Recently, while Zoho Help was very useful in creating work-arounds to my helpdesk issues, I became aware that there is no current solution/setting in ZohoOne for properly calendarizing employees' meetings and calls when working from multiple time zones.
While using the CRM calendar, worker A in time zone 1 creates a meeting. Worker B in time zone 2, with settings appropriate to their own time zone, sees the item on the CRM calendar in their own local time. That works properly.
However, while using the CRM calendar, if worker A in time zone 1 creates a meeting and invites worker B in time zone 2, worker B receives an email invitation reflecting the meeting time for time zone 1. There is no indication in the invitation email what time zone the meeting is set for. That employee does not know from the invitation when the meeting will take place.
Further, if worker B then tries to add the meeting to any calendar FROM that email (either using an embedded cceptance of the invitation or the ZohoOne email tool that prompts calendar additions) the item is then added to the destination calendar at the wrong time for worker B.
Further still, if the destination calendar now showing the wrong time for worker B is the CRM calendar, that entry is then automatically adjusted for worker A's view, without worker A's knowledge, creating yet another wrong time for the meeting on worker A's end.
These discrepancies are then exacerbated by Cliq and ZohoOne email reminders and notification that sometimes list upcoming meetings in terms of how much time until a meeting begins, rather than a proper and fixed time. So, we, as an organization, have experienced, multiple times, situations where all calendar entries for a meeting are both duplicated and incorrect simultaneous to reminders and notifications that are further incorrect. This is of particular concern when two employees invited to the meeting are only a single time zone away, forcing that cascade of errors to advertise as many as four different incorrect times for a single meeting.
I suggest coding email invitations and embedded email tools for calendar additions to sync with the time zone preferences of the employee recipient. I further suggest that if a meeting invitation has been created via a CRM calendar addition, that the recipient not be able to add a duplicate of that meeting from the email to the CRM calendar. While this suggestion will only work for employees in static locations across multiple time zones, this would actually allow us t use the CRM calendar for our business and not have to ignore it entirely for another product.
I suggest that calendar reminders and notifications, likewise, be coded to auto-generate reflecting static times, not durations leading up to an event, and that those static times be expressed in the recipient's preferred time zone.
Thank you.
Robert