Hello Everyone!

September's Here! Before we jump into product updates, and community highlights, here's a quick spotlight!

Zoho has launched a Professional Sales Rep Certification course on Coursera, tailored for sales professionals to strengthen their CRM and sales skills. The program covers CRM fundamentals, sales strategies, automation, and real-world CRM scenarios, helping you build both practical experience and recognized credentials. Check out the post to learn more and enroll.

With that exciting news covered, it’s time to dive into this month’s product updates and see what our community has been discussing.

Product Updates: 

Cadences Now Support WhatsApp Follow-ups!

You can now add WhatsApp messages as follow-ups in your Cadences. Choose from pre-approved templates like payment reminders, offers, or feedback requests, and schedule them just like emails or calls. This feature is available for the Leads and Contacts modules. We’ve also introduced combined limits for all follow-up types, allowing you to decide how many emails, calls, tasks, or WhatsApp messages to include in a Cadence.The Cadences limit per module has been increased to 70, with no individual follow-up limits, providing greater flexibility. Permissions for Cadences are now separated from “Manage Automation” for improved control. An add-on option is now available to extend usage without changing your subscription plan. Take a look at this post for more details. 

Zoho CRM Mobile Gets Sleek Updates!

We've introduced some cool new features for the mobile app,including customizable home page widgets and field tooltips that provide helpful guidance while filling fields. You can now update your user profile image directly from the iOS app, something that was previously only possible through the Zoho CRM web app. These updates make the mobile experience more informative, personal, and engaging. Check out the post for more details and a closer look at how these features enhance your mobile CRM experience.

Enhanced Data Export Features Now Live

Zoho CRM now gives you more control when exporting data. Supported enhancement include option to export in .xlsx format, choosing your character encoding while downloading as CSV files, and select exactly which records you want to export instead of full modules. These updates let you export data directly from a module page with more control and convenience. Check out the post for the full breakdown.

Quick Wins: 

Mass Email Count Mismatch? Here’s How to Track the Missing Sends:

@Bill noticed a discrepancy in his campaign stats and wanted to find out which emails weren't sent. While Sent Email Statistics shows overall metrics like opened, clicked, and bounced, it doesn’t list unsent emails individually. To identify them, @Sunderjan suggested using advanced filters to sort records by Email Status   --> “Not Sent”. This lets them quickly see which contacts didn’t receive the email and take quick action or resend if needed. @Sunderjan has also shared a screenshot in the post to guide you through setting up this filter. Check it out for reference!

Track Daily Note Creation in Zoho CRM:

@Kaamil Ajani wanted to know if there’s a way to see how many notes are created each day in Zoho CRM. The good news: you can! Check out the post for the solution shared by @Ishwarya!

Developer Corner: 

Filtering Future Events: The COQL Way

@Simon wanted to retrieve only upcoming events using Zoho CRM’s API but found that their query returned all events instead of just future ones. To fix this, @Sunderjan suggested using Functions to get the current date and time, then fetching records from the open Meetings custom view or use the COQL query API for greater control. The post also covers how to set the timezone offset (for example +05:30) to ensure results align with your local time zone. A must-read post for anyone exploring how Zoho CRM APIs and filters work behind the scenes!

Search Records Under Approval

@Arbaz wanted to know how to fetch both approved and pending approval records using the searchByCriteria API in Zoho CRM. Since the default method only retrieves approved records, @Sunderjan suggested calling the API with the parameter approved=both in the URL. This lets you view records in both statuses at once. Check this post for the shared code and full details. 

Updating Recurring Tasks

@Marco wanted to make CRM tasks repeat every year using the Recurring_Activity field, but ran into  an “invalid recurrence pattern” error. The problem was with how the repeat rule was written. @Sunderjan posted a solution clarifying that recurrence details must be passed as an object containing RRULE, DTSTART, and UNTIL, as these parameters are mandatory. While tasks can be set to repeat annually, it’s currently not possible to set the end date to “Never” since UNTIL must be specified. Check out the post for the working code and full details.

Downloading Images from Zoho CRM Image Upload Fields

@Albert wanted to create a button in Zoho CRM to download all images stored in an image upload field for each record. Initial attempts using Deluge, client scripts, and widgets didn’t work, but Zoho MVPs @Bhoomi and @Hugh stepped in to help. @Bhoomi suggested using the API embedded in a button to download the images from the field, while Hugh provided a working Client Script that dynamically builds image download URLs from the record’s API data. After testing, @Albert confirmed that the final script worked perfectly. Check out the post for Hugh’s working code example and try it yourself.

Kaizen:

Answering Your Queries!

(Kaizen #206) - Displaying Related Purchase Orders from Zoho Books in CRM Deals using Queries

This post explains how to display related Purchase Orders from Zoho Books within CRM Deals using the Queries feature. The key idea is to create a custom field in Books called CRM Deal ID to link each PO to its respective deal. By setting up a REST API Query and adding it as a related list in CRM, users can view all connected POs directly under a deal. The author also suggested automating this process with a Deluge function or Zoho Flow to maintain real-time sync between CRM and Books.

(Kaizen #207) Advanced Queries using COQL API: 

This Kaizen post goes beyond the basics of COQL, showing how it can fetch complex data using filters, joins, and sub queries, all in a single query, eliminating the need to juggle multiple APIs. It explores real-world scenarios such as filtering deals based on account attributes, identifying missing relationships, and combining multiple sub queries for richer insights. If you want to perform deeper CRM analytics or streamline data fetching across modules, this post is a must-read to level up your developer skills.

And that’s a wrap for this fortnight’s Zoho CRM Community Digest. 

Drop it in the comments! We’d love to hear from you. We’ll be back in two weeks with more updates and community gems. 

Until then, stay tuned!