What is Zoho DataPrep? | Self Service Data Preparation

What is Zoho DataPrep? | Self Service Data Preparation

The productivity provider SaaS provided Zoho entered the business intelligence platform field in July 2021. Zoho announced an AI-powered data preparation, business intelligence, and self-service platform application that combined the new Zoho DataPrep application with an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics.

This was to win over business users with a combination of features that focused on ease of use, supporting the data preparation, and the ability to blend internal data with the outside data sources. Zoho DataPrep application is self-service data preparation and management tool that uses machine learning to help business users integrate, transform, enrich, transform, and catalog data for creating and managing data pipelines.

Zoho has also added an integrated enterprise portal builder called Zoho Sites and presentation software called Zoho Show to the platform. This is for helping business users put their ideas into context. Basically, Zoho aspires to reduce any friction by empowering business users to drive decisions with data and without learning any new tools.

In this blog, we will learn about Zoho DataPrep in complete detail. So let’s begin.

What is Zoho DataPrep?
 
Zoho DataPrep is data cleaning software that enables organizations to prepare high-quality data by automatically looking for errors, discovering data patterns, cleaning, transforming, and enriching data. This is without any need for coding. It also helps in setting up data pipelines for syncing prepared data to Zoho Analytics or to any data warehouses.

Using Zoho DataPrep you can connect, cleanse, transform, enrich, schedule, and export data with ease. In addition, you can also catalog and manage how the prepared data is consumed with fine-grained controls. It is also possible to import data into Zoho DataPrep from over 50+ data sources such as files, FTP, feeds, cloud storage, databases, and data warehouses while making it simple to bring the data together.

The functions of Zoho DataPrep are:

1. Cleansing and Improving Data Quality
Zoho DataPrep helps in automatically profiling data for viewing distribution, outliers, statistics, and data quality. You can clean and improve data quality by removing duplicates, fixing invalid data, and missing values.

2. Transforming Data
Using the AI-powered data preparations and intelligent suggestions, one can apply over 250 transforms and prepare the data. You can learn to take advantage of machine learning to enrich data with sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, language detection, and much more.

3. Data Lineage
You can track every change applied to the data using ruleset. It is also possible to modify, disable, and remove any changes at any point in time. You can reuse rulesets for applying the same set of changes in other datasets while removing automated data preparation.

4. Data Catalog
The Zoho DataPrep can be used to catalog and manage datasets by categories, data quality, custom tags, data readiness, and much more. You can perform a system-wide metadata search powered by Zia for improving discoverability.

5. End to end data Pipelines
The organizations continue to gather data each day and cleaning it is never a one-time task. It includes setting up pipelines by automating imports, preparing data using rule sets, and exporting to destinations. This status can be monitored and one can also get notified in case there are any changes to improve the data quality.

Basically, you should use Zoho DataPrep because it helps in doing the below-mentioned things.
  1. Empowers business users with a self-service data preparation
  2. Offers high-quality data for any business need
  3. Helps in identifying the next step with augmented data preparation
  4. Brings unstructured data into the fold
  5. Helps in being expansive scale with the cloud
  6. It is an extensible data preparation platform with powerful APIs.
Zoho DataPrep is multipurpose software by design. It can fit in wherever it is needed. It helps in:

1. Advanced Analytics
The high data quality helps the data analyst to get deeper insights from business intelligence and analytics tools. The use of Zoho DataPrep reduces the time and effort needed to prepare the data.

Basically, data analytics enables organizations to interpret and analyze the data and make data-driven decisions. The data analysts can clean and prepare inconsistent and invalid data before coming on to analysis and insights.

The data analysts and scientists spend around 80% time preparing data and the use of Zoho DataPrep helps in speeding up the process and improving the data preparation experience.

2. Data Warehousing
You can run automated data pipelines from various sources to Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Azure SQL, and other popular cloud data warehouses.

It is also possible to build resilient and end-to-end data pipelines while connecting multiple siloed data sources to the data warehouse of an organization. This can be done with easy to maintain and low-code platform.                      

