Zoho CRM Community Digest - August 2025 | Part 2

Hello Everyone! Here's a quick round-up of handy tips, clever workarounds, and product updates from late August.

Product Updates:

Meeting Enhancements in Zoho CRM! 

Track whether a meeting is online, in-office, or at the client’s location using the new Meeting Venue option. This enhancement lets you categorize meetings for easier organization, filtering, and reporting. You can also mark meetings as all-day, set them to repeat, or remove venue options from the picklist that doesn’t fit your business needs. For admins, a new Preferences Tab enables managing online meeting providers directly from CRM without needing to visit the Marketplace. This full post has screenshots and key notes worth checking out.

Quick Wins:

Portals: Account-Level Access Challenge

Your customers, linked as Contact records, can access their information via the CRM portal. @Ivan Staykov brought up an interesting use case where individual Contacts should only access records linked to their emails, while the CEO of their company should access all Contact records linked to their Account. As CRM portals are tied to Contacts, not Accounts, this setup isn’t straightforward. @Max explored options, and @Amy shared a workaround that sparked Ivan’s interest. If you’ve run into the same limitation, this thread is a must-read for practical insights.

Understanding how custom view un-enrollment works in Cadences?

@Matt Warner asked if leads enrolled to a Cadence through a custom view gets automatically un-enrolled when they no longer meet the view criteria. @Sunderjan Siddharth clarified that leads will remain in the Cadence and continue their scheduled steps unless an unenrolled property is specifically linked to the custom view condition. Once that property is set, the system will automatically remove leads that drop out of the criteria. Check out the full post for more on how Cadence un-enrollment works and how to fine-tune your setup!

Tip for targeted marketing campaigns for Contacts with closed Deals!

@Dalton wanted to run a marketing campaign targeting Contact records with closed Deals but faced a challenge: some contacts have multiple deals, with a mix of open and closed statuses. Simply filtering for closed deals would still include contacts who have open deals, which wasn’t desired.@Sunderjan Siddharth suggested using roll-up summary fields in the Contacts module to count total deals as well as open and closed deals per contact. This lets you build reports that accurately excludes contacts with any open deals. Check out the full post for detailed steps, screenshots, and where to set this up!

Developer's Corner: 

Can you fetch 200+ records from a Custom View at once?

@Sam wanted to pull all records from a Custom View exceeding  the 200-record limit without using pagination. @Sunderjan Siddharth clarified that COQL can fetch up to 2,000 records in a single query, and suggested using a loop to retrieve up to 100K records efficiently.Check-out the post for the full solution on  handling large datasets effectively in Zoho CRM.

Make attachments mandatory before closing Deals:

@Jhonata wanted to make it mandatory to add attachments before marking a deal as Closed-Won. @Rakesh Kumar suggested triggering a Client Scripts on the Stage field update across touchpoints like the Details, Edit, and Canvas pages to check for attachments, cancel submission if none exist, and display an alert. @Pheranda Nongpiur followed-up with step-by-step guidance and shared the sample Client Script to check attachments on save. Check the full post for the scripts and detailed setup instructions!

How Marta leveraged AI and assistance from the community to automate Quote stage updates:

@Marta wanted all quotes with stage "Next Year" to automatically update to "Draft" on a specific date. @Bhoomi Joshi suggested creating a scheduled function to fetch quotes from a custom view and update the stage, recommending that Marta test with a few records first before connecting it to a Schedule. Despite being a non-coder, Marta used AI to generate the required code and then collaborated with the Community to refine and get it working.Check this post for the step-by-step setup, code tips, and insights on how Marta made it happen!

Kaizen:

Answering Your Questions!

(Kaizen #204) - Perform Field Updates before Blueprint transition via Client Script

Learn how to enhance your lead follow-up Blueprint by prompting users for input during Blueprint transitions and updating description field with detailed comments in Zoho CRM. Kaizen #204 demonstrates how to use beforeTransition scripts to capture comments, validate input, and maintain a running comment history. In this setup, a popup prompts users to enter a comment before each transition. If the comment is fewer than 25 characters, the transition is stopped; otherwise, the system appends the comment along with the transition name and user’s name to the Description field. This is a practical way to improve transparency and traceability in your Blueprint process. Check the post for the full code and setup!


(Kaizen #205) - Managing Picklists and Enabling History Tracking via Zoho CRM APIs

Kaizen #205 breaks down the difference between Picklist and Multi-select Picklist, shows you how to set up global picklists across modules, and explains how to enable history tracking in Zoho CRM using APIs. It's super detailed and walks you through creating and updating picklist fields, removing options, assigning and updating values in records, and turning on history tracking with step-by-step API examples. The inclusion of sample code and responses for each part makes it easy to follow. Give this post a read if you want to get these features set up smoothly!

