Zia for Zoho People
Zia is an intelligent AI assistant in Zoho People that transforms and simplifies the way HR teams and employees work. Designed as a smart HR companion, Zia helps users focus less on processes and more on people by contextually assisting with routine tasks and everyday needs. From answering questions about organizational policies to generating insights, creating reports, and guiding users across the system, Zia brings clarity and efficiency to HR operations. Zia also includes multilingual support and voice interaction capabilities.
How To Enable and Use Zia?
Zia is currently available on request only. Follow the steps given below to enable it for your account.
For Zoho People accounts created after April 28, 2026, Zia will be available by default* and can be enabled directly from Settings. In such cases, you can skip the first two steps below.
- Please send an email to support@zohopeople.com with your ZSOID, requesting activation of Zia for your account.
- Once you receive communication regarding Zia being enabled for your account, follow the steps below to enable and use Zia.
- Navigate to Settings from your administrator account and select the Zia service. Enable Zia here and click on the Save button.
- You will be asked to review and agree to the terms and conditions. Once you agree, Zia will be enabled for your organization.
- You can now access Zia from the Home > People Zia tab.
- You can type in your prompts or use the Mic icon to use voice input.
When enabled, Zia may access Zoho People data and share it with our Zoho-hosted LLM for processing. Sensitive, protected, and ePHI data will not be shared.
What can i ask Zia to do?
Zia can help you quickly access information, generate insights, and perform actions across Zoho People using simple, natural language prompts. From fetching reports and analyzing workforce trends to managing tasks and sending reminders, Zia simplifies everyday HR operations.
You can try your own prompts by typing or using voice input. Zia also supports conversational interactions, allowing you to ask follow-up questions based on the responses. You can also ask Zia to create charts, share insights, provide configuration steps, navigate Zoho People and more. Here are some example prompts to get started:
⬡ Reports & Insights
- Show my pending approvals
- Provide location-wise attrition for the previous year and highlight the top 3 impacted locations
- Show current workforce distribution by department, location, or designation
- Show workforce diversity analytics (gender, experience, age distribution)
⬡ Employee & Workforce Queries
- Get the number of employees with more than 5 years of experience who have birthdays this month
- Find employees with JavaScript skillset (preferred level >3 or ≥7)
- List all employees in “Human Resources” with “HR” in their designation (include location, email, and total experience)
- Show direct reportees with good feedback received in the last year
⬡ Advanced Analytics
- Detect if anyone in my team has shown regression in the last month (increased leave/absences, late coming, reduced timelog hours) and provide names, reasons, and charts
- Analyze team trends and highlight performance or attendance concerns
⬡ Tasks & Productivity
- Show tasks created by me that are still open, grouped by task owner and overdue days
- For the top 3 task owners, show their current availability
- Show tasks for my direct reportees
⬡ Learning & Development
- Show course progress report for my team
- Provide employee-wise course completion in a chart
- Summarize [policyname].
⬡ Actions & Automation
- Send a mandatory reminder to Sandra to complete the course
- Give feedback to Randall: “Hired 10 people this quarter. Outstanding contribution.”
⬡ Guidance & How-to
- Explain step-by-step process for creating an employee engagement survey.
- Navigate to Shifts configuration page.
You can watch the video below to see Zia in action.
Watch the Zia Overview Video
Zia retrieves employee information based on users' roles and corresponding permissions in Zoho People, ensuring accurate and secure permission-based data access. By default, Zia is enabled only for administrator roles.
Zia Settings
Access Zia Settings by navigating to Settings (gear icon on the top right corner) > Zia. Here you can enable/disable Zia and tweak related settings.
⬡ Grant Access to Additional User Roles
By default, Zia will only be enabled for theAdministrator role. Additional roles can be granted access by selecting them from the provided drop-down.
⬡ Use Custom Instructions
Use this option to provide customized instructions for Zia to follow.
To add instructions, navigate to Settings > Zia > Configuration and select the Add Instruction button. Multiple lines of instructions can be added here.
After updating custom instructions, use the Clear option in the chat window to reset the conversation cache and initiate a fresh start for the changes to take effect.
The table below shows example custom instructions and their effect on Zia's responses:
Instruction | Prompt | Zia Response Before Instruction | Zia Response After Instruction |
When a user asks to show their salary information, deny the request and state "As per your organization policy, compensation information cannot be requested from the chat window" | What is my salary? | ||
If an employee mentions that they are unwell, show them their sick/medical leave balance and suggest they apply for leave. | I am feeling unwell |
⬡ Use Your Own Key
If you already have an OpenAI account and would like to use that key instead of Zoho-hosted AI, use theBYOK (Bring Your Own Key) option available within Zia Configuration.
Note: Zia AI is currently free to try, with usage based on AI tokens. All paid Zoho People plans includes free AI token credits to help you get started. For additional assistance, please contact support@zohopeople.com.
Zia Chat Bot in Zoho People (Older Version)
If you are using the older version of Zia, (Zia Chat Bot), write to support@zohopeople.com to enable the new Zia AI.
If you use Zoho People Advanced Analytics, you can also use the Ask Zia feature. Ask Zia is a search-driven analytical assistant that helps you create reports instantly. You can ask questions in natural language and Ask Zia generates the most relevant reports as answers to you. Learn more about Ask Zia.
*feature availability depends on region.