3. Machine Learning
The overall efficiency of the machine learning model is dependent on the quality of the data used for training it. The use of Zoho DataPrep helps the data scientists with data cleaning at a full scale without any need for coding.

Zoho DataPrep can be used to perform data collection, cleaning and pre-processing, feature engineering, and data labeling with the Zoho DataPrep.

4. Business Processes/Migration
You can migrate data between business apps using the DataPrep. It can be used for cleaning and enriching the data in business applications such as CRM, help desk, and survey tools for weeding out any duplicates and validating records.

Hence, the Zoho DataPrep can be used for enhancing the data quality, improving data flows, inefficiencies, and removing any redundancies across an organization.

Now that we have had a look at Zoho DataPrep in complete detail, let us now have a look at the features of Zoho DataPrep in complete detail. This will help in understanding what Zoho DataPrep can do for us.

1. Connecting to Multiple Sources
You can eliminate data silos in an organization, connect to it and a variety of other sources including feeds, files, cloud storage, warehouses, databases, and business applications.
  1. Import Files: It is possible to import files from anywhere in a wide range of formats including CSV, XLS, TSV, TXT, XML, XLSX, HTML, JSON from local storage, URLs, FTP servers, or from cloud drives such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box
  2. Warehouses and Databases: It is also possible to import data from a wide range of warehouses and databases.
  3. Tight Integration: Zoho DataPrep allows in connecting and cleansing data directly from Zoho Analytics using the built-in connectors.
2. Improving Data Quality
With Zoho DataPrep, you don’t ever have to miss out on important data with an intelligent solution.
  1. Data Quality: Zoho DataPrep helps in viewing valid, invalid, and missing data from each column using the data quality bar. You can filter and cleanse data using intelligent suggestions while improving the data quality and removing duplicate and invalid data.
  2. Smart Modelling: You can automatically find data types, create custom data types to find and fix invalid data, and get suggestions for joining the datasets.
  3. Data Distribution: Zoho DataPrep helps in understanding your data better with the help of multiple widgets like value distribution histogram, outliers, text patterns, value statistics, and more.
3. Transform and Enrich Data
Using the interactive data preparation studio, the data can be transformed without any code.
  1. Smart Selection: You can highlight the required part from the data and DataPrep helps in looking for selection patterns to offer accurate suggestions for extracting, counting, replacing, and splitting data.
  2. Transforming: It is possible to format and change the data using more than 250 transformations without the need for any coding. The data can be reshaped using pivot, unpivot, and summary transforms.
  3. Blend Data: The data can be blended from a wide range of sources using the join and append transforms.
  4. AI-Powered Enrichment: The data can be enriched with AI-powered transforms such as keyword extraction, language detection, sentiment analysis, and much more.
4. Automating Workflows
The automation of mundane tasks is one of the quickest ways to reduce time in preparing data. With the use of Zoho DataPrep, it is possible to schedule the data preparation workflows and receive alerts as well.
  1. End-to-end Data Pipelines: You can set up end-to-end data pipelines by connecting data from multiple sources, blending and cleaning data, and syncing to various destinations.
  2. Monitoring Data Quality: The use of Zoho DataPrep helps in continuous monitoring of data quality while sending alerts anytime the quality drops.
  3. Tracking and Reusing: The rulesets can be used to track any changes made to the data and reusing them across datasets.
5. Catalog Data
The built-in management capabilities help in classifying, cataloging, and governing data using the Zoho DataPrep.
  1. Discover Data Easily: The data can be discovered easily using a system-wide search capability powered by Zia.
  2. Mark as Ready: When the data is all prepared and set, it can be marked as ready for letting your team know that the data is available for sharing and exporting.
  3. Data About Data: More metadata can be added to the datasets and workspaces using the tags and improving searchability and filtering. All the important details about the datasets and workspaces can be found in a single overview pane.
6. Safe Data Sharing
You can collaborate seamlessly with the teams and offer fine-grained permissions for ensuring that the users access the data intended for them.
  1. Setting Access Permissions: You can set access permissions for sharing data, share workspaces with users and groups in an organization, and set role-based access controls to share data securely.
  2. Data Audit: You can get a detailed report of changes made to your data. The datasets when shared and exported can be tracked and exported. In addition, you can also verify if the security measures are applied to protect personal data before sharing or exporting the datasets.
7. Security and Compliance
The Zoho DataPrep enables you to find personal data in your dataset, ensure privacy by masking or tokenizing sensitive data, and also enables to adhere to privacy policy and data protection regulations such as GDPR.

