Hi community members,

We have developed a workaround for approval-based booking using Zoho Creator and Zoho Bookings! This provides a temporary solution as we work on the native feature, and it's useful for anyone needing an approval workflow when confirming appointments.

Solution overview

1. Intake form via Zoho Creator 

Zoho Creator serves as the intake form where customers can submit their booking requests by providing details, such as:

  • Name

  • Email

  • Contact number

  • Preferred service

  • Desired date and time slots

2️. Scheduling and booking management via Zoho Bookings  

Zoho Bookings acts as the scheduling engine in the background, handling:

  • Staff onboarding

  • Working hours configuration

  • External calendar and video conferencing integrations

  • Event creation and appointment management.

3️. Real-time data sync via API  

This solution leverages API integration between Zoho Creator and Zoho Bookings to ensure real-time data synchronisation. When customers fill out the intake form, it dynamically fetches and displays available slots from Zoho Bookings based on their selection.

Since we are using APIs, any changes made in Zoho Bookings (such as staff availability or service modifications) will be instantly reflected
in the Zoho Creator form, eliminating concerns about outdated information.

Prerequisites for the workaround  

  • Zoho Bookings: Any paid plan

  • Zoho Creator: Standard plan or higher

How to access this solution  

Zoho Creator allows you to export applications as DS files, making it easy to share and deploy solutions. We have attached the DS file for this solution so you can easily download and import it into your Zoho Creator account.

  • Download the DS file here: DS file code

  • Guide to import the DS file into Zoho Creator: Guide

Watch the working demo of this solution here: Solution demo

How it works 

1️. Customer appointment request form  

  • The Zoho Creator intake form allows customers to select their workspace, service, date, time zone, and preferred time slot.

  • The Zoho Bookings API dynamically fetches the available services and slots based on customer selections.

2️. Admin notification and approval dashboard  

Once a customer submits a request, admins receive an email notification with access to the approval dashboard.

Admins can approve requests using two methods:

Auto-assign staff  

  • If admins do not have a preference for assigning staff, they can simply click the Auto-Assign button.

  • The system checks the first available staff member for the selected service.

  • If the first staff member is available, the appointment is automatically assigned to them.

  • If the first staff member has an existing appointment for the day, the system will automatically move to the second staff member and check their availability for the approved date and time.

  • If the second staff member is also unavailable, an error message is displayed, prompting the admin to manually select a staff member.

  • This mechanism ensures that staff assignments are distributed efficiently every time the Auto-Assign button is clicked.

Manual staff assignment  

  • Admins can manually select a specific staff member before approving the appointment.

  • If the selected staff member is unavailable, the system notifies the admin to choose another staff member.

3️. Deny function and automation options  

If the appointment is denied, various automated actions can be configured, including:

  • Sending email notifications to customers about the cancellation

  • Notifying other admins or specific users

  • Triggering custom workflows based on business needs

Key highlights of the solution  

  • No need to manually configure complex workflows—everything is ready to go.

  • Simply pass the Workspace ID and Staff ID while making API calls.

  • The system fetches all required booking details dynamically using Zoho Bookings API.

How to retrieve IDs from Zoho Bookings  

Workspace ID  

  1. Navigate to Zoho Bookings and open the required workspace.

  2. Retrieve the Workspace ID from the URL.

Example:

https://bookings.zoho.in/?app_version=new#/home/dashboard/2209960000******/bookings-page?clview=false


     3. Workspace ID: 2209960000******


Staff ID  

  1. Open the Staff section and select the required user profile.

  2. Retrieve the Staff ID from the URL.



Watch this short video on where to replace the Workspace ID: Workspace ID video 

Watch this short video on where to replace the Staff ID: Staff ID video

Important notes on payment handling  

This solution does not currently handle payment processing. Since appointment requests require approval before confirmation, the payment function is not included by default.

However, if you need to integrate payment processing, here is a possible approach: Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books integration

You can connect Zoho Bookings with an invoicing system like Zoho Invoice or Zoho Books using Zoho Flow or Zapier.


