Kaizen #159 - Configuring Telephony Extension Widget in Zoho CRM

Hello Developers! 

Welcome back to the Widgets fold in our Kaizen series.

In this post, we will learn how to build a custom telephony extension widget for call centers and deploy it within a Zoho CRM organization. This helps in establishing unified communication support without leaving the platform.

Why configure a Telephony?

Telephony integration with Zoho CRM is vital for businesses that rely heavily on customer communication and sales. Following are a few key reasons for its vitality:

• Centralized Communication: Make and receive calls directly within the CRM, streamlining the communication process.
• Automatic Call Logging: Calls are automatically logged, helping businesses track communication history without manual effort.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Sales, marketing, and customer service teams can access shared communication logs for improved teamwork.
• Automated Follow-Ups: After each call, you can trigger follow-up tasks or emails, ensuring no lead is forgotten.

While the Zoho Marketplace within Zoho CRM offers a variety of telephony extensions, we will look at how to create a private extension that allows you to customize the integration to suit your specific needs.

Note:

For this demonstration, we will use RingCentral as our telephony platform. Although RingCentral is available in the marketplace, we will assume it is a private connected app in this scenario.

Business Scenario

Imagine that you are running a sales agency and you want a widget that lets your sales reps make calls directly from Zoho CRM while tracking all call details seamlessly within CRM records.

The private extension should allow you to control the user interface, customize call-related actions, and manage data flow directly into the CRM, optimizing your sales process.

Creating a Private Telephony Extension

Start by logging into your Zoho CRM account and follow the below steps to build a private extension powered by Zoho Sigma. 

Set Up a Private Extension

1. Navigate to Setup > Marketplace > Extension Builder.

2. Create a workspace in the new tab and click on the New Extension button.Provide the necessary details as shown in the image and choose the service as Zoho CRM.

3. Provide the necessary details as shown in the image and choose the service as Zoho CRM.

4. Click Create.

5. The private extension that you have created will be listed in the Extensions page. Choose your extension and click the edit icon. 

You will be redirected to the Zoho Developer Console. 

Configure the Telephony Widget 

6. In the console, go to Utilities > Connected Apps on the left-side menu.

7. Follow the steps provided in this kaizen to create a new Zoho CRM widget for this use case. 

8. Fill in the details of the application as shown in this image. 

We have chosen External Hosting for the demo, as our sample widget code is hosted on Amazon Web Service (AWS).

Refer to the 'Code Logic for Integration' section below to see how the widget code should be handled.

9. Click Save.

Code Logic for Integration

10. Here is the core logic for handling telephony events like Dial and DialerActive using the Zoho CRM JS SDK:

DialerActive Event Listener:

• This listener is triggered when the softphone icon at the bottom of your screen is toggled.
• It makes a call to the dialed number using Ring Central SDK.
  

Dial Event Listener:

• The listener is activated when a user initiates a call from a Zoho CRM record using the phone icon next to the Phone fields.
  
• The phone button passes the specific record data to the widget, allowing Ring Central to display the record name and dial the number. Following it, the Ring Central SDKs play the role to execute call related functions.
  

Call Completion and Notes Update:

• Once a call ends, the widget opens a note section.
  
• The text added to the widget is fed to the Notes Related List of the corresponding record using the Add Notes SDK.
  

For detailed instructions and to get started, the demo code is available on our GitHub page. Ensure to replace your telephony app credentials, SDKs, and its versions in the rc.js and handler.js files to suit your production needs.

Configure the Call Center

11. Navigate to Build > Telephony in the left menu. 

12. Provide a Name and the Resource Path of your widget. 

13. Click Save.

Packaging and Publishing

14. Go to Package > Publish on the left-side menu and publish the extension. 

15. You will receive a prompt asking if you would like to submit your extension to the Marketplace and avail it like other telephony platforms. 

Once submitted, the review process will take from three weeks to one month for approval.

Instead of waiting for approval, we will proceed with deploying the extension using the private plugin deployment link.

Deploy in your Organization

16. Log into your Zoho CRM organization.

17. Replace the URL of your Zoho CRM page with the deployment link from the Developer Console to install the widget extension.

18. Approve the addition of this extension to your CRM.

19. Once installed, refresh the page and check for the softphone icon at the bottom of your screen.

Click the icon to log in to your telephony platform, such as RingCentral.

Try it Out! 