All the data associated with the Zoho DataPrep is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Zoho DataPrep In Sum

An important part of any business analytics tool starts with preparing the data for insights. Zoho’s DataPrep is an AI powered data preparation platform that takes out a lot of manual work for correcting formatting, updating fields, and determining missing values. This enables the clients to set up once and save time without being dependent on difficult processes and inaccurate spreadsheets.

The Zoho DataPrep platform is on its way to becoming AI-driven data analytics and self-service tool through data preparation and augmented analytics. It is a BI platform that will allow its customers to clean, unify, and analyze cross-departmental data and obtain an encyclopedic view of the company.

This is a solution that combines Zoho DataPrep which automates and simplifies challenges of importing data sources along with an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics 5.0. The users launch queries for a deeper understanding of data by using the graphical tools or using Ask Zia which is Zoho’s conversational AI platform. The end goal is to make things simple for end-users so that they can construct and share analytics featuring pre-built visual dashboards for data integration and flexible deployment.

Conclusion
Zoho DataPrep is advanced self-service data preparation and pipeline service that helps organizations prepare and manage huge volumes of data. In case you wish to implement Zoho DataPrep then get in touch with a qualified and certified Zoho partner who can guide you at each step.

I hope that you learned something new 
Cheers!
Abhi
(Seasoned Zoho Authorized and Certified Partner)

Feel free to contact me if you have any queries
Email: abhishek(@)encaptechno(dot)com
Call: +1-416-405-8185

      • Recent Topics

      • How to display two measures (sales and price) divided by categories on one line chart

        Hi everyone, I’m having trouble figuring out how to display two columns on a line chart with category breakdowns. What I need is a line chart where one line represents Sales and the other represents Price. However, the Price data is divided into around
      • Resizing a Record Template Background Inage

        Hi everyone, I have an issue which I can't seem to resolve: Basically, I'm designing a record template in certificate form. I've specified A5 landscape. I've set my background image the same dimensions with total pixels at 443,520. Whatever I try, when
      • Exporting Charts from ZohoCRM

        Hi...I'm relatively new to ZohoCRM, but very happy with it so far. I have all my leads and potentials accurately entered, and like the reports that I can view, with charts at the top of the data. But when I export the data, I'm receiving only the data, whether I export as excel, csv or pdf. How can I export both the chart and the data? In case it makes a difference, I'm using the free version right now. I tried researching the other editions to see if a paid version of the software offered the ability
      • Zoho CRM - Scheduled Reports Which Contain Chart

        Hi Zoho CRM Team, I'm requesting that the Report Export and Scheduling feature be enhanced to include a chart, if one has been created on a report. At the moment I have a report which shows Sales This Week by Deal Owner and a pie chart at the top of the
      • Show price book list price

        When using price books, once you add products to the price book in the Products related list you can display the Unit price which is the default list price; however, there is no option to show the price book list price. To see the price book list price
      • Zoho FSM API Delete Record

        Hi FSM Team, It would be great if you could delete a record via API. Thank you,
      • "Authorize to Access Your Account"

        Hi, I'm trying to log into cliq on my phone but I can't. It says "Authorize to access your account - Verify your identity to access your account using oneAuth credentials", and asks for a password. I tried maybe 100 different passwords and nothing works.
      • Automatically Update Ticket Status in Zoho Desk Based on Actions in Zoho Projects

