I'd like to put forward a suggestion about how Deluge updates are surfaced to Zoho Creator developers, and I'm hoping the Creator team will consider it.
Zoho Creator is built on Deluge. Every workflow, custom function, validation and schedule we write runs Deluge, so when a new Deluge task, function or parameter ships and is usable in Creator, that is effectively a new Creator capability. The problem is that these updates only
sometimes reach the
Zoho Creator release notes. Coverage is selective rather than systematic, which means genuinely useful capabilities can land without Creator developers ever hearing about them.
What the Creator release notes already do well
To be fair, the Creator feed does carry Deluge items today, and several recent ones are documented well:
- The
thisapp.environment attribute (March 2 2026) - Dynamic stage and blueprint link names in Blueprint tasks (February 10 2026)
- The Translate task expanding to 74 languages (January 6 2026)
- The
OPTIONS request method in invokeUrl and invokeAPI (November 28 2025) - The Zia Deluge task (November 14 2025)
- The
zoho.loginuser.name variable (September 8 2025)
So the pipeline clearly exists. The issue is that it fires inconsistently, and the omissions include some high-impact tasks.
The example that prompted this
On June 22 2026, Deluge gained a new
setFilePassword task, which encrypts and password-protects a PDF or ZIP file object. This is directly relevant to Creator: password-protecting an outbound PDF or ZIP — a payslip, an invoice, a sensitive report — is a common Creator requirement that until now needed a workaround.
// Syntax
<file>.setFilePassword(<password>);
// Form workflow, On Success (e.g. a Payslip Request form)
// Password-protect the fetched PDF before emailing it
payslipPDF.setFilePassword(dob + employeeId);
sendmail
[
to : zoho.loginuserid
subject : "Your payslip"
message : "Password is your DOB (DDMMYYYY) followed by your Employee ID."
attachments : file : payslipPDF
]
Password-protecting outbound documents is something a lot of us have built awkward workarounds for. It is now a single native task, and I only found out by accident.
The discovery gap: This task is documented in the
Deluge release notes, but it never appeared in the Creator release notes. A developer who follows only the Creator feed — which is where most of us look — had no way to know this capability had shipped.
A second example
The same thing happened in April. On April 16 2026 the
convertToPDF task was enhanced to accept 20+ optional parameters, passed as key-value pairs in an
options_collection — scale, orientation (including landscape), margins (top, bottom and so on) and more — giving much finer control over the layout and formatting of generated PDFs. convertToPDF is one of the most heavily used file tasks in Creator, so this is a significant improvement. It is in the Deluge release notes, but again not in the Creator feed.
It's a pattern, not a one-off
Several recent Deluge updates with clear Creator relevance never made it into the Creator feed. The last row is included deliberately, to show the pipeline works when it is used:
| Deluge update | Date | In Deluge notes | In Creator notes | Relevance to Creator |
|---|
setFilePassword — encrypt PDF/ZIP files | Jun 22 2026 | ✓ | ✗ | High — secure payslips and invoices |
convertToPDF — 20+ output parameters (scale, orientation, margins) | Apr 16 2026 | ✓ | ✗ | High — PDF generation is everywhere in Creator |
| Zoho CRM Integration Tasks V8 | Apr 15 2026 | ✓ | ✗ | High — many Creator apps talk to CRM |
base32Encode / base32Decode and a character_set option on the base64 tasks | May 21 2026 | ✓ | ✗ | Medium — encoding tasks run in Creator |
| Translate task expanded to 74 languages | Jan 6 2026 | ✓ | ✓ | Proof the pipeline works |
The same Translate enhancement appears in both feeds on the same date. That is exactly the outcome we would want for every Creator-applicable Deluge change, not just the occasional headline one.
The "does this apply to Creator?" problem
Even a diligent developer who reads the Deluge release notes as a fallback cannot easily tell what applies to them. The Deluge notes are full of applicability qualifiers that point in opposite directions:
- Some entries read "available across all Zoho services that support Deluge" (for example the FTP and SFTP tasks) which includes Creator.
- Others are explicitly "in all services except Zoho Creator".
- Many are "now available in Zoho Creator too", meaning a task existed elsewhere for months or years before reaching us.
There is no Creator-scoped view of Deluge changes anywhere. Applicability has to be inferred entry by entry, which is not a reliable way to keep up.
Why this matters for Creator developers
- Silent capability changes. Tasks, parameters and limits change under our scripts without a Creator-facing announcement.
- Wasted effort. We build and maintain workarounds for problems that now have a native task — file password protection being a perfect example.
- Missed behaviour and security changes. Deprecations, limit changes and security restrictions can affect running production scripts, and these are easy to miss when they sit only in the Deluge feed.
- Onboarding and discovery. Newer developers have no single, Creator-relevant place to learn what Deluge can now do.
What I'm suggesting
Primary request: Automatically include Creator-applicable Deluge updates in the Zoho Creator release notes.
The Creator feed already has a Filter By Solution control (Applications, BI & Analytics, Integration flows). A dedicated Deluge lane would fit naturally, or these updates could simply be tagged under Applications. There is even precedent: Deluge-related changes for the Integration flows solution already appear in the Creator feed — the April 30 2026 entry documents the Deluge custom-function string limit increasing to 2MB. Extending the same treatment to core Creator Deluge tasks would be consistent, not a stretch.
Fallback, if full mirroring isn't immediately feasible:
- Add a prominent link to the Deluge release notes from the Creator release notes.
- Tag each Deluge-notes entry with an explicit Applies to Creator: Yes / No marker, so applicability is unambiguous rather than inferred.
Request to Zoho Team
Can Creator-applicable Deluge updates be surfaced in the Creator release notes as a standard part of the release process?
The pipeline already exists and is used occasionally. Making it consistent would mean Creator developers stop discovering native capabilities by accident, and start finding them where they already look.
Community input requested: How is everyone else keeping track of Deluge changes that affect Creator? Are you watching the Deluge release notes directly, or have you found other ways to stay current?
📚 Documentation References: