New built-in functions in Deluge

New built-in functions in Deluge

Hello everyone,

In today's post, let us begin with understanding functions, return values, arguments, and built-in functions. Towards the end of the post we will have a look at some of the newly supported built-in functions.

What are functions?
Functions do exactly what the name suggests. They are used to perform a specific 'function' or a task. Functions are used to combine multiple instructions to form a single piece of code meant to perform an action. And whenever you want to perform that action again, you do not have to write that code again. Instead you can simply 'call' or 'invoke' the function whenever required.
For example, a function can be written to find the average of three numbers. Once the function is created, it can be used as many times required, without having to rewrite the code all over again.

Arguments
The most important part in functions is arguments. Functions take in data in the form of arguments. For example, let's say you need a function that calculates the sum of two numbers. The two numbers could vary at different times. So in one place the numbers could be 10 and 5, in some other place it could be 20 and 25. Simply put, the function is meant to calculate the sum of two numbers which are going to be dynamic. To address this, we can specify two arguments to hold the numbers. Whenever the function is executed, the arguments are simply replaced with the numbers. The operation (in this example the operation 'sum') remains the same as defined in the script.

Argument is just programming jargon for input. Since functions aren't tied to any static or definite data, getting the outside data into your function's script requires arguments. Without arguments, Deluge wouldn't know which data your function should work with. 

Return values
Functions usually "take in" data, process it, and may or not "return" a result. The return is dependent on the script that you write within a function. For example, if you write a script to fetch a record from a specific service, then that function returns the value that has been fetched. If the script simply performs an action, for example if you write a script to add a record to a specific service and you do not want the status or response of the action in return, then that is a function without any return.

Note:
  • Configuring functions, arguments, and their return values depend on the Zoho service you are working on. 
  • We will come up with a central help page covering the working of custom functions in all Zoho services soon. Until then, you can refer to the product documents to learn about configuring custom functions.

Types of Function in Deluge 
In Deluge, functions can either be a user-defined function (custom function), where you decide what scripts are to be written in the function. Or, they could be built-in functions, where the scripts are written by us in the backend, and is readily available for you to use. 

Custom functions
For example, to calculate profit percentage you can create a custom function with the following code snippet. The inputs cost_price and selling_price of a product can be supplied to the function as arguments so the function will process them to calculate the profit percentage. Once the custom function is configured, you can use the same function to calculate profit percentages of different products by passing their cost and selling prices as arguments to this function.

  1. profit = selling_price - cost_price;
  2. percentage = (profit/cost_price)*100;

To trigger a custom function whenever an action is performed, associate it with an appropriate workflow. In Zoho Creator, you can also call the function within another function. 

Note: Configuring workflows to trigger custom functions depends on the Zoho service you are working on. 

Built-in functions
Another type of function that can be used in Deluge is built-in functions. It can be perceived as ready-to-use functions whose actions are pre-defined. That is, the script to perform the action, the required parameters, and the type of return value (if required) are already configured by us. This saves your time and effort as you can simply use them in your Deluge scripts by inputting arguments as expected by the function, without having to write the code.

For example, the leftPad built-in function inserts the specified number of white spaces to the beginning of the input text. This function expects you to supply two arguments specifying the input text and the number of white spaces to be inserted and it returns the padded text. The script required to pad the white spaces has already been written in the backend so you can directly use this function within your custom function. 

  1. lastName = leftpad("Watson",1);
  2. name = "John"+ lastName; // returns "John Watson"

In the above script, "Watson" and 1 are the arguments that are supplied to the leftpad functions and lastName is the variable that holds the return value - " Watson".

Deluge offers around 200 built-in functions so you can perform common actions, like computing the square root of a number, or checking if a given letter is present in a text. Each type of data has its set of built-in functions that allow you to manipulate it.You can refer to our help documents and flashcards to learn more. 

Let's now take a look at the built-in functions that we've recently supported. These functions are applicable for all Zoho services except Zoho Creator. We will eventually support them for Zoho Creator as well. 

Recent updates to built-in functions

Text functions: Functions that work on Text inputs
  • ltrim: Trims the leading white spaces from the given text
  • rtrim: Trims the trailing white spaces from the given text
Consider a concatenation function that will append two text values to return an ID. The following script uses the ltrim and rtrim functions to ensure no white spaces are inserted in between the texts.

  1. generated_ID = first_part.rtrim() + second_part.ltrim();

Here, first_part and second_part are the variables that hold the portions of the ID that need to be concentrated.
generated_ID is the variable that contains the concatenated text.

Number functions: Functions that work on Number and Decimal inputs
  • truncate: Limits the input decimal to the specified number of places to the left or right of the decimal point.
  • signum: Determines if the given number is negative, positive, or zero.
  • degrees: Converts the radians value into degrees
  • radians: Converts the degrees value into radians
  • sinhasinhcoshacoshtanh, and atanh: Perform the respective mathematical hyperbolic operations.
  • atan2: Finds the atan2 value of the specified point.
The following example converts the specified angle to radians and finds its hyperbolic sine value:

  1. angle_in_degrees = 90;
  2. angles_in_radians = angle_in_degrees.radians();
  3. sinh_value = angles_in_radians.sinh();

Here, the angle_in_degrees is the variable that holds the input angle in degrees.

We are working on offering around 70 more built-in functions in the near future. You can keep track of all the new releases, bug fixes, and improvements from our release notes. Do let us know your questions and suggestions in the comments.






      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          • Sticky Posts

          • Function #41: Sync Associated Subforms!

            Welcome back everyone! The last custom function showed how to update a Contact with Product details from it's Related list in Deals. This week, let's look at a function that lets you update subform records in two modules simultaneously when one of them is updated. Business scenario Let's look at how subform helps in an education institution that has deployed Zoho CRM. National Public School, Austin (made up, of course!) has set up Zoho CRM and it follows the same relationship pattern of "Students",

          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

            Zoho Books Resources


              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                Zoho Projects Resources


                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                    Zoho Orchestly Resources


                      Zoho Creator Resources


                        Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                          Zoho CRM Resources

                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                            CRM Community Learning Series


                          • Tips

                            Tips

                          • Functions

                            Functions

                          • Meetups

                            Meetups

                          • Kbase

                            Kbase

                          • Resources

                            Resources

                          • Digest

                            Digest

                          • CRM Marketplace

                            CRM Marketplace

                          • MVP Corner

                            MVP Corner




                            Zoho Writer Writer

                            Get Started. Write Away!

                            Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ








                                ご検討中の方

                                  • Recent Topics

                                  • Zoho Commerce - Mobile Application

                                    Does Zoho Commerce have a mobile application for customers to place an order?
                                  • Register user through Phone Number by Generating OTP

                                    In zoho commerce , I am developing website on online food store Inilialy the user get verification code to their email for registering there account for login. But I need to login using phone number by generating OTP automatically rather than verification
                                  • Unable to change sales_order status form "not_invoiced" to "invoiced"

                                    I am automating process of creating of invoice from sales_orders by consolidated sales_orders of each customer and creating a single invoice per customer every month. I am doing this in workflow schedule custom function where i create invoice by getting
                                  • Custom Buttons for Mass Actions

                                    Hello everyone, We’ve just made Custom Buttons in Zoho Recruit even more powerful! You can now create Bulk Action Buttons that let you perform actions on multiple records at once, directly from the List View. What’s new? Until now, custom buttons were
                                  • Zoho Vault Passwords

                                    Is there a way to consume Zoho Vault Manager passwords using the API? Thanks in advance.
                                  • Is the ChatGPT Assistant integration capable of recognizing WhatsApp voice messages?

                                    I was wondering: if a visitor sends me a voice message on WhatsApp, would the assistant be able to transcribe it and reply to them?
                                  • Zoho Creator to Zoho CRM Images

                                    Right now, I am trying to setup a Notes form within Zoho Creator. This Notes will note the Note section under Accounts > Selected Account. Right now, I use Zoho Flow to push the notes and it works just fine, with text only. Images do not get sent (there
                                  • 【Zoho CRM】レポート機能のアップデート

                                    ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、レポート機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 目次 1. レポートのエクスポート時のレコードIDの表示について 2. 通貨項目の表示について 3. レポートの削除の監査ログへの反映について 1. レポートのエクスポート時のレコードIDの表示について これまで、レポートをエクスポートするとファイルにレコードIDが必ず含まれていました。レコードIDが識別子として役立つ場合もありますが、実際には多くの企業で参照されることはありません。
                                  • Translation in zoho bookings

                                    We cant translate zoho booking emails. The general text we can change. But what about text like: ""Here a link to join the meeting online:"" and "Add to Zoho Calendar" and "Add to Google Calendar"? No professional business have mixed languages. Its looking
                                  • Is there any way to bill one client in different currencies on different invoices?

