Zoho Creator Developer Console | Improved Distribution and Lifecycle Management for apps

Zoho Creator Developer Console | Improved Distribution and Lifecycle Management for apps

Hello everyone,

We're excited to introduce new enhancements now in the Zoho Creator Developer Console. These updates strengthen private app distribution through licensing controls and extend environment support across all installed apps, helping teams test changes safely before going live.

What is private sharing?
Private sharing of apps gives you the flexibility to distribute your apps directly to specific clients using their Zoho email address. This is especially useful for developers and Partners who want to deliver tailored solutions to select customers.

Why this matters
Many of our Partners would like to distribute applications directly to clients and manage payments offline. Until now, Zoho Creator had no in-product mechanism to enforce app validity based on your payment or agreement status with clients. This meant that even if a client stopped renewing their license, the application remained fully functional in their account.
This new enhancement solves that issue by allowing Partners to define a clear validity period. Once expired, the app automatically becomes disabled, and the Partner gains the ability to block access fully. This protects your IP and ensures fair usage of your apps.

Additionally, there was previously no way to share apps for evaluation purposes. With this update, the Trial License feature enables developers to offer a time-bound preview before subscription.

While Developer Console already supported private sharing, we recognized that the existing flow was limited and didn't fully address the diverse requirements of our Partners. That’s why we've rolled out this new update to make the flow more robust and professional.

Here's how the new flow works:
  1. Evaluation: You can now offer your client a Trial License for your app. Once the client is added and the app is shared with a trial license, they'll receive an installation email. After they install the app using the provided link, it becomes available in their Creator account for the trial period.

  2. Post-evaluation: If an agreement isn't reached, the application will be disabled after the evaluation period ends. This means the app will switch to read-only mode, where the client would have access to existing data but won't be able to add new entries. At any point after the trial period expired, the developer will have the option to delete the disabled application (along with its data) from the client's account.

  3. Subscription: Following the evaluation, if the client decides to proceed with a purchase, you can offer them a Subscription License after completing the transaction through your preferred channels. Based on your agreement, the subscription can be granted for as little as one month or set to lifetime validity.

    Once the subscription period ends, the application is automatically disabled and moved to read-only mode, allowing clients to view existing data but not perform any actions. If required, developers can further restrict the application, completely blocking client access. If the client and developer agree to extend the subscription, the app can be unblocked and access restored. 

    These safeguards ensure clients can't continue using your app beyond your agreed terms with the client, giving you complete control, since payments are handled outside Zoho Creator. 
 
To share applications with your clients:
  1. Navigate to the Clients section. Click the horizontal ellipsis icon next to a client and select Share Application.

  2. In the popup, you can choose the Application and the version to be shared with the client.
  3. Next, you can choose from two license types:
    Trial License: Provide your client with a trial period to evaluate the app. You can set the duration to 15, 30, or 60 days.

    Subscription License: Once you've finalized the subscription terms with your client, you can issue a subscription license. You have the option to set a fixed validity period in months (from 1 to 36) or grant lifetime access to the app.


Consequently, with the introduction of this new flow, we've implemented automated email reminders to keep clients informed about their subscription status and expiry timelines. Developers will be proactively notified about client subscription activity and upcoming license expirations. This ensures both parties stay in sync throughout the subscription lifecycle.

Documentation
To help you better understand these changes, we've provided comprehensive resources to assist you with the private sharing of applications. They can be accessed at the Understanding private distribution of apps help page.

Environment support for installed apps  
Along with the above enhancements, we're also introducing environment support for apps you've distributed. Your clients will now be able to add installed apps to environments and thoroughly test them in the staging environment before publishing them to production. This ensures the changes to apps are validated before they become accessible to end users.

This enhancement removes the earlier limitation that prevented distributed apps from being added to environments. Please note that while your clients can add distributed apps to environments, they will not have access to development. This continues our policy of protecting intellectual property and ensuring that developers remain in control of their apps.

For more information, visit the Installing and managing distributed apps help doc.

Timeline
These enhancements have already been rolled out and are now accessible to users in all DCs.

We believe this new enhancement to the private sharing feature will provide you with greater control and flexibility when distributing your Zoho Creator applications. We hope you love it!

We'll be back soon with more exciting updates, so stay tuned.