How it works:

1️. When an admin approves an appointment, the booking is confirmed.

2. The system automatically generates an invoice based on the booked service.

This is just one way to integrate payments into this solution. If you have specific payment requirements or alternative workflows in mind, feel free to share them, and we will check the feasibility of implementation.


Need further customization?  

Note: This solution is in its initial stage of development, and we will refine it wherever possible based on new ideas, feedback, and better implementation approaches. Your suggestions are always welcome.

If you require additional automation or a custom approval/denial process, feel free to reach out.

Contact us at: hello@zohobookings.com


      • Sticky Posts

      • Zoho Bookings know-how: A hands-on workshop series

        Hello! We’re conducting a hands-on workshop series to help simplify appointment scheduling for your business with Zoho Bookings. We’ll be covering various functionalities and showing how you can leverage them for your business across five different sessions.

      • Announcing: custom color palette + free workshop

        Hello everyone, We're excited to share new feature in Zoho Bookings—a color palette within booking page themes. You'll find this option under Manage Bookings > Workspaces > Booking Page Themes. You can customize the color of every element in your booking page and even alter the transparency of your background image. Please note that this is a paid feature included in the Basic and Premium plans. At the moment, it's available only under the Modern Web theme. This means you can create billions (7,

      • Complete walk-through of Zoho Bookings (video)

        Save time for both you and your customers. Use Zoho Bookings, the appointment scheduling app from Zoho, to free yourself from email and paper-based scheduling. Zoho Bookings can give you a common calendar by syncing multiple calendars, including yours and your staff's. Your customers can book a time convenient for them, and pay for services, through your website or the customizable webpage features available in Zoho Bookings. They'll also get emails reminding them about their appointments and any

      • New Features: Service Availability and staff booking page themes!

        Dear All,  Want a dedicated schedule for your one-on-one services? How would it feel to have one-on-one services open for consultations only during certain times? You need a superpower to make that happen and we give it to you - Service Availability is

      • Zoho Bookings has a new pricing - Pay per user

        Dear customers, Businesses around the world use Zoho Bookings. Customers have booked 1.5 million appointments and over 200K online meetings using Bookings. We are only set to cross more milestones, thanks to your support. We are excited to introduce to

        • Recent Topics

        • Are Cadences visible to anyone with Cadence permission?

          When setting up a new Cadence is it possible to restrict its use to a specific user? How can I prevent users from making modifications to existing Cadences?

        • Super Admin Logging in as another User

          How can a Super Admin login as another user. For example, I have a sales rep that is having issues with their Accounts and I want to view their Zoho Account with out having to do a GTM and sharing screens. Moderation Update (8th Aug 2025): We are working

        • Show my cost or profit while creating estimate

          Hi, While creating estimate it becomes very important to know exact profit or purchased price of the products at one side just for our reference so we can decide whether we can offer better disc or not .

        • Issue on Upload API and href image URL

          Here is my Full API Code , URL : URL: https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/uploads/659563000000193003/content Headers* Authorization: 'Zoho-oauthtoken 1000.ed5ce2836bf5ba9b946f5ec9************88e73ff4883a3e9c58ffeb7870' orgId: 7586***** RESPONSE{ "errorCode":

        • Issue when downloading a Mail Merged Zoho Writer Document as .docx

          Hi, We are using within Zoho CRM mailmerge to create documents. This results in a Zoho Writer document. When we try to download as a Microsoft Docx file we get following error: "Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions.

        • 【Zoho CRM】ケイデンス機能のアップデート

          ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、ケイデンス機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 ケイデンス機能の2つの強化されたことで、適用と解除のタイミングをより柔軟に管理できるようになり、 よりタイムリーで的確なコミュニケーションが実現できるようになりました。 目次： 1. ケイデンスの再開／最初からのやり直し 2. ケイデンスからのデータ解除タイミングの設定 1. ケイデンスの再開／最初からのやり直し 手動削除、完了、または適用解除条件が満たされた場合など、以前に適用解除されたデータをケイデンスに再適用できるようになりました。

        • Rescheduled US meetups: Zoho Desk user meetups are coming to seven U.S. cities in October and November, 2025

          Hello to our Zoho Desk users in the United States, We're excited to share the revised dates for the upcoming Zoho User Groups happening across the US this summer. Our product experts are heading to seven cities throughout the country, and for the first

        • Anyone get the OpenAI API to work in Zoho Meeting?

