8:00 PM IST – Registration link

Catalyst is a full-stack cloud development platform that simplifies the complex. Build, test, host, deploy, and optimize solutions like never before. Its easy learning curve eliminates complexities, empowering you to craft bold innovations at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO). This is a four-part learning initiative that focuses on offering a thorough understanding of Catalyst—Zoho's cloud computing platform. 

Zoho CRM APIs

Title: Part 6 – Mastering COQL
Date: May 22, 2025
Time: 10 AM & 9 PM IST – Registration link

COQL (CRM Object Query Language) lets you write SQL-like queries to retrieve records from Zoho CRM, including across related modules. In this session, we'll cover how to use Dot-notation in COQL to establish implicit joins and fetch records linked via lookup fields and subqueries as a smart alternative to joins — allowing dynamic filtering based on related data while improving performance and memory efficiency.

Zoho CRM Developer Series – Client Script

Title: Part 7 – Client Script in Custom Buttons and Canvas List View
Date: May 27, 2025
Time: 10 AM & 9 PM IST – Registration link

In this session, we explore the latest enhancements to Zoho CRM’s Client Script feature, with a focus on Custom Buttons and the Canvas List View. You'll learn when and why to use scripts with Custom Buttons, how to set them up, and see a live walkthrough in action. We'll also explore Canvas List View, where another hands-on demo illustrates how Client Scripts can bring interactivity and smarter actions directly into your list views, helping you create a more dynamic and efficient CRM experience.

Extensions 101

TitleZoho CRM – Webhooks & Signals
Date: May 29, 2025
Time: 10:00 AM IST & 8:00 PM IST – Registration link

This series aims to guide developers through the process of building extensions for various Zoho products using the Zoho Developer platform, Sigma. Our previous sessions in this series covered extension development for multiple Zoho products and highlighted the platform's key capabilities for developing efficient extensions. Register for the upcoming sessions, where we'll delve deep into developing extensions for Zoho products like CRM, Books, and Desk.

Zoho CRM Developer Series – Queries

Title: Introduction to Queries
Date: June 5, 2025
Time: 10 AM IST & 9 PM IST – Registration link

In this session, we’ll introduce Queries—a powerful feature that lets you dynamically retrieve data from Zoho CRM or third-party services using REST APIs and COQL. You’ll learn when and where to use Queries and the types of data sources they support. 

Learning Table Series:

Title: Smart Visitor Management with Zoho Creator – Built for Every Industry
Date: June 5, 2025
APAC & ANZ: 11 AM to 12 PM IST – Registration Link
EMEA: 4 PM to 5 PM IST – Registration Link
Americas: 9 PM to 10 PM IST – Registration Link

We designed this series to provide users with valuable insights and knowledge about Creator's capabilities in various business use cases and applications. This year as well, we have adopted the 12 Months 12 Industries concept. Every month, we will focus on a specific industry, illustrating its unique processes with real-time business scenarios and how to make best use of Creator for that industry. Our recent webinar on Creator for the property management was a success, and during the upcoming session we'll be exploring Creator for the Visitors Management.

Resource Spotlight

Info
We've consolidated all the resources from the developer community learning series into a centralized hub for your convenient access. Consider bookmarking our Zoho Developer Community website to stay informed about the latest updates in the developer community.

Community Discussions

Big news—we're moving! The developer discussion channel is shifting from Zoho Cliq to a new space on Zoho CommunitySpaces, and it comes with a mobile app! iOS folks, grab it from the App Store. Android users, hang tight—the app’s on its way. Until then, sign up here and use the web version. (Using Zoho credentials? Just sign in—no need to fill the form.)

Why the change? This new space brings all Zoho users together, lets you follow threads and people, sends personalized notifications, and has a much smoother experience overall. We’ve been envisioning this for a while, so we’re thrilled it’s live.

Developers ZUG Cliq Channel

  • Are you a Zoho developer? A blog with solutions featuring various Zoho products and features could be refreshing to scroll through. Check out miningwebs.in—Vishal's blog solely dedicated to Zoho-related coding content.
  • Usually, one asks a question and another posts the answer. Check out this interesting conversation with the roles reversed! A community member asks questions trying to understand OP's problem, and that leads OP to figure out the answer themself.
  • Newly released features are great, yes! But at times, features that are still in the works could fit your requirements perfectly. One such feature was what fit Evonne's needs. Check out the conversation here, and learn about ZDK CLI in more detail in this 4-part virtual series we concluded recently.
  • Populating data can be tiresome, but bulk-importing can make it a piece of cake. @Mike not only shows @Thameem how to do it, but goes beyond and warns him of some pitfalls and how to avoid them. If you're prepping your own data for importing, you might find Mike's advice useful.
  • Sometimes, the solution you're looking for is right under your nose! And all it takes is a fresh set of eyes, and in this case, @Sohib's.

Community Spotlight

Cliq Contributors

We want to express our sincere appreciation to all our community contributors. Your commitment, expertise, and the time you invest are invaluable to the community. 



For those who are new to the Zoho Developer Community, check out this post to get started. 

Make sure to follow the digest every month for the most recent updates and conversations. Stay connected and participate in the forums and the Cliq channel to be featured in the upcoming month's digest. Wishing you all an amazing month ahead!


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