Deluge in Zoho Services #4: Zoho Sheet

Deluge in Zoho Services #4: Zoho Sheet

Hello everyone,

Greetings from Deluge! It's been a while since we connected, but now we're back in action, continuing our series of posts on Zoho services that support Deluge. We hope you found the previous post in this series useful. In today's post, let's explore the ways in which you can use Deluge to achieve more with Zoho Sheet.

Custom functions is the Zoho Sheet feature that uses Deluge. These functions are written using the Deluge scripting language to manipulate data more effectively, communicate with third-party applications, and fetch/update values based on your requirements. Custom functions enable you to program your own functions and add different types of business logic. Apart from creating and running custom functions using Deluge, Zoho Sheet also allows bringing in data from other Zoho or third-party services using connections. Integrating with other services requires you to create a connection, thereby ensuring data transfer between the connected services. 

Many organizations have their own business logic that requires personalized functions. For example:
  • Let's say you've maintained inventory stock details in the Item Details report inside your Zoho Books account. As prices keep fluctuating everyday, it could become frustrating and tedious to individually edit and update each record in your report. To resolve this, you can maintain the required data in your Zoho Sheet. You can achieve data synchronization between both the services by configuring a custom function that performs the following actions via API calls.
    • Pulls the required data from the Item Details report in your Books account and populates the same in your sheet.
    • Pushes data to the Item Details report in Books as and when data is created/edited in your sheet.
      This way the data in your Books report will be automatically updated each time you add new data to your sheet.  
  • Let's say you've collected and stored the feedback comments of your customers in your sheet. You need to analyze the sentiments of these comments, categorize them as — Positive, Negative, and Neutral and submit the final sheet to the appropriate authority. To achieve this, you can create a custom function using zoho.ai.analyseSentiment task. The function checks a comment, analyzes its emotion and returns the detected emotion along with its probability percentage.

Example

Let's say you own a business named Zylker Corp. Your business has clinched a good number of sales-ready deals in the current year. But handling a large number of deals every day makes it difficult to determine which ones to focus on.

You're in charge of tracking and maintaining these deals, and you need to fetch all of them, along with their relevant details, such as Deal Name, Amount, and Closing Date for a certain period, and then populate that data inside your sheet.

This data is useful in generating real revenue for your business. However, this is time-consuming if done manually, and can also lead to errors. To overcome this, Deluge can be used to create custom functions that can actually pull data from your Deals module inside Zoho CRM.

Note: To use custom functions that require fetching data from other services (in this case, we're fetching data from Zoho CRM and populating them in Zoho Sheet), the ow​​​​ner of the spreadsheet must hold an account in Zoho CRM.

These custom functions are similar to the macros in an Excel sheet. A macro is an action or set of actions that you can run as many times as you want. If you have tasks in Microsoft Excel that you repeatedly perform, you can create a macro to automate those tasks. 

Similarly, you can create a custom function by specifying set criteria and running it repeatedly whenever required. In other words, you can automate repetitive tasks using custom functions to save time and manual effort. 

How it works



Steps to create a custom function

1. Create connection 

  1. Navigate to Tools > Custom Functions and click Manage Connections.
  2. Click Create Connection. Select the Default Services tab under Pick Your Service.
  3. Select the Zoho OAuth service from the list of services. 
  4. Enter a suitable Connection Name. Here, we named it crm_oauth_connection. The Connection Link Name will be auto-filled accordingly.
  5. Choose scopes ZohoCRM.coql.READ and ZohoCRM.modules.deals.ALL.
    Note:
    • This connection is used to authorize Zoho CRM to fetch records from all its modules through a COQL query.
    • We're using the COQL API here, since selecting a date range in  the function's criteria isn't supported in the Get Records API.
    • Refer to the API page to learn how to get records through a COQL query.
  6. Click Create and Connect. You'll be redirected to the service authentication page.
  7. Click Connect, then click Accept to allow DRE to access data in your Zoho account. The required connection is now created.
  8. The CONNECTION SUMMARY page will display your connection details.

2. Create custom function

  1. Navigate to Tools > Custom Functions and click Create Custom Function.
  2. Enter a valid function name.
  3. Select the data type of the return value for the specific function to be created from the Result Type dropdown. Here, you need to choose list as the return data type, since we need the output to be displayed as a list of values (vertically).
  4. You can also add the required arguments and their types for the function in the Create Custom Function popup. Here, you must add the following arguments—StartDate and EndDate—with their data types as date. This is because we're going to fetch the deal details between the specified start and end dates.