Once the softphone is installed, try out the following features:

• The softphone icon opens an iframe dialer pad.
• You will see a phone icon near the Phone data fields, enabling quick calls directly from the record.
• After calls, you can take notes and log them as a related list for the CRM record.
  

Additional Components

Consider adding these components to enhance the functionality of your telephony extension widget:

• Call Recordings Widget: Create a related list widget that automatically stores all call recordings for future reference. Refer to this page for help. 
• Call Analytics: Using Ring Central SDKs support users can integrate call duration, frequency, and outcomes into a CRM dashboard Widget for performance tracking.
• Custom Workflow Triggers: With the help of Insert Records SDK in the extension widget, you can automatically log the call details into the Calls module. This enables you to trigger workflow rules for follow-up tasks, notifications, or actions based on call outcomes. 
  

From managing call center operations to automating task follow-ups, the potential of widgets is vast and adaptable to a variety of business needs. We encourage you to explore the complete potential of widgets to build custom solutions that elevate your workflows. 

For further assistance, explore our Widget fold in the Kaizen collection or reach out to us at support@zohocrm.com. You can also drop your questions in the comments below. 

Cheers! 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Related Reading

1. Zoho CRM Widget - An Overview, Installation and Creation, Mobile Compatibility, other Kaizens.
2. Widget SDKs - An Overview, Insert Records API and SDK, Add Notes API and SDK. 
3. Zoho Marketplace - An Overview
4. Zoho Developer Console - An Overview, Creating Extensions, Building Connected Apps, and a Quick Start Guide.
5. RingCentral - Getting Started, Ring Central SDKs.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Previous Post: Kaizen #158 - How to effectively handle API calls to optimize API credits? | Kaizen Collection: Home

• Topic Participants

• Kiruthiga G

  

• Sticky Posts

• Kaizen #222 - Client Script Support for Notes Related List

  Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. The final Kaizen post of the year 2025 is here! With the new Client Script support for the Notes Related List, you can validate, enrich, and manage notes across modules. In this post, we’ll explore how

• Kaizen #217 - Actions APIs : Tasks

  Welcome to another week of Kaizen! In last week's post we discussed Email Notifications APIs which act as the link between your Workflow automations and you. We have discussed how Zylker Cloud Services uses Email Notifications API in their custom dashboard.

• Kaizen #216 - Actions APIs : Email Notifications

  Welcome to another week of Kaizen! For the last three weeks, we have been discussing Zylker's workflows. We successfully updated a dormant workflow, built a new one from the ground up and more. But our work is not finished—these automated processes are

• Kaizen #152 - Client Script Support for the new Canvas Record Forms

  Hello everyone! Have you ever wanted to trigger actions on click of a canvas button, icon, or text mandatory forms in Create/Edit and Clone Pages? Have you ever wanted to control how elements behave on the new Canvas Record Forms? This can be achieved

• Kaizen #142: How to Navigate to Another Page in Zoho CRM using Client Script

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another exciting Kaizen post. In this post, let us see how you can you navigate to different Pages using Client Script. In this Kaizen post, Need to Navigate to different Pages Client Script ZDKs related to navigation A.

• Recent Topics

• Zoho Social - Feature Request - Reviewer Role

  Hi Social Team, I've come across this with a couple of clients, where they need a role which can review and comment on posts but who has no access to create content. This is a kind of reviewer role. They just need to be able to see what content is scheduled

• Zoho Social - Feature Request - Non-US Date Format

  Hi Social Team, I have noticed that there is no option to change the date format from US mm/dd/yyyy to others like dd/mm/yyyy. It would be great to see this added as the platform matures. Thanks for considering this feedback.

• Drop Down Value

  Hi, May I know why Zoho Flow treat this drop down as number and not as string. If so, how can I fetch the right value for filtering. This field is from Creator, in Creator upon checking by default it is a string since it's not a lookup field.

• Zoho CRM's mobile apps: A 2025 Recap

  2025 marked a year of steady progress for Zoho CRM's mobile apps. We rolled out several updates and features to improve usability and make everyday CRM work a lot easier to manage. Here’s a look back at some of the key releases from 2025. Android releases

• How to compare a subform lookup field that allows multiple entries when edited

  I have a form with a subform with multiple fields. One of the fields is a lookup field that allows a multi select. On edit validation, I want a workflow to execute only when the entries in that subform field has changed. The old. function is not working

• Zoho → ShipStation Integration – Sales Order–Driven Fulfilment Workflow

  Hello All, I’m reaching out to explore the best way to integrate a shipping tool into our inventory which will speed our process up. We are looking to integrate ShipStation into our existing order-to-fulfilment workflow, as we’re keen to standardise on

• Facebook follower count doesn't match FB Analytics

  Hi all, I am wondering if anyone else has issues with follower counts for Facebook not matching FB's native analytics tool. On the Zoho dashboard, it's showing 1,007, but FB shows 1,060. All the other channels match up. Any insights are much appreciated!

