New in Zoho CRM Plus - October 2019

Hello everyone!

This post is a summary of the recent updates made to Zoho CRM Plus, aimed to help keep you up-to-date on all new and forthcoming changes.

You can read through to learn about the latest updates added to different parts of our platform, such as CRM, Desk, and Social. Find out all the new ways you can utilize Zoho CRM Plus as a customer experience platform for your business.

CRM

1) Fine-tune your configurations in Assignment Rules

a. Selecting users based on set criteria

Apart from sorting users into categories such as Users, Roles, and Groups, you can also define certain conditions for these categories based on which records will be assigned to them.

For example, let's say you set an assignment rule in your CRM stating that all records from India and the US should be assigned only to users in the U.S. In the previous version, you would need to choose the U.S. users individually from the Users category.

With this new update, you can now define specific conditions, such as setting all your records from India and the U.S. to be assigned to users in the U.S.

b. Check user's availability before assigning a record

In addition to easier and more specific lead assignment, we've also added an optional enhancement allowing you to check the availability of a user based on their shift timing and online status (whether they're logged into CRM or not) before assigning records to that particular user.

Now that you can check for a user's availability before assigning records, there are times when you choose not to assign a record to the user, such as when they are unavailable or logged out, or have deactivated or deleted their CRM account.

To avoid such situations, you can also select a default user, who will be assigned the records in absence of the first selected user. For this default user, you can choose either a logged-in user (who has initiated the record action) or any other CRM user. More on Assignment rules here.

2) Updates to the data importing process: replacing empty values

In our previous version, if any field you marked as mandatory in your import file was empty or did not have a value, the record will not be imported. To address this, our new update allows you to define a value for the empty field while you are importing the records. More on imports here.

3) Find out how Zia answers your questions

"Explore" in Zia is a new feature that helps you trace the search route taken by Zia to find answers to your questions.

For example, let's say you want to know your upcoming tasks and you tell Zia, "Show my upcoming tasks." Click on the "Explore" icon in the results and Zia will show you the criteria applied and the module the answer came from. In this example, it would be the "Tasks" module and the search criterion would be the duration.

This helps improve the accuracy of your search results, and also find out if Zia is fetching you the right information by looking at the criteria she set for fetching the results.

To access this feature, hover over Zia's response and click the Explore icon. More on Zia here.

4) New views for CRM Dashboards

Along with the existing categories for dashboard views, Favorites, Created by me and Shared with me, CRM has added three more views: All, Public, and Other users' dashboards.

All: Display a consolidated view of all the dashboards in your CRM

Public: View dashboards accessible to all users inside CRM

Other users' dashboards: Admins and Super Admins can view dashboards created by other users inside CRM.

More on Dashboard views here.

5) Reduced refresh time for Sandbox

The refresh time for your Sandbox account (a test environment to check your CRM settings before deploying them to production) has been reduced from every 30 days to every three days.

In addition to the shorter refresh time period, you also get to retain your Deployment Logs for up to six months. More on Sandbox here.

Desk

1) The new, improved Social module inside Desk

An active social media presence, combined with real-time responsiveness from your customer support teams, can work wonders for your business. Desk, your dedicated service for support operations, helps utilize your organization's social media accounts as direct support channels.

With our new take on Social module under Desk, you can now organize your Social media channels—Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, and Twitter handles—into a single unit, called a brand.

*A brand is the fundamental unit under which you can manage the Facebook page and Twitter handle of a brand/organization.

After you connect your social media accounts to a brand in the Social module, all posts, tags, and private messages posted or received by the accounts are automatically populated from their respective feeds. You can perform all basic actions from there, such as commenting on a post, liking a post, replying to a tweet, and retweeting or liking a tweet. You can also manually or automatically convert posts into tickets in your help desk portal.

2) Convert business reviews into tickets with new Marketplace extensions

We have now introduced two new marketplace extensions for Desk: App Store Reviews and Google Play Reviews for Desk. With these extensions, you can now convert your reviews on Google Play and App Store into tickets within your help desk. Links to both review channels will be redirected to the respective app channels. Your agents can now reply to reviews from Desk, and their responses will be automatically posted on Google Play Store.

Note: Due to authentication constraints, agents can view but not reply to App store reviews from Desk

Social

1) Easily accessible emoji menu

You can now access the emoji menu anywhere you type on Social.

Previously, the emoji menu was available only under the Compose window but with this new update, the emoji menu is easily accessible whenever you start typing on the platform. This includes your notifications tab, your livestream updates, and under the monitor tab. More on emoji menus in Social here.

2) Tag your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts in your posts

In our previous version, you could tag Twitter and Instagram profiles in Social posts. Our new update in Social now allows you to also tag your Facebook and LinkedIn pages in your posts.

To tag Facebook and Linkedin Pages on Social, type the "@" symbol, followed by the name of the Facebook or LinkedIn page. The New Post box will display matching profile suggestions for you to choose from. Select the correct username from the drop down, then click Done and your tag will appear on the post. More on tagging users in social media posts here

That's it with our product updates for this month, but stay tuned for next month's news! In the meantime, check out these new updates and share your experience with us in the comments below.

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