And that’s a wrap for this fortnight’s Zoho CRM Community Digest. Caught something cool we missed? Or have a favorite from this edition?

Drop it in the comments! We’d love to hear from you. We’ll be back in two weeks with more updates and community gems.

Until then, stay tuned!

• Topic Participants

• Swetha S

  

• Sticky Posts

• How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

  Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers

• Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

  Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just

• Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

  <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,

• Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

  Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical

• CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

    Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

• Recent Topics

• 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

• 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

• 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

• CRM Related list table in Zoho analytics

  In Zoho Analytics, where can I view the tables created from zoho crm related lists? For example, in my Zoho CRM setup, I have added the Product module as a related list in the Lead module, and also the Lead module as a related list in the Product module.

• Zoho learn Custom portal - networkurl & CustomPortalId

  I want to get my individual account’s networkurl and customportalId to use in this API: https://learn.zoho.com/learn/api/v1/portal/<networkurl>/customportal/<customportalId>/manual How can I retrieve the networkurl and customportalId using the API? I

• Connecting zoho creator to zoho writer to send prefilled documents

  i will paste the worflow below // Get user's submitted data from the form userSalary = input.Current_Salary; userCIBIL = input.CIBIL_Score; userEmail = input.Email; userName = input.Name; // You need to get the Document ID from the URL of your Zoho Writer

• Zoho Creator to Zoho Writer for prefilled documents...

  In response to the question about connecting Zoho Creator to Zoho Writer for prefilled documents, I wanted to share a working implementation that demonstrates how to use the record_id parameter with the Zoho Writer Merge API. This allows Writer to automatically

• Managing functions

  Can someone let me know if there are any plans to improve the features for managing functions in CRM? I have lots of functions and finding them is hard. The search only works on the function name and the filter only works on function type. I have created

• Introducing our latest privacy enhancement - Hiding email IDs in Zoho Cliq Networks

  Hello everyone, Zoho Cliq Networks offers a powerful collaboration platform that allows businesses to create dedicated digital workspaces for external vendors, partners, or individuals you want to communicate with professionally without adding them to

• zoho performance

  OVERALL CONFIGURATION OF ZOHO PERFORMANCE Quarterly performance review Self rating and scoring Manager rating and scoring

• Zoho Social API for generating draft posts from a third-party app ?

  Hello everyone, I hope you are all well. I have a question regarding Zoho Social. I am developing an application that generates social media posts, and I would like to be able to incorporate a feature that allows saving these posts as drafts in Zoho Social.

• When will it be possible to edit Subform records via either views or tabular reports?

  Hey there, data maintenance often requires mass update of quite a lot of records. While this is a piece of cake via either List view or Zoho sheet view, the same cannot be carried out for subform records yet. When one of the two options will be made available?

• Onboarding

  Hello Team, Im yuktha working as HR at Ossisto Technologies. We are currently utilizing zoho for onboarding candidate. right now facing issue with onboarding Attaching the screenshots for your reference

• Archiving Contacts

  How do I archive a list of contacts, or individual contacts?

• How do I change a form's name? Why isn't this more intuitive?

  Can someone please let me know how to change a form's name?

• Control Over Zia Generative AI Reply Assistance Behavior

  Hello, I would like to request an enhancement to the Zia Generative AI feature, specifically concerning the Reply Assistance within Zoho Desk. Current Issue: When replying to a ticket, the Ticket Properties section is automatically replaced by the Zia

• Zia now integrated with Open AI in Zoho Desk

  The powerful integration of Zia with OpenAI, has empowered Zoho Desk reach a new level of efficiency and performance. With contextual self-service capabilities, Zia enables agents to boost their productivity and delivers superior customer experiences.