  5. Click Create and your custom function will be created.

3. Script using Deluge

  1. Navigate to Tools > Custom functions > View Deluge Editor.
  2. Select the added custom function (DEALS_BETWEEN), write the following script in the editor, and click Save.
  1. //List is the return data type. StartDate and EndDate are the parameters, whose values will, in turn, be supplied as params while making the CRM API call.
  2. list DEALS_BETWEEN(date StartDate, date EndDate)
  3. {
  4. //Use toString to convert the input dates to accepted date formats in Sheet.
  5. start_date = StartDate.toString("yyyy-MM-dd");
  6. end_date = EndDate.toString("yyyy-MM-dd");
  7. //Construct a map with the required deal details in the defined map variable using a select query. The deal details include field names from the Deals module in CRM.
  8. query_map = Map();
  9. query_map.put("select_query","select Deal_Name, Amount, Closing_Date from Deals where Closing_Date between '" + start_date + "' and '" + end_date + "'");
  10. //Invoke the Zoho CRM API to fetch the records from the Deals module through a COQL query. The connection you created earlier will be used here.
  11. response = invokeurl
  12. [
  13. url: "https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v3/coql"
  14.  type: POST
  15. parameters:query_map.toString()
  16. connection:"crm_oauth_connection"
  17. ];
  18. //resultList is the variable to declare a list.
  19. resultList = List();
  20. response_data = response.get("data");
  21. //The below "for" statement parses the records inside the Deals module and fetches the specified details
  22. for each record in response_data
  23. {
  24. resultMap = Map();
  25. resultMap.put("Deal Name",record.get("Deal_Name"));
  26. resultMap.put("Amount",record.get("Amount"));
  27. resultMap.put("Closing Date",record.get("Closing_Date"));
  28. resultList.add(resultMap);
  29. }
  30. //Returns the response in the format expected by Zoho Sheet.
  31. return resultList;
  32. }
Note: 
  • In the above script, Deal_Name, Amount, and Closing_Date are API names of fields in the Zoho CRM Deals module.
  • You can test your custom function by clicking Run and entering sample values.
If you want to get the required API names for other CRM fields:
Log in to your CRM account.
Navigate to Settings > APIs (under Developer Space) > CRM API > API names.
Click the Deals module. The API names page will list the API names of all the fields in the Deals module. 
You can then use the required API names in your script.

4. Execute function

Enter the function in the below format. Your sheet will be populated with the deal details (Deal Name, Amount, and Closing Date) between the specified time period.

Input format:

=DEALS_BETWEEN("2022-01-01";"2022-11-11")

where,

DEALS_BETWEEN
name of your custom function
2022-01-01 
start_date value
2022-11-11
end_date value

You can refer to help page to learn in-depth about how to achieve the above custom functions using Deluge in Zoho Sheets. 
We hope you found this post useful—we'll be exploring Deluge in Zoho Connect in our next post. Please let us know if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions in the comments, or write to us at support@zohodeluge.com.

Thank you!

You can also check out our preview posts in this series!




        • Recent Topics

        • Track ZohoForm Conversion using Postmessage event

          Hi, I’ve been using a third-party lead tracking tool to capture leads from my website along with their source. Earlier, with the HubSpot form, the third-party script was able to detect the postMessage event that iframe forms typically send back to the

        • Email task creator when task is updated/marked complete

          I am looking for a way to notify the creator of a task in zoho todo when - Task is updated Task is closed Comments entered 1 and 2 are critical, and I cannot find a zoho flow to do this. There is no way that as a manager I will know when someone has completed

        • Email Recall Feature In Zoho Mail Which Should Also Work For Outside Organisation Members

          Add a feature to recall or undo sending an email within a configurable short time window (e.g., 30 seconds to 2 minutes) after hitting send, similar to Gmail’s undo send. Currently the sent email can not be recall If the recipient is not from within your

        • How to implement calculating average value of averaged values?