Regards,
The Zoho Creator Team

    • Sticky Posts

    • Introducing Zoho Creator's 2025 Release Projection 2

      Hello Creators! I'm Prakash, from the Creator product management team, and today I'm delighted to unveil our next set of features as part of Release Projection 2 for 2025. With thoughtful analysis and planning, we've curated powerful new capabilities

    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 1

      Hello everyone! A very Happy New Year to you and your family. Hope you're all good and having a great time using Zoho Creator to make your lives easier and your businesses prosper. 2022 was an action-packed year for us at Creator, and we hope to continue

    • Zoho Creator User Group meetups in a city near you! - Oct - Nov, 2023

      Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! We're hosting a series of Zoho Creator meetups in various cities across the globe, and we'd love to meet you there! Our meetups are a great opportunity to network with industry peers, exchange ideas and best practices,

    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 2

      Hello everyone! Time truly flies when you're having an incredible journey, and today we mark the completion of an eventful and action-packed six months. It feels like just yesterday when we embarked on this adventure together with the launch of our new

    • Upcoming Updates - August 2022

      Hi all, Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! Today we've got news for you on some exciting updates. And rest assured— there’s more to come! In this post, we'll be going over the upcoming features and improvements for this month as mentioned below. A

      • Recent Topics

      • Workflow Rule - Field Updates: Ability to use Placeholders

        It will be great if you can use placeholder tags to update fields. For example if we want to update a custom field with the client name we can use ${CONTACT.CONTACT_FIRSTNAME}${CONTACT.CONTACT_LASTNAME}, etc

      • Password Assessment Reports for all users

        I'm the super admin and looking at the reporting available for Zoho Vault. I can see that there is a Password Assessment report available showing the passwords/weak and security score by user. However I'm confused at the 'report generated on' value. Monitor

      • Can't change form's original name in URL

        Hi all, I have been duplicating + editing forms for jobs regarding the same department to maintain formatting + styling. The issue I've not run into is because I've duplicated it from an existing form, the URL doesn't seem to want to update with the new

      • Setting certian items to be pickup only

        How do we have some items that are pickup only? I have several items in my item's list that I do not ship. But they need to be on the website to be sold, and picked up in store. Need to be able to do this as one of these products is a major seller for

      • Using gift vouchers

        We would like to be able to offer a limited number of gift vouchers, of varying values, to our customers, and are looking for the best way to do this. We have looked at Coupons and Gift Certificates, but neither seem to fit the bill perfectly. Coupons:

      • Automatically updating field(s) of lookup module

        I have a lookup field, which also pulls through the Status field from the linked record. When the lookup is first done, the Status is pulled through - this works perfectly. If that Status is later updated, the lookup field does not update as well. As

      • Zoho Commerce and Third-party shipping (MachShip) API integration

        We are implementing a third-party shipping (MachShip) API integration for our Zoho Commerce store and have made significant progress. However, we need guidance on a specific technical challenge. Current Challenge: We need to get the customer input to

      • Adding custom "lookup" fields in Zoho Customization

        How can I add a second “lookup” field in Zoho? I’m trying to create another lookup that pulls from my Contacts, but the option doesn’t appear in the module customization sidebar. In many cases, a single work order involves multiple contacts. Ideally,

      • Can you import projects into Zoho Projects yet?

        I see some very old posts asking about importing project records into Zoho Projects. But I can't find anything up to date about the topic. Has this functionality been added? Importing tasks is helpful. But we do have a project where importing projects

      • Allocating inventory to specific SO's

        Is there a way that allocate inventory to a specific sales order? For example, let's say we have 90 items in stock. Customer 1 orders 100 items. This allocates all 90 items to their order, and they have a back order for the remaining 10 items which could

      • Zoho Inventory. Preventing Negative Stock in Sales Orders – Best Practices?

        Dear Zoho Inventory Community, We’re a small business using Zoho Inventory with a team of sales managers. Unfortunately, some employees occasionally overlook stock levels during order processing, leading to negative inventory issues. Is there a way to

      • Automation #10 - Auto Assign Ticket based on Keywords

        This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips on optimizing

      • Automate attendance tracking with Zoho Cliq Developer Platform

        I wish remote work were permanently mandated so we could join work calls from a movie theatre or even while skydiving! But wait, it's time to wake up! The alarm has snoozed twice, and your team has already logged on for the day. Keeping tabs on attendance

      • Reusable Custom Functions Across Department Workflows

        Dear Zoho Desk Team, We appreciate the powerful workflow automation capabilities in Zoho Desk, particularly the ability to create and use custom functions within workflows. However, we have encountered a limitation that impacts efficiency and maintainability.

      • Don't Allow Customer to Edit Values After Submitting Ticket

        After a customer submits a ticket through the customer portal, they can go into the ticket and see some of the values from the questions they answered in the sidebar. Currently, a customer can edit these values even after they submitted them. This makes no sense. We ask very specific questions that we don't want customers to later change! Please disable the ability for customers to edit the values to their submission questions in the portal. Screenshot attached.

      • Analytics <-> Invoice Connection DELETED by Zoho

        Hi All, I am reaching out today because of a big issue we have at the moment with Zoho Analytics and Zoho Invoice. Our organization relies on Zoho Analytics for most of our reporting (operationnal teams). A few days ago we observed a sync issue with the

      • text length in list report mobile/tablet

        Is there a way to make the full text of a text field appear in the list report on mobile and tablet? With custom layouts, the text is always truncated after a certain number of characters.