• Zoho Desk Partners with Microsoft's M365 Copilot for seamless customer service experiences

  Hello Zoho Desk users, We are happy to announce that Zoho Desk has partnered with Microsoft's M365 to empower customer service teams with enhanced capabilities and seamless experiences for agents. Microsoft announced their partnership during their keynote

• Employee self-service portal: Onboarding and continuous learning platform for support reps

  Hello everyone, In any organization, employees must go through multiple courses to learn about the product, their organization's standards, and how to respond to customer queries using the knowledge base articles available. This typically requires completing

• 2024 Email Authentication Standards: Elevating Security with Google and Yahoo

  In contemporary email communication, email authentication plays a pivotal role in mitigating email fraud, spam, and phishing attacks. Brace yourself for a new level of security. Starting February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will be implementing robust email

• Contact custom field in layout

  Good day, all, I have an "Extension" custom field in contacts, and would like to display the contact extension in the ticket layout, but I don't seem to be able to. What am I missing? Thanks Rudy

• Exact match in name when searching workdrive

  Hello, I am wondering how to search workdrive files/folders with an exact match in the name. For example, when I search across folder with the url param search[name]=someName, I get multiple results such as "someName", "someNameAndMore", or "someName

• Meeting impossible to use when sharing screen

  he Meeting tool in Brazil is practically unusable when sharing anything, whether it’s a presentation or simple navigation. When accessed via Cliq, the situation gets even worse: even basic calls fail to work properly, constantly freezing. And as you are

• Changing the Default Search Criteria for Finding Duplicates

  Hey everyone, is it possible to adjust the default search criteria for finding and merging duplicate records? Right now, CRM uses some (in my opinion nonsensical) fields as search criteria for duplicate records which do nothing except dilute the results.

• Is there a way to create a desktop shortcut for a website course portal?

  Hello everyone, I recently got a laptop and bought an online course from a website, Skillwint.com, which I visit regularly. I open that site many times a day and want to create a desktop shortcut so I can open it directly instead of searching in the browser

• SalesIQ Tip for Admins: Your Safety Net for Data Recovery

  Ever clicked 'Delete' in your SalesIQ and then realized it was the wrong item? Maybe it was a prospect's chat that held important context you needed to refer to later on. Or, maybe you deleted an elaborate Zobot that you were still testing or planning

• Depreciated mergeAndStore Function Help!

  Hello, I have a function designed to create a PDF containing information from the fields in a Deals record. There is a Writer Mail Merge template in WorkDrive that is populated via Deluge code, and a copy of the resulting PDF is then attached to the record.

• Can I execute two 'functions' when completing a mail merge from CRM?

  Hi, I have set up a mail merge from CRM Deals to a template. I want a copy of this to be saved in Workdrive, and then a copy also saved back into the deal record from which the merge occurred. I can do both independent of each other, and managed to get

• External Share > Edit: Cannot Create Zoho Files

  Hi Zoho, When we create an external share link with Edit permission, our external users are unable to create a Zoho file (Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet and Zoho Show). They can only upload files. They can edit the Zoho files if we create them internally and

• Zoho Mail iOS app update - RTL languages support and access emails using permalink and universal link, image upload resolution

  Hello everyone! In the most recent version of the Zoho Mail iOS app update, we have brought in support for RTL languages(Arabic and Urudu), providing a seamless reading experience with proper text alignment and layout throughout the app. We have also

• Why are emails sending with @viazohocrm.com ?

  I just sent out mass emails from CRM. They are sending from the email below and people cannot reply, and they are getting this message: Address not found Your message wasn't delivered to sales.XXXXXXXX.com.au@viazohocrm.com because the address couldn't

• Duplicating and referencing datasets

  I am moving from PowerBI to Zoho Analytics and while I find Zoho easier to use in many ways, there is one function that I use in PowerBI that I have not been able to find in Zoho.   I have several data sets that I need to modify in different ways to get

• Zoho Inventory 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

• Why am I seeing deleted records in Zoho Analytics syncing with Zoho CRM?

  I have done a data sync between Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics, and the recycle bin is empty. Why do I see deleted leads/deals/contacts in Zoho Analytics if it doesn't exist in Zoho CRM? How can I solve this problem? Thanks

• Enhancements to Zoho Map integration tasks

  Hello everyone, We're excited to announce enhancements to the Zoho Map integration tasks in Deluge, which will boost its performance. This post will walk you through the upcoming changes, explain why we're making them, and detail the steps you need to

• Let’s Talk Recruit: Meet Zia, your all-in-one AI assistant (Part-3)

  Welcome back to the Let’s Talk Recruit series. In the part 2 post, we explored how Zia has evolved with smarter summaries and seamless AI-assisted content creation. This time, we’re diving into the latest upgrades that take productivity even further —

• Announcing Early Access to "Zoho CRM for Everyone" — A new and exciting update to Zoho CRM

  Update : Zoho CRM For Everyone's Nextgen Interface gets an upgrade! Hello everyone, We’ve updated the Zoho CRM for Everyone Nextgen interface based on your feedback. The UI is now simpler with a unified sidebar, a more visible global search and features

• Next Page