• Unable to mass update a picklist field

  Hello, I have the records within our Accounts module divided between two account types: Parent Accounts & Member Accounts. I am attempting to mass update accounts from one picklist value to the other (within other specific criteria in our custom fields)

• Meta and Facebook data report discrepancy

  I have been currently gathering manually facebook follower data thru meta. In zoho marketing plus the social media reporting only allows for page likes, and so there is a discrepancy with the data. please the difference in files attached. Is there way

• Business Day Logic Update: More Accurate Scheduling for Your Workflows

  Hello everyone, We’re improving how business-day calculations work in workflows, especially when triggers happen on weekends. This update ensures that offsets like +0, +1, and +2 business days behave exactly as intended, giving you clearer and more predictable

• Develop and publish a Zoho Recruit extension on the marketplace

  Hi, I'd like to develop a new extension for Zoho Recruit. I've started to use Zoho Developers creating a Zoho CRM extension. But when I try to create a new extension here https://sigma.zoho.com/workspace/testtesttestest/apps/new I d'ont see the option of Zoho Recruit (only CRM, Desk, Projects...). I do see extensions for Zoho Recruit in the marketplace. How would I go about to create one if the option is not available in sigma ? Cheers, Rémi.

• Unlocking New Levels: Zoho Payroll's Journey in 2025

  Every year brings its own set of challenges and opportunities to rethink how payroll works across regulations and teams. In 2025, Zoho Payroll continued to evolve with one clear focus: giving businesses more flexibility, clarity, and control as they grow.

• Can I export all attachments from Zoho CRM?

  Can I export all attachments from Zoho CRM?

• Please can the open tasks be shown in each customer account at the top.

  Hi there This has happened before, where the open tasks are no longer visible at the top of the page for each customer in the CRM. They have gone missing previously and were reinstated when I asked so I think it's just after an update that this feature

• What's new in Zoho Sheet: Simplify data entry and collaboration

  Hello, Zoho Sheet community! Last year, our team was focused on research and development so we could deliver updates that enhance your spreadsheet experience. This year, we’re excited to deliver those enhancements—but we'll be rolling them out incrementally

• Displaying only unread tickets in ticket view

  Hello, I was wondering if someone might be able to help me with this one. We use filters to display our ticket list, typically using a saved filter which displays the tickets which are overdue or due today. What I'd really like is another filter that

• Community Digest — Noviembre y Diciembre 2025

  ¡Hola, Comunidad de Zoho en Español! Cerramos el año de la mejor forma con nuestro último Community Digest de 2025, donde podrás encontrar las últimas novedades de nuestros productos. ¿Todo listo para empezar 2026 con el mejor pie? ¡Vamos a ello! Zoho

• Passing the CRM

  Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

• Zoho Projects Plus’ 2025- the year we launched

  We’ve been building project management tools for the past 19 years, and a question we often hear is: Different teams in our organization prefer different project management methods; while the development team prefers agile, the marketing and sales teams

• Why can't we change the Account type from an Expense to an Asset?

  Like the question. Why in QuickBooks for example if I mistakenly created an account as an expenses and I already captured information in those accounts, I can just change the account type from expense to asset

• Move email between inboxes?

  Is it possible to move emails from one team inbox to another? We would like to be able to have a single "catch-all" inbox for incoming requests, and then move the email to the appropriate department inbox. I was hoping we would be able to accomplish this

• Zoho Books emails suddenly going to Spam since 11 Nov 2025 (Gmail + now Outlook) — anyone else?

  Hi everyone, We migrated to Zoho Books in July 2025 and everything worked fine until 11 Nov 2025. Since then, Zoho Books system emails are landing in customers’ Spam (first Gmail, and now we’re seeing Outlook/Office 365 also starting to spam them). Impacted

• Default Tagging on API-generated Transactions

  If one assigns tags to an Item or Customer, those tags get auto-populated in each line item of an Invoice or Sales Order when one creates those documents. However, if one creates the Sales Order or Invoice via the API (either directly coding or using

• How do you print a refund check to customer?