                                    I have some customers who have their currency set as USD and most of their billing is done in USD.   However, from time to time I have a need to bill them in my base currency GBP for some specific invoices, but there seems to be no way of doing this that I can see. The only workaround that I can see is to create two client records for the same client, one for USD billing and one for GBP billing, but this is not an ideal situation. Is it likely that the (hopefully!) soon to arrive multi-currency support
                                  • API name for all fields in Zoho Project (Standard or custom)

                                    Hi! I struggle to find easily all API name of all field in Zoho Project to build my API rest with other services. We can find them very fast in CRM but not in PRoject.   Could you share a function to get the list of all API Name of any field of an App
                                  • Disappearing Mouse cursor in Zoho Mail / Windows 11 (Chrome + Edge)

                                    I'm seeing an issue when writing mails with the light theme with the mouse cursor being white and the document area also being white - making it nearly impossible to see the mouse cursor. I see the problem on Windows 11 under Chrome and Edge. (Yet to
                                  • Zoho Assist not rendering NinjaTrader chart properly

                                    Hi everyone. Just installed and testing Zoho Assist. I want to display my laptop' screen (Windows 11) on a monitor connected to my Mac mini. The laptop is running a stock trading program called NinjaTrader. Basically, when running, this program displays
                                  • Dropshipping Address - Does Not Show on Invoice Correctly

                                    When a dropshipping address is used for a customer, the correct ship-to address does not seem to show on the Invoice. It shows correctly on the Sales Order, Shipment Order, and Package, just not the Invoice. This is a problem, because the company being
                                  • Best way to schedule bill payments to vendors

                                    I've integrated Forte so that I can convert POs to bills and make payments to my vendors all through Books. Is there a way to schedule the bill payments as some of my vendors are net 30, net 60 and even net 90 days. If I can't get this to work, I'll have
                                  • Link(s) between Notes

                                    Hello Everyone, It would be great if links could be created between notes. Let's say we have 5 Notes A, B, C , D, E. I would like to be able to link Note A to Note B but not in other way, so no link appears in Note B linking to Note A. An so on, linking
                                  • Option to Hide Project Overview for Client Profiles

                                    In Zoho Projects, the Project Overview section is currently visible to client profiles by default. While user profiles already have the option to restrict or hide access to the project overview, the same flexibility isn’t available for client profiles.
                                  • Zoho Books | Product updates | August 2025

                                    Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From the right sidebar where you can manage all your widgets, to integrating Zoho Payments feeds in Zoho Books, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience.
                                  • Regex in Zoho Mail custom filters is not supported - but it works!

                                    I recently asked Zoho for help using regex in Zoho Mail custom filters and was told it was NOT supported. This was surprising (and frustrating) as regex in Zoho Mail certainly works, although it does have some quirks* To encourage others, here are 3 regex
                                  • Feature Request: Assign Documents to Already Entered Bills, Expenses, Invoices, etc.

                                    Hi Zoho Team, We are regular users of the Documents module in Zoho Books and appreciate its ability to keep financial records well-organized. However, we’ve noticed a limitation: There is no way to attach a document from the "Documents > Files" section
                                  • I don't see any WITHDRAWL transaction at all

                                    Hi I manually imported my bank statement to Zoho books today and I am a complete newbie. I have been reading the knowledgebase but unable to fix this. I only see "Uncategorized 91 DEPOSIT transactions". I don't see any WITHDRAWL transaction at all. Also,
                                  • Shared inbox unable to see replies

                                    Hi we are a small company me and someone else, we have a shared inbox for our sale@ and contact@ however we have this issue where by if i reply to an email or the other person reply to the email, it does not show it to them and therefore we end up replying
                                  • Kaizen #136 - Zoho CRM Widgets using ReactJS

                                    Hey there! Welcome back to yet another insightful post in our Kaizen series! In this post, let's explore how to use ReactJS for Zoho CRM widgets. We will utilize the sample widget from one of our previous posts - Geocoding Leads' Addresses in ZOHO CRM
                                  • 404 error at checkout

                                    Our customers are getting a 404 error at checkout. Anyone else with the same problem?
                                  • FONT Sizing in Notebook

                                    Hi Kishore - What is the status of adding font sizing to the application? I have several things that I have pasted directly into Notebook and the fonts are HUGE! I would like the ability to highlight them and reduce the font to a legible size. Nothing
                                  • Can managers Upload documents to their direct rapports?

