Project Management Bulletin: Q1 2025

The first quarter of 2025 has flown by! Here at Zoho, we're pausing to appreciate all the goals we've hit so far.

With this momentum in mind, we're excited to share our first edition of the Project Management Bulletin, where we'll discuss highlights from Zoho Projects, Zoho Sprints, Zoho BugTracker, and our newest addition—Zoho Projects Plus. You're invited to join in on the discussion and share your project management stories with us!

Let's jump in.

Our brand new launch: Zoho Projects Plus

Meet Zoho Projects Plus, a hybrid project management software solution that supports teams using waterfall, agile, or a mix of both. Designed as a comprehensive platform for data-driven insights, it helps you harness the combined power of Zoho Projects, Sprints, Analytics, and WorkDrive. And of course, our in-house AI assistant Zia is always ready to help you work smarter.

Check out our recent blog post on Zoho Projects Plus

Featured videos on Zoho Projects Plus

      

PM spotlight

Have you ever wished your project tools were more inclusive and accessible for every team member?

We've got it covered! Zoho Projects now includes accessibility options across key features to ensure a more intuitive experience for all users. Read more about accessibility

Key releases this quarter

Zoho Projects rolled out major features this quarter:

• Power BI integration: Sync your project data with Microsoft's advanced analytics tool. Create dashboards and reports to visualize progress and share them with your project stakeholders.
  
• Revamped APIs: We've introduced new additions, sample inputs and responses, and an easy-to-use interface. Access our complete API documentation and read our announcement to learn more.
  
• Invitation templates: Set up reusable templates with custom messages to invite portal and client users to your projects.  

View the complete set of updates for this quarter in this announcement.

 

Zoho Sprints had a valuable quarter with a bunch of new releases. Here are the top three features:

• AI integrations: Connect with Zia, OpenAI, Google AI Studios, Cohere, and Anthropic to simplify your discussions and enhance your technical reviews.
  
• Meeting Bridge: A centralized platform for third-party meeting services, this integration provides a list of curated services that meet your unique needs.
  
• Layout rules: Customize item layout based on specific conditions and automate field behavior in that layout.
  

 

We've also introduced weekly logs, data import from Trello, and more. The entire list of updates for this quarter is available in this announcement.

 

Productivity tips

Looking for tips and tricks? Here's our list:

• Organize and clone task custom views in Zoho Projects
  
• Time-based workflow rules for projects and tasks  
  
• Customize user invites with invitation templates in Zoho Projects
  
• Analyze project trends with Power BI integration for Zoho Projects  
  
• Gain user-based AI insights with Sheet view in Zoho Sprints
  
• Introducing Zoho Projects Plus
  
• Why hybrid project management might be the best fit for you?

 

Solution corner

Our solution expert team creates custom functions on demand to meet your unique requirements. Here’s a curated list of the top five custom solutions developed this quarter.

 

1. Auto-approve pending time logs

One customer needed a way to automatically approve pending time logs during the first week of every month. We built a solution using schedule functions, where custom functions can be executed hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. The code for achieving this requirement is available in this post about pending time logs.

 

2. Auto-generate an invoice after task completion

We received an interesting request where the customer wanted to automatically generate an invoice once all tasks in a milestone were completed. We created a custom function that connects Zoho Projects and Zoho Books via their APIs to automate the process using task workflow rules. Check out this post about invoice generation to view the script we created.

 

3. Schedule a meeting when a task is created in Zoho Projects

A power user leveraging the integration between Zoho Projects and Zoho Meeting wanted to automatically schedule a meeting upon task creation. The task’s start date and time was used to schedule the meeting, with a default duration of one hour. Refer to this post about meeting scheduling to see how we used task custom functions and workflow rules in Zoho Projects to achieve this.

 

4. Auto-create checklists on task creation

Checklist for Zoho Projects is an extension that lets you create a set of to-do lists for your tasks and issues. One of our customers wanted to add a specific checklist from the template when a new task was created. Here’s the custom function code we created.

 

5. A smart approach to task workflow automation: Preventing infinite loops

We tackled a common issue—infinite loops caused by task workflow rules and custom functions—with a smart solution. Here's a detailed post on the use case, solution, and implementation steps.

 

Project management meetups

Agile India 2025

We exhibited Zoho Sprints at Agile India 2025, held in Bengaluru from March 25 to 27. It was an ideal platform with thought leaders and agile experts assembling to discuss the current landscape of agile practices and its future. We engaged with a lot of agile enthusiasts and exchanged ideas and perspectives that we could translate into practical solutions. Learn more about Agile India

Upcoming: Zoholics USA (May 13 to 15, 2025)

For the first time ever, Zoho is bringing Zoholics to Houston this May! From expert-led sessions to hands-on workshops, this event is power-packed. You can expect dedicated project management announcements and stalls hosted to communicate, learn, and empower teams with our project management suite. Grab your slots today!

We hope all our new additions and enhancements help you manage your projects faster and smarter. Keep tabs on this space for more round-ups and updates on our suite of project management tools.

 

• Topic Participants

• Saranya Baskaran Lakshmi

  

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