          Hi, I'm trying to implement a formula in my layout for a module that calculates the average of 2 averaged values, but I can't do so using the formula custom field. To calculate the 2 averaged values, I could use the formula custom field, but in the custom

        • Zoho Recruit update published job boards

          If we have a job thats already posted on several different job boards and we edit this job in zoho recruit (e.g. the description of the job), does this then automatically update this new information to all the published job boards?  If not, how does the

        • Narrative 14: The magic bazaar of Desk

          Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 14: The magic bazaar of Desk Marketplace is a centralized platform where users can discover Zoho and third-party applications that can be integrated with their Desk account to facilitate

        • Collections Management: #2 Late Payment Automation

          "Sir, I'll process the payment by evening, please don't apply any late payment charges", the customer said while arranging papers on his desk. Sanjay stood there with a tired smile. He had already visited twice that week. Payment collection was one thing.

        • Create a table in the layout section of modules

          Dear Sirs, I would like to know whether is possible to create a table under new fields in layouts section of modules. In fact in this section there are single line, multi line, pick list, multi-select, date, formula etc. but I am unable to add a table

        • 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

        • Power of Automation :: Automatic Task Status Handling for Users

          Hello Everyone, A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate

        • Question - why no way to input a 'tool description' and 'tree of 'tools'

          Every business is different, with different business processes. To be truly useful Zoho MCP needs to have user editable tool descriptions (or ruleset) and a 'tool tree' so that the LLM is context aware when being used. For example, the tool description

        • Develop Zoho Meeting as a Full Native Application (Not a Browser Wrapper)

          Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to suggest an important improvement regarding the Zoho Meeting desktop application. At the moment, the Zoho Meeting app feels more like a mini browser window or an iframe that loads the web

        • Can I create a custom function for chart of accounts?

          I'm trying to add a custom function that should run whenever a record in the Chart of Accounts module is edited, but on the form for creating a new function, the module dropdown does not include the chart of accounts as an option.

        • billing

          hi, I am being billed $12/year, and I can't remember why. My User ID is 691273115 Thanks for your help, --Kitty Pearl

        • Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

          Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these

        • Unable to confirm Super Admin assignment — confirmation button not working

          I’m trying to change the roles within my organization. I am currently a super admin and would like to add another user as a super admin. When I attempt to confirm the action, a screen appears asking for my password to verify my identity. However, when

        • Automation#36: Auto-create time-entry after performing the Blueprint transition

          Hello Everyone, This week’s edition focuses on configuring a custom function within Zoho Desk to streamline time tracking within the Blueprint. In this case, we create a custom field, and request the agent to enter the spending time within the single

        • Feature Request: Reviews

          Any chance we could get a "Reviews" element to put on sites? It should be extremely simple to do. Basically just take the comments box and add an option for a star rating. At the very least, it would be nice to have more customization options for the comment box so the text could be changed from "Comments" to "Reviews". I've looked at a bunch of embeddable review widgets but nothing meets my needs so this would be a great feature to have added to the site builder.

        • Can we handle a support like (incident management) project in Zoho Projects?

          Hi, I have a new profile of a project whereby we provide "ticket" base support to a client. They have a request and ideally we would handle comms via a email exchange logged in Zoho. Today we use Zoho Projects for all out projects, which means that we

        • Trying to show the actual Terms & Conditions on PDF

          Hi, On Zoho forms I am trying to have the actual terms and conditions that the user needs to accept also show on the pdf that they receive after. Right now it only says "Agreed". Please help.

        • Installing EMAIL Setup in New Domain

          Respected Support team, I'm facing an issue with cloudflare in Pakistan, I want to setup Zoho Mail Setup but I Don't know how to enable Zoho mail setup without cloudflare. My Website https://stumbleguyzzapk.com/, https://fakservices.com/ is using CF,

        • Enhancements to Zoho Meeting Annotator

          Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to share a few improvement suggestions regarding the Zoho Meeting Annotator used during screen sharing. While the current version provides helpful annotation tools, there are several limitations

        • Zoho Social/Marketing Plus - Addition to "Monitor" function

          It would be very helpful if the Monitor function would allow us to add a column to monitor hashtags in addition to pages and mentions. This is a common and very valuable function in other social listening tools.