                                    Admin employees have the ability to upload documents to employees' files; however, managers do not have add/manage button - is it possible for managers to upload their direct reports' documents, such as absence documents or 121 documents. Is there something
                                  • Leave balance display for next year

                                    Is there a way to not have a rollover or not limit the leave balance depending on the date. For example an employee has 10 days leave balance and wants to apply for January leave in December. They cant because the rollover doesnt show the leave balance
                                  • Please add an “Auto-Apply Unused Credits” toggle

                                    Hello — please add a simple org-level option to automatically apply unused credits (credit notes, excess payments, retainers) to new invoices and/or bills. An ON/OFF toggle with choices “invoices”, “bills”, or “both” would save lots of manual work for
                                  • Zoho Books not working/loading

                                    Hi! I haven't been able to access/load Zoho Books for the past hours. I get a time out (and it is not due to my internet connection). Could you please check this asap? Thank you!
                                  • Custom Fields with Data Types for Expense and Payments Received in Zoho Books

                                    Hi all, We are glad to present to you, the option to create Custom Fields for the Expense and Payments received modules in Zoho Books. This also comes with an icing on top of it - Yes, the custom fields can now be created with different data types. Types like Text, Number, Decimal, Amount, Auto Number and Check Box are supported as of now. Rush to the gear icon at the top right corner, select 'More Settings', choose 'Preferences' in the left pane. Click the Expense/Payment preferences where you can
                                  • [Webinar] Automate sales and presales workflows with Writer

                                    Sales involves sharing a wide range of documents with customers across the presales, sales, and post-sales stages: NDAs, quotes, invoices, sales orders, and delivery paperwork. Generating and managing these documents manually slows down the overall sales
                                  • Zoho Cliq - Incident alert (Server outage - IN DC) | August 28

                                    We've received server down alerts and are currently investigating the issue (IN DC) to find the root cause. Our team is actively working to restore normal operations at the earliest. Status: Under investigation Start time: 09:44:21 AM IST Affected location:
                                  • Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM Integration – AI-Powered Sales Automation

                                    Hello Zoho Community 👋 I’m excited to share a recent integration we’ve worked on at OfficehubTech: ✅ Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM This integration connects Zoho CRM with Claude AI through our custom MCP Server, enabling intelligent AI-driven responses
                                  • How can I see content of system generated mails from zBooks?

                                    System generated mails for offers or invices appear in the mail tab of the designated customer. How can I view the content? It also doesn't appear in zMail sent folder.
                                  • Limitations on editing a message in Cliq

                                    Hi I've checked the documentations and there's no mention of how many times a message can be edited. When trying with code, I get various numbers such as ~1000 edits or so. Please mention if there's a limit on how many times one can change a message via
                                  • Narrative 10: Assignment Rules - Streamlining Ticket Management

                                    Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 10: Assignment Rules - Streamlining Ticket Management In the complex world of customer support, a flood of incoming tickets can hit the help desk in seconds. Businesses must do more
                                  • Free webinar! Digitize recruitment and onboarding with Zoho Sign and Zoho Recruit

                                    Hello, Tired of being buried in onboarding paperwork? With the integration between Zoho Sign and Zoho Recruit, a powerful applicant tracking system, you can digitize and streamline the entire recruitment and onboarding process, all from one platform.
                                  • Custom form - Duplicate Value Present

                                    I am new to Zoho People. I create a new form on Zoho People quite simple. A date (by default the current date) and a radio button with 3 options (Yes, No, Not applicable) I defined the date as ‘No duplicate’ as only one entry by date is allowed. I added:
                                  • Zoho API connection issues

                                    Hi, Today at around 1930 GMT our application started experiencing intermittent timeouts from the Zoho API. These intermittent timeouts are not enabling our app to work properly. The API connection was working just fine before. HTTPSConnectionPool(host='www.zohoapis.com',
                                  • Query Regarding our Partnership between AIC-JKLU and Zoho

                                    Dear Zoho Team, I am writing to raise a concern on behalf of AIC-JKLU, one of Zoho’s incubator partners. Recently, our startups have been facing difficulties while trying to get themselves onboarded on Zoho through our dedicated partner link. Unfortunately,
                                  • Next Page