          Has anyone been able to get the OpenAI API to work in generating meeting summaries? I have been trying, but I get an error that says "OpenAI key notes request rate exceeded. Please try again later or upgrade your open AI account." I contacted Zoho support

        • Push Notifications Customization

          There is no way to customize the notifications we get. I would like to be able to get notifications based on if they are assigned directly to me, my team, my department, or perhaps tickets that match a specific criteria (a contact or account is a VIP

        • Announcing Early Access to the next generation of Zoho Desk UI

          Customer service is one of the categories where efficiency and quality of service have to run in parallel, and your team's experience with their helpdesk goes a long way ensuring these aspects are uncompromised. Introducing DOT Design for Zoho Desk -

        • Editing the record in report

          I have a use-case as below- User creates a assessment record by filling some fields. User assigns that record to portal user by using Assigned To dropdown (Assigned To is Users field in form with choices as customers). I have set the record owner of form

        • Unified WhatsApp Number Management in Zoho Desk and SalesIQ

          Dear Zoho Desk Support Team, We are currently utilizing both Zoho Desk and Zoho SalesIQ for our customer support operations. While both platforms offer WhatsApp integration, we are facing challenges due to the requirement of separate WhatsApp numbers

        • Can we have Bills of Material Module ?

          Can we have Bills of Material Module ?

        • Main Ticket Page Customization

          We do not love the ticket list page (right after clicking Tickets menu item) would like options to customize it.

        • Communicating with emojis

          On July 17, we celebrate World Emoji Day! We're a bit late 😐 sharing insights about this day. But we just couldn't let it pass without a mention 😊 because emojis have a meaningful connection with customer service 💬 🤝. We do not want to miss out on

        • Agent Collision Missing from Mobile App

          Please add Agent Collision capabilities to the mobile app.

        • Zia Sentiment and Functionality on Mobile

          Please add Zia sentiment and generative responses to the mobile app. It would be nice to see the ticket sentiment and generate a response back to a user using Zia on my iPhone

        • View Account Attachments on iOS

          Please allow us to view account attachments on the mobile iOS app!

        • How do I run a PnL by Sales Person?

          I am trying to run a PnL by sales person but am not seeing the option do so. All I need to know (per salesperson) is revenue, cost of goods, gross profit.

        • View Contracts and Support Plans on Mobile

          We would like to be able to see contracts and support plans from the mobile app on iOS!

        • Why is Zoho Meeting quality so poor?

          I've just moved from Office 365 to Zoho Workplace and have been generally really positive about the new platform -- nicely integrated, nice GUI, good and easy-to-understand control and customisation, and at a reasonable price. However, what is going on

        • App like Miro

          Hi all, is there a way to have a interactive whiteboard like in Miro? We want to visualize our processes and workflows in an easy way.

        • Loan repayment Entry

          While receiving loan, i does following steps in My Zoho books. 1. Create "Loan & Advance " Account as Parent Account under Long Term Liabilities. 2. Create another account For Example "Mr. ABC's Loan as Child account under the parent account. Now: In

        • Quotes module send email reverted back into 2022??

          Our Zoho CRM PLUS quotes, sales orders, invoice modules is showing us an email composer from 2022. We cannot send emails and its been a real pain. I tried clicking the new version over there but it doesnt seem to do anything. Any help is welcome. th

        • Workflow Condition - how do check that a date / time value is in the past?

          Hello, I'm got a workflow that runs a function when records reach their 'Effective Date / Time', but sometimes records are created after the 'Effective Date / Time' so I have another workflow that checks for records which needs to be processed immediately.

