Approval-based booking with Zoho Creator and Zoho Bookings

Approval-based booking with Zoho Creator and Zoho Bookings

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in the Zoho Creator form, eliminating concerns about outdated information.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

    • Zoho Workdrive - Communication / Chat Bar

      Hi Team, Please consider adding an option to allow admins to turn on or off the Zoho Communication Bar. Example of what I mean by Communication Bar: It's such a pain sometimes when I'm in WorkDrive and I want to share a link to a file with a colleague

    • Zoho CRM - Writing Assistant Tone

      Hi Zoho CRM Team, Text in my emails often gets underlined in yellow because I tend to use a more informal tone with my client's, like using "I'm" instead of "I am". Is there some way for me to tell the system that this is my preferred writing tone, so

    • Work Order Assignment for Engineers Handling Their Own Requests

      I’m setting up FSM for a business where there are multiple engineers, but each engineer handles their own process end-to-end receiving the service request, creating the work order, and completing the field service job. I noticed that I must create an

    • Proposal for Creating a Unique "Address" Entity in Zoho FSM

      The "Address" entity is one of the most critical components for a service-oriented company. While homeowners may change and servicing companies may vary, the address itself remains constant. This constancy is essential for subsequent services, as it provides

    • Request for Auto PO - Min–Max based Automated Purchase Feature

      Dear Zoho POS Team, I’m writing to request a feature enhancement that would significantly streamline inventory management for businesses using Zoho POS — particularly supermarkets, FMCG retail, and multi-store operations like ours. Feature Requested:

    • Zoho CRM mobile app update: Reports module for Android app

      Hello everyone You can now access the Reports module in your Zoho CRM Android app. With this update, you can view any report created in CRM web app in your mobile app. <br> Once you open the report, you can tap on any record to view its details.

    • Zohomail

      Im trying to setup email address zoho

    • PROBLEMA

      Salve, non riesco a inviare email, e mi esce una tabela errore temporaneo. come posso risolvere il problema ?

    • Forever FREE Business Email with Zoho Mail

      Forever FREE Business Email with Zoho Mail: is it available?

    • CRM: hosting a single html file in Zoho and displaying it as a widget

      I have seen that CRM offers the option of uploading a web project to Zoho itself and displaying it as a widget in CRM. The instructions then talk about setting a development environment with Node and developing an application to upload to Zoho. But I

    • Weekly Tips : Make collaboration effortless with Whiteboard in Zoho Mail

      Working with your team often means switching between emails, notes, and other applications just to explain an idea. Maybe you are trying to sketch a layout, plan a workflow, or quickly brainstorm ideas—with text alone, things can get confusing. So how

    • Formula field number of days between 2 dates

      Hi, I want to have a formula field which calculates the following: IF EndDate < TODAY and Oproep is true (this is a checkbox field) than EndDate - StartDate, otherwise TODAY - StartDate It should calculate the number of days How can I write this for

    • Show Custom Button in Portal Listview Canvas

      I have created a custom button that shows in a list view of deals (internally I can see it). I have permissions to allow this button on the portal. But it is not displaying in the canvas list? Before I do too much leg work, is this function allowed?

    • Improved RingCentral Integration

      We’d like to request an enhancement to the current RingCentral integration with Zoho. RingCentral now automatically generates call transcripts and AI-based call summaries (AI Notes) for each call, which are extremely helpful for support and sales teams.

    • Zoho CRM for Everyone's NextGen UI Gets an Upgrade

      Hello Everyone We've made improvements to Zoho CRM for Everyone's Nextgen UI. These changes are the result of valuable feedback from you where we’ve focused on improving usability, providing wider screen space, and making navigation smoother so everything

    • search and Smart Bar both missing in Mail

      One of the users on my account does not have the search bar at the top right or the Smart Bar at the bottom left of the desktop Mail app. Any ideas how to get those back?

    • What's New in Zoho Analytics - November 2025

      We're thrilled to announce a significant update focused on expanding your data connectivity, enhancing visualization capabilities, and delivering a more powerful, intuitive, and performant analytics experience. Here’s a look at what’s new. Explore What's

    • ZOHO reporting DKIM entries are not configured, when they have been configured and verified by 3rd parties

      Why is ZOHO reporting to my organisation users the following: "The DKIM entries in your domain's DNS records are not configured. Please contact your administrator for configuring DKIM to ensure optimal RSVP invite delivery." When I have configured the

    • Manage Bookings directly from Zoho Mail

      Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re introducing the new Zoho Bookings extension for Zoho Mail, designed to help you view appointments, copy time slots and share booking links without leaving your inbox. This integration brings scheduling right

    • My notes from the past 2 months have disappeared

      Hola, necesito ayuda urgente. Hoy, al iniciar sesión en mi Zoho Notebook como todos los días, me llevé una gran sorpresa al descubrir que todas mis notas de los últimos dos meses habían desaparecido. Estas notas son muy importantes para mí, ya que uso

    • How can I load a network into the cliq desktop app?

      I have both the standard cliq log in for my org and I am part of a cliq network. In the browser I can choose which I log in to. However, in teh desktop app if I log in it will alwasy load my org's cliq. Can I switch this to the network I have create

    • Ability to modify what displays in calendar invite?