      • Automation #4 - Auto Delete Tickets based on Rules

        This is a monthly series in which we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Unwanted tickets spamming

      • Zoho Community Digest — Enero 2026

        ¡Hola, comunidad! 🌟 Aquí os traemos las novedades más interesantes de Zoho durante este mes de enero, incluyendo actualizaciones de productos, integraciones y un recordatorio sobre los workshops certificados que vuelven a España. 🎓 Eventos y Comunidad

      • Automation #3 - Auto-sync email attachments to tickets

        This is a monthly series where we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Most of our customers use email

      • Automation #11 - Auto Update Custom Fields with Values from Emails

        This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips to optimize

      • Automation #13 - Auto assign tickets based on agent shift time

        This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips to optimize

      • Automation #14: Capture Jira Issue Key/ID in a Ticket Custom Field

        Hello Everyone! This month's edition brings you a custom function to consolidate your records associated with Jira integration. Jira integration enables support engineers and R&D units to collaborate seamlessly on feature development, product improvement,

      • Automation #16: Automate Ticket Reopening on Scheduled Timestamp

        Hello Everyone! This edition uncovers the option to schedule reopening a ticket automatically. Zylker Finance tracks insurance policyholder activities through Zoho Desk. For policyholders who pay monthly premiums, tickets are closed upon payment completion.

      • Automation#19:Auto-Close Tickets Upon Task Completion

        Hello Everyone! We’re excited to bring you another custom function this week. In this edition, we’ll show you how to automatically close tickets when all associated tasks are marked as completed. Let’s see how ZylkaPure, a leading water filter company,

      • Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts

        Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have Terence

      • Improved UX design for Projects CRM integration

        The current integration embeds the entier projects inteface into the CRM this is confusing and allows users to get lost. For example as a user i navigate to an account and go down to the related projects list and want to get information about a specific

      • Link Purchase Order to Deal

        Zoho Books directly syncs with contacts, vendors and products in Zoho CRM including field mapping. Is there any way to associate vendor purchase orders with deals, so that we can calculate our profit margin for each deal with connected sales invoices

      • Transformer vos stocks en décisions intelligentes avec Zoho Inventory et Zoho Analytics

        Zoho Inventory permet de suivre facilement les niveaux de stock et d’anticiper les restockages. Pour de nombreuses entreprises, cela suffit à gérer les opérations au quotidien. Mais à mesure que l’activité se développe, cette clarté peut commencer à montrer

      • Zoho Commerce - Poor Features Set for Blogging

        Hi Zoho Commerce team, I'm sure you will have noticed that I have been asking many questions about the Blogs feature in Commerce. I thought that it would be useful if I share my feedback in a constructive way, to highlight the areas which I feel need

      • Security Enhancements | Migrate to the Updated Policies

        Hello everyone, Zoho Directory's security policies have been updated and reorganized into three new policies with features that enhance the overall organization security. These policies provide a stronger and more secure sign-in methods and improve the

      • Bring Zoho Shifts Capabilities into Zoho People Shift Module

        Hello Zoho People Product Team, After a deep review of the Zoho People Shift module and a direct comparison with Zoho Shifts, we would like to raise a feature request and serious concern regarding the current state of shift management in Zoho People.

      • Facturation électronique 2026 - obligation dès le 1er septembre 2026

        Bonjour, Je me permets de réagir à divers posts publiés ici et là concernant le projet de E-Invoicing, dans le cadre de la facturation électronique prévue très prochainement. Dans le cadre du passage à la facturation électronique pour les entreprises,

      • Quick Create needs Client Script support

        As per the title. We need client scripts to apply at a Quick Create level. We enforce logic on the form to ensure data quality, automate field values, etc. However, all this is lost when a user attempts a "Quick Create". It is disappointing because, from

      • How to block a WhatsApp user for sending spam

        Is there a way to block those whatsapp users that just come to play and annoy our service, they also spam us. We have a waba service with sales iq

      • Inquiry regarding auto-save behavior for Zoho Sign Embedded Sending

        Dear Zoho Support Team, I am currently integrating Zoho Sign's Embedded Sending functionality using iframes on my website. I would like to know if there is a way to ensure that the document state (including any added fields) is automatically saved as

      • Introducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone

        Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to

      • Automation#17: Auto-Create Tasks in Zoho Projects Upon Ticket Creation in Zoho Desk

        Hello Everyone, This edition delivers the solution to automatically create a task in Zoho Projects when a ticket is created in Zoho Desk. Zylker Resorts uses Zoho Desk for bookings and handling guest requests. Zylker resorts outsources cab bookings to

      • Automation#20 : Auto-Add Ticket Tags based on Keywords

        Hello Everyone! Welcome to unveiling custom functions on our Community series. This week's post lets you add tags to your tickets automatically based on the keywords in the ticket subject and the ticket thread. Discover how this custom function helps

      • Automation#21: Track Ticket Transfers Across Departments

        Hello Everyone! With Halloween just around the corner, we'd like to let you know the Zoho Desk team is always there to sweep away your customer service troubles! This week, we’re excited to introduce a custom function that tracks tickets moved between

      • Next Page