        • Pre filling SignForm field values by URL field alias's in Zoho Sign

          Hi, Does anyone know if it's possible to pre fill the field values of the SignForm by using field alias's like you can in Zoho forms? To be more specific, I want to be able to change the SignForm URL to include some information like this: Before : https://sign.zoho.eu/signform?form_link=234b4d535f495623920c288fc8538cb9e6db03bbfd44499b63f3e5c48daf78f44bc47f333e2f5072cc1ee74b7332fe18b25c93fab10cb6243278d49c67eacbf30bbe5b6e1cc8c6b2#/

        • How to Split Payout in Zoho Books (Without Using Journal?)

          Hi, I'm trying to properly record payouts in Zoho Books. The issue is that each payout is a combination of sales and expenses (fees). When I try to categorise the payout transaction from the Banking tab, I can only split the transaction using income-type

        • Payment Schedule

          Please add the ability to create a payment schedule. The other options, like retainer invoices or two invoices, do not work for the customer.  We invoice a client and need to be able to show them everything they owe in one invoice, and when each payment

        • Google Recaptcha V3

          Hi, Why, years later now, are we still waiting for Zoho Forms to incorporate Google Recaptcha V3 into it's systems? Come on Zoho this has been an ongoing issue for over a year now!! It should be a priority.

        • Which pricing system do you think would work best for us?

          Imagine we’re selling strictly wholesale. We’d rather not publish unit prices; instead, we quote customers case-by-case. To spur larger orders, we’re considering a transparent discount ladder—say: $0 – $999: 0 % $1,000 – $1,999: 5 % $2,000 – $4,999: 10

        • Add Support for Google reCAPTCHA v3 in Zoho Forms

          Hello Zoho Forms Team, We appreciate the security measures currently available in Zoho Forms, including Zoho CAPTCHA, Google reCAPTCHA v2 (checkbox), and reCAPTCHA v2 (Invisible). However, we would like to request the addition of support for Google reCAPTCHA

        • Can't Remove Payment Gateway

          I am getting the error "Settings cannot be cleared as some of the transactions are still in progress." when trying to remove the PayGate payment gateway which I was unable to get working. I am now using paystack and I want to remove Paygate.

        • Sync specific Zoho Inventory Warehouses to Zoho Commerce

          As said in the title, we would want to only sync stock from one warehouse of Zoho Inventory to the Zoho Commerce item stock. We have a 2 warehouses in different countries and the way that Zoho Commerce works (It takes stock from ALL WAREHOUSES EVERYWHERE

        • Weekly Tips : Automatically clean clutter with Junk cleanup interval

          If you regularly receive many unwanted or spam emails, your Spam folder can quickly fill up and start taking up valuable storage space in your Zoho Mail account. Instead of manually clearing it every few days, you might find it helpful to enable automatic

        • Any solution for getting portal users list in deluge or in widget

          Hi Team, Has anyone able to find the solution to get portal users list in deluge or in zoho creator widgets? Thanks, Payal

        • The Grid is here!

          Hey Zoho Forms Community! 👋 We’re thrilled to announce the launch of a feature that’s been on your wishlist for a while: Grids What is Grids? Grids let you place form fields side by side in multiple columns to create a more concise and organized form

        • Steuerberater der Zoho benutzt in Deutschland

          I write in English because the issue is related to German regulations. Wir sind ein Unternehmen, welches aktuell keine Pflicht zur doppelten Buchführung hat. Aktuell bucht unser Steuerberater jeden Beleg, auch unsere Auslagen. Wir würden dies gerne selbst

        • GraphQL in new Send Webhooks feature

          Hello, is it possible to use GraphQL apis in the new Send Webhooks feature?

        • # 2 Why do we need a billing system when accounting covers billing?

          In today's evolving financial tech stack, businesses use a mix of tools to manage their day-to-day operations, from invoicing to full-fledged accounting. While accounting platforms typically come with built-in invoicing features, specialized billing systems

        • How to insert an Excel/Zoho Sheet table in a chat?

          Hello, is there a way to paste an excel/zoho sheet table to a conversation without loosing table lines. I tried to paste a piece of a table and all the columns and rows were gone. How to easily paste a table without a need of sending a file? Katarzy

        • Next Page