      I am a long time calendly user and want to make the switch to bookings.  I understand that there is not currently a meets/hangouts integration, is one on the roadmap? Is there anyway I can modify the calendar invite to include the meet link?  I can add it to the emails no problem, but I would also like it to display on their calendar.  Is there some work around I can do to get it on the calendar?  Also am I able to modify the calendar event title?

    • Issue with Booking Confirmation Page Not Displaying, Leading to Customer Anxiety and Unnecessary Support Calls

      I am writing to express my growing concern regarding the confirmation process in Zoho Bookings, particularly the inconsistent display of the confirmation page after a successful payment. As a mobile service provider, I rely on Zoho Bookings platform for

    • Is it possible to turn off all capabilities for a customer to schedule, reschedule or cancel an appointment?

      Is it possible to turn off all capabilities for a customer to schedule, reschedule or cancel an appointment? I would like to set it up so only staff can schedule appointments. Is this possible?

    • Is there a way to generate a virtual meeting for a group service in Zoho Bookings?

      Are virtual meetings not supported for group services/meetings? I have integrated Zoom with one-on-one services, but I need a way to create an online group meeting. Thanks

    • Tracking Snippet not working in Zoho Marketing Automation!

      First off, the fact that you have to wait about 12-24 hours for every response is terrible. How are we supposed to conduct business? Second, we have been trying for several days to get the Tracking Code Snippet in marketing automation to work, to no avail.

    • Introducing VeriFactu Support in Zoho Books

      Hello users, Spain has introduced the VeriFactu system under Real Decreto 1007/2023 to ensure integrity, traceability, and anti-fraud compliance in e-invoicing. Starting January 1, 2026, all B2B invoices must be reported to Agencia Estatal de Administración

    • Where we can change the icon in social preview

      Hi, we changed our logo, and the image that appear in preview (ex : when we post a appointment link somewhere) is still our old logo. I did change our logo in the org setting. https://bookings.zoho.com/app/#/home/dashboard/settings/basic-info?clview=false

    • Zoho Bookings changes Lead Source

      Hi. i would like to know if there's a way for Zoho Bookings to not change the lead source when booking a lead for an appointment as the lead source will be used in a report. Scenario: Lead source: Website after booking an appointment Lead source: Zoho Bookings Thanks. Dan

    • Need to set workflow or journey wait time (time delay) in minutes, not hours

      Minimum wait time for both Campaigns workflows and Marketing Automation journeys is one hour. I need one or the other to be set to several minutes (fraction of the hour). I tried to solve this by entering a fraction but the wait time data type is an integer

    • Suggestion: Associating Assets with Company in Zoho FSM

      Hello Team, I would like to share an idea based on practical experience. Currently, all assets in the Zoho FSM Asset module are linked to a specific contact person. I would like to know if it is possible to associate assets with a company instead. This

    • Zoho Inventory / Finance Suite - Extend Visibility of File Names on Attachment Fields

      Hi Inventory / Finance Suite team, I noticed recently that when you add an attachment field to a module in Inventory, only the first 8 characters of the file name are visible on the details view. 8 characters is not a useful amount and there is plenty

    • AI Interview Insights: Turn Recorded Interviews into Quick Transcripts & Summaries

      Evaluating interviews shouldn’t require replaying long recordings or taking manual notes. With AI Interview Insights, you can now review complete transcripts and AI-generated summaries of your One-way (Recorded) interviews right inside Zoho Recruit. This

    • Edit Pinned Comments in Zoho Desk

      It's great that private comments can now be pinned to the top of the ticket but what would be extremely helpful would be to allow for the pinned comment to be edited vs. having to find the comment in the ticket to edit it.

    • Many Notes Becoming Unusable

      Hello. The Notebook app is becoming unusable. I'm getting odd-looking results from my searches. Some of the notes, after clicking on them, show an update button that does absolutely nothing. Not sure what has happened, but it would be nice to get this

    • Kaizen #218: Actions APIs - Field Updates

      Hello all!! Welcome back to a fresh Kaizen week. In the previous weeks, we covered Workflow Rules APIs, Actions APIs - Email Notification APIs, and Tasks Update APIs. This week, we will continue with another Actions API - the Field Update API in Zoho

    • How Contract Types and Templates Form the Backbone of Zoho Contracts

      Every contract in Zoho Contracts starts with two essential elements: Contract Type and Template. These are not just administrative steps. They define how every contract in your organization is created, governed, and managed over time. Let us look at the

    • E-Invoicing in Belgium with Zoho Books

      Starting January 1, 2026, Belgium is introducing mandatory electronic invoices (e-invoicing) for all B2B transactions between VAT-registered businesses. This means that invoices and credits notes must be exchanged in a prescribed digital format. How E-Invoicing

    • Zoho Books Finance Modules Not Accessible in Zoho CRM Mobile App

      We have integrated Zoho CRM with Zoho Books using the Zoho Finance Suite integration. In the CRM web version, we can see the Finance modules (Estimates/Quotes, Invoices, Sales Orders, Items, Payments) and are able to create invoices and quotes directly

    • Greek character in Deluxe script

      Hi, We have been using a script since 2022 which replaces characters in Greek contact names using replaceAll. Since this morning, all the Greek characters used in the script have turned to question marks. I tried retyping the characters, copy-pasting

    • Next Page