        Hi Zoho Desk Team, Hope you’re doing well. We’re using the Zoho Desk–Zoho Projects integration to manage tasks related to customer tickets, and it works well for linking and tracking progress. However, there are a few important automation capabilities
      • All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

        The address field will be available exclusively for IN DC users. We'll keep you updated on the DC-specific rollout soon. It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition. Managing addresses
      • sms long credits

        I’m trying to purchase Long Code credits so I can send SMS campaigns to my contacts. However, when I click the “Buy Now” button, the page appears blank and doesn’t load any purchase options. Could you please assist me in purchasing the Long Code credits
      • Whatsapp Limitation Questions

        Good day, I would like to find out about the functionality or possibility of all the below points within the Zoho/WhatsApp integration. Will WhatsApp buttons ever be possible in the future? Will WhatsApp Re-directs to different users be possible based
      • Tip #48- Power Your AI Workflows with Zoho Assist on Zapier’s MCP- 'Insider Insights'

        We’re thrilled to announce that Zoho Assist is now part of Zapier’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), bringing remote support automation right into your AI ecosystem. What is MCP? The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is Zapier’s new framework designed to connect
      • Insert Cookie Policy in Zoho Sites

        Hello, i need to insert a banner on my site because i'm in Italy so i have to respect EU laws for Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy. I see that i need to insert a code in <head> section of my site to show a banner/popup with cookie info. How i can do this? Thank you Luca
      • Nimble enhancements to WhatsApp for Business integration in Zoho CRM: Enjoy context and clarity in business messaging

        Dear Customers, We hope you're well! WhatsApp for business is a renowned business messaging platform that takes your business closer to your customers; it gives your business the power of personalized outreach. Using the WhatsApp for Business integration
      • Marketing Tip #1: Optimize item titles for SEO

        Your item title is the first thing both Google and shoppers notice. Instead of a generic “Leather Bag,” go for something detailed like “Handcrafted Leather Laptop Bag – Durable & Stylish.” This helps your items rank better in search results and instantly
      • Customer Parent Account or Sub-Customer Account

        Some of clients as they have 50 to 300 branches, they required separate account statement with outlet name and number; which means we have to open new account for each branch individually. However, the main issue is that, when they make a payment, they
      • Forced Logouts - Daily and More Frequent

        In the last month or so, I've been getting "power logged out" of all of my Zoho apps at least daily, sometimes more frequently. This happens in the same browser session on the same computer, and I need to re-login to each app separately after this happens.
      • Paste issues in ZOHO crm notes

        Hi, since a week or so I have issues with the paste function in ZOHO CRM. I use "notes" to copy paste texts from Outlook emails and since a week or so, the pasting doesnt function as it should: some text just disappears and it gives a lot of empty lines/enters.....
      • ENTER key triggering Submit

        Is it possible to stopped the ENTER key from the mandatory triggering of the Submit button on Creator form? I want forms submitted "ONLY" when the Submit button is pressed. 
      • Is it possible to assign Client user to external task ON PROJECTS' TEMPLATES?

        Is it possible to assign Client user to external task ON TEMPLATES PROJECTS?
      • What happens when someone clicks 'unsubscribe' in a zoho CRM email

        Hello, As per, i am going round in circles trying to find an answer to these 2 question. I have an email template that has an unsubscribe link in the footer in zoho CRM. First, what happens when someone clicks it - where does the contact get unsubscribed
      • Draft & Schedule Emails Directly in Bigin

        Greetings, I hope all of you are doing well. We're happy to announce a few recent enhancements we've made to email in Bigin. We'll go over each one in detail, but here's a quick overview: Previously, you couldn't draft or schedule emails in Bigin, but
      • Cannot Invert Axis for Rankings

        Hi there I want to be able to create a ranking graph in Analytics/BI, with 1 at the top of the Y axis, but I am unable to invert the axis. Super simple example in Excel below. Higher rankings need to be higher up on the graph to give the correct visual
      • Zoho CRM Workflow and Function Backup Options