        • Zoho forms - > Zoho desk multiple agents

          Hi! I would like to use a standard form to be used when we hiring people, so we looked at zoho forms for that. Now we would like to get that info in to Zoho desk and their different users shall take care of this ticket simultaneous . So, what would be

        • Almacenamiento

          Hola, Quisiera saber como podría hacer para bajar el almacenamiento de 5gb a mis usuarios, en otras palabras los quiero ir limitando de la cuota real, y luego ir agregando poco a poco la cantidad hasta llegar a los 5gb que me dan en el plan free. 

        • Zoho Invoice Now Supports VeriFactu for Businesses in Spain

          Starting from January 1, 2026, Spain requires real-time invoice reporting for all B2B transactions. From July 2026, this requirement will extend to B2C transactions as well. All reporting must be carried out through the VeriFactu to AEAT (Agencia Estatal

        • Will I Get a Refund If I Downgrade Zoho Mail?

          Hello, We upgraded an email account for our new employee. However, the employee left after one month, and now I've reduced the number of Zoho Mail users from 7 to 6. Can we get a refund for the remaining portion of our annual payment?

        • Infinite loop of account verification

          Hi I can't do anything on my zoho account.  I always get this message Hi Sheriffo Ceesay As a security measure, you need to link your phone number with this account and verify it to proceed further. When ever I supply the details, it displays that the number is associated with another account. I don't have any other account on zoho so this is really annoying. 

        • Zoho Billing Now Supports VeriFactu for Businesses in Spain

          Starting from January 1, 2026, Spain requires real-time invoice reporting for all B2B transactions. From July 2026, this requirement will extend to B2C transactions as well. All reporting must be carried out through the VeriFactu to AEAT (Agencia Estatal

        • Introducing the revamped What's New page

          Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that Zoho Campaigns' What's New page has undergone a complete revamp. We've bid the old page adieu after a long time and have introduced a new, sleeker-looking page. Without further ado, let's dive into the main

        • Zoho Books - France

          L’équipe de Zoho France reçoit régulièrement des questions sur la conformité de ses applications de finances (Zoho Books/ Zoho Invoice) pour le marché français. Voici quelques points pour clarifier la question : Zoho Books est un logiciel de comptabilité

        • Name autocomplete

          Hi, During searching emails the web tool does not always propose the auto-completion of the saved emails. As a result I either have to go to contacts and look up the exact email, or the exact full name including the middle name and any dots, which is very annoying. For example I have a contact that I emailed in the past that has "First M. Last" <email@email.com> type of contact. When I start typing 'First' the email may or may not pop up in the autocomplete menu. Then if I start typing "first last"

        • How do i follow up my email campaign in-thread

          Is there a way to follow up the email campaign so that it is in-thread using zoho campaigns? eg customer gets original email with subject line "hello" then 5 days later follow up would be with subject line "RE: hello".

        • Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.29.0)

          Hello everyone! Trident for macOS (v1.29.0) is here with new features and enhancements to enhance your business communication. Let's take a quick look at them. Access shared mailboxes. You can now view and access shared mailboxes in Trident, which are

        • Books is extremely slow again today !

          Everything is running slowly even with 500mb connection speed

        • Cyclic dependencies in many-to-many relationships...

          I have an application which includes a form for companies, and a form for contacts. Each company can be assigned 1 technical and 1 administrative contact. I have this working okay so far, but I want to copy the scripts used so far to a new empty application. When I import the scripts it fails with a message that says: Problem encountered while creating the application Error in resolving form dependency:Cyclic dependency among the forms:[Company, Contact] What can I do to resolve this? After all,

        • Zoho API to create ticket

          I'm developing an integration to create tickets via API, but, locally it works (send and recieve requests). In production it also works sending requests, but, my file don't recieve any response data. My URL is available in Zoho API Console and I have

        • Automate Timesheet Approvals with Multi-level Approval Rules

          Introducing Approval Rules for Timesheets in Zoho Projects. With this automation, teams can manage how timesheets are reviewed and approved by setting up rules with criteria and assigning approvers to handle submissions. Timesheet, when associated to

        • Labels Part 2

           Hey Zoho Mail Team, On the labels window on the left-hand pane, alphabetize label name display, rather than displaying in order created.  This one should be easy. Thanks, Drew

        • Building Toppings #1 - Serving your needs with Bigin Toppings

          Hey Biginners! We're excited to kick off our Developer Community series on building toppings for Bigin, and our goal is to provide an accessible, beginner-friendly, and relevant path for every developer. Imagine creating tiny pieces of software that unlock

        • Next Page