  Maybe this is a dumb question, but how does anyone print a refund check to a customer? We cant find anywhere to either just print a check and pick a customer, or where to do so from a credit note.

• Data Import | Zoho Analytics Custom Query Window Size

  Please increase the window size for the Custom Query Data Import. It's impossible to work with such a small query window.

• Company Multiple Branch/ Location Accounting

  Hi All, anyone know whether company can maintain their multiple Branch Accounting in Zoho  Books. It will be chart of Accounts & Master Data will be same but different report available as per per Branch. Thanks & regards, Vivek +91 9766906737

• Zoho Books Invoices Templates

  It would be really helpful to have more advanced features to customise the invoice templates in Zoho Books. Especially I´m thinking of the spacing of the different parts of the invoice (Address line etc.). If you have a sender and receiver address in

• Zoho Tracking Image location

  So we've been having an issue with tracking email opens. Specifically in Gmail. Our emails are not that long either, maybe 4 sections of image/250 characters of text/button per section.  But all my test accounts I used via Gmail we're showing opens. But then come to find out the tracking image is at the very bottom of the email. So If the message is clipped (It always just clips our social icons on the bottom) and the user doesn't click the show more button it never tracks the open.  Looking at other

• Support for Developing Zoho Recruit Extensions via Zoho Sigma

  Hi, I’m interested in building an extension for Zoho Recruit using Zoho Sigma. However, when I navigate to Sigma and attempt to create a new extension (via the "New Extension" option), Zoho Recruit does not appear as a listed service—only options like

• Email Administrators! Join our tips & troubleshooting series

  Greetings to all the admins out there! This announcement is exclusively for you. As we step into the New Year, we’re excited to start a dedicated series of admin-specific tips curated to support you. These posts will help you overcome everyday challenges

• Notes badge as a quick action in the list view

  Hello all, We are introducing the Notes badge in the list view of all modules as a quick action you can perform for each record, in addition to the existing Activity badge. With this enhancement, users will have quick visibility into the notes associated

• Deprecation of the Zoho OAuth connector

  Hello everyone, At Zoho, we continuously evaluate our integrations to ensure they meet the highest standards of security, reliability, and compliance. As part of these ongoing efforts, we've made the decision to deprecate the Zoho OAuth default connector

• Personalize your booking pages with Custom CSS

  Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re introducing Custom CSS for Zoho Bookings, designed to give you complete control over the look and feel of your booking pages. With this new feature, you can upload your own CSS file to customize colors, fonts,

• Free Webinar : Unlock AI driven business insights with Zoho Inventory + Zoho Analytics

  Are you tired of switching between apps and exporting data to build customized reports? Say hello to smarter & streamlined insights! Join us for this exclusive webinar where we explore the power of the Zoho Inventory–Zoho Analytics integration. Learn

• No OR Filter for Views with a Related Modules Criteria

  We would like to create a Deal View where the User can see all their deals. For that, we would need an OR to connect the criteria. One of the Fields is a "multiselect User", these (Related Modules Criteria) can only be Filter with an AND. Even between

• Creating a Chart from a Report

  In Zoho Analytics, is it possible to create a chart from a Pivot View report? We are looking to use Zoho Analytics to replace Excel for Sales reports and would like to be able to show both the table and the chart together.

• Import Function: ONLY update empty fields

  When setting up an import from a spreadsheet to CRM, there is a checkbox "Don't update empty values for existing contacts" (see screenshot below). While I see some limited benefit from this functionality, I think there should also be an "ONLY update empty

• Sales IQ Chat Widget is Only Displaying Last Name

  Can anyone suggest why the widget is only displaying "last name"?! We have the latest version of the wordpress plugin installed. Thanks Thanks!

• Free Webinar: Zoho Sign for Zoho Projects: Automate tasks and approvals with e-signatures

  Hi there! Handling multiple projects at once? Zoho Projects is your solution for automated and streamlined project management, and with the Zoho Sign extension, you can sign, send, and manage digital paperwork directly from your project workspace. Join

• Begin the year with best practices in the Zoho Desk mobile app : Part 2

  In focus: Optimizing collaboration and supervision Let's begin 2026 with Part 2 of our tips series on driving your ticketing operations at your fingertips. In Part 1, we explored streamlining operations within tickets. This helped individuals at Omniserve

• Next Page