        Hi everyone! I have been able to make several backups of my CRM data and noticed that the Workflows and Functions are not included in these backups. To my knowledge, there is no backup feature for workflows and functions, which is problematic in of itself.
      • Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

        Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards
      • Cliq does not sync messages after Sleep on Mac

        I'm using the mac app of Cliq. When I open my mac after it was in sleep mode, Cliq does not sync the messages that I received. I always have to reload using cmd + R, which is not what I want when using a chat application.
      • Free Webinar : Unlock AI driven business insights with Zoho Inventory + Zoho Analytics

        Are you tired of switching between apps and exporting data to build customized reports? Say hello to smarter & streamlined insights! Join us for this exclusive webinar where we explore the power of the Zoho Inventory–Zoho Analytics integration. Learn
      • PO receive quantities

        At last, Zoho has finally got around to allowing us to receive a larger qty than recorded in the PO :-) Saves us all from editing the PO's before receiving larger quantities ( usual for us ) ! It's still in "beta" but available upon request, I've tested
      • Link to images

        I have added images in pages. I would like to link those images with linked in URL so that they open in new window. There is an option of image -> link but I am not able to use the same to open URL in new window. Please check the attached image. Can you
      • Canvas View - Print

        What is the best way to accomplish a print to PDF of the canvas view?
      • What's New in Zoho Analytics - October 2025

        Hello Users! We're are back with a fresh set of updates and enhancements to make data analysis faster and more insightful. Take a quick look at what’s new and see how these updates can power up your reports and dashboards. Explore What's New! Extreme
      • 100 record view limitation

        I have just migrated from another CRM and am starting in ZOHOcrm with over 5000 contacts. It seems that my searches and sorts are limited to 100 live records....or am I missing something. This seems to be very limiting...in a lot of scenarios (mass email,
      • Respond faster and smarter with Zia in your IM Inbox

        You’re in the middle of a busy chat queue. New messages keep popping up. One customer sounds upset. Another is asking a long list of questions. You need context. You need speed. You need help. That’s exactly when Zia Insghts jumps into action. It shows
      • Meeting impossible to use when sharing screen

        he Meeting tool in Brazil is practically unusable when sharing anything, whether it’s a presentation or simple navigation. When accessed via Cliq, the situation gets even worse: even basic calls fail to work properly, constantly freezing. And as you are
      • Let's Talk Recruit: Meet Zia, your all-in-one AI assistant (Part-2)

        Welcome back to Let’s Talk Recruit series. In Part 1, we introduced Zia and how AI is reshaping the way recruiters work. This time, we’re taking a closer look at how far Zia has come and how each update continues to simplify your everyday tasks. When
      • WARNING : Smart list automatically unsubscribes your contacts.

        I created a smart list of my team members based on the criterion that their email domain was @_____. The list refreshed as expected — but it ended up unsubscribing almost all members of my team. I contacted support, but it took two months to get a reply,
      • Export Purchase orders as Excel

        Is it possible to export purchase orders as excel rather than PDF? Our suppliers don't want orders made in PDF, they need it to be excel
      • 5名限定 課題解決型ワークショップイベント Zoho ワークアウト開催のお知らせ (10/31)

        ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。Zoho ユーザーコミュニティチームの中野です。 10月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 参加登録はこちら(無料):https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/BGYTysOnSqa9LA9eY2IKww ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは? Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目的とした
      • Subforms in Stateless Forms

        Stateless Forms are very useful, but we can't build complex data entry pages without Subforms. Can this be implemented? This would make Stateless Forms truly powerful.
      • Billing Preferences per Account

        Hello, We are trying to setup Billing Preferences in Zoho Desk to set up a different pricing per account. We charge different pricing per hour per customer/account. Account A = 100 per hour Account B = 125 per hour In the Billing Preferences in Time Entry
      • Next Page