What is Zoho DataPrep? | Self Service Data Preparation

What is Zoho DataPrep? | Self Service Data Preparation

The productivity provider SaaS provided Zoho entered the business intelligence platform field in July 2021. Zoho announced an AI-powered data preparation, business intelligence, and self-service platform application that combined the new Zoho DataPrep application with an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics.

This was to win over business users with a combination of features that focused on ease of use, supporting the data preparation, and the ability to blend internal data with the outside data sources. Zoho DataPrep application is self-service data preparation and management tool that uses machine learning to help business users integrate, transform, enrich, transform, and catalog data for creating and managing data pipelines.

Zoho has also added an integrated enterprise portal builder called Zoho Sites and presentation software called Zoho Show to the platform. This is for helping business users put their ideas into context. Basically, Zoho aspires to reduce any friction by empowering business users to drive decisions with data and without learning any new tools.

In this blog, we will learn about Zoho DataPrep in complete detail. So let’s begin.

What is Zoho DataPrep?
 
Zoho DataPrep is data cleaning software that enables organizations to prepare high-quality data by automatically looking for errors, discovering data patterns, cleaning, transforming, and enriching data. This is without any need for coding. It also helps in setting up data pipelines for syncing prepared data to Zoho Analytics or to any data warehouses.

Using Zoho DataPrep you can connect, cleanse, transform, enrich, schedule, and export data with ease. In addition, you can also catalog and manage how the prepared data is consumed with fine-grained controls. It is also possible to import data into Zoho DataPrep from over 50+ data sources such as files, FTP, feeds, cloud storage, databases, and data warehouses while making it simple to bring the data together.

The functions of Zoho DataPrep are:

1. Cleansing and Improving Data Quality
Zoho DataPrep helps in automatically profiling data for viewing distribution, outliers, statistics, and data quality. You can clean and improve data quality by removing duplicates, fixing invalid data, and missing values.

2. Transforming Data
Using the AI-powered data preparations and intelligent suggestions, one can apply over 250 transforms and prepare the data. You can learn to take advantage of machine learning to enrich data with sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, language detection, and much more.

3. Data Lineage
You can track every change applied to the data using ruleset. It is also possible to modify, disable, and remove any changes at any point in time. You can reuse rulesets for applying the same set of changes in other datasets while removing automated data preparation.

4. Data Catalog
The Zoho DataPrep can be used to catalog and manage datasets by categories, data quality, custom tags, data readiness, and much more. You can perform a system-wide metadata search powered by Zia for improving discoverability.

5. End to end data Pipelines
The organizations continue to gather data each day and cleaning it is never a one-time task. It includes setting up pipelines by automating imports, preparing data using rule sets, and exporting to destinations. This status can be monitored and one can also get notified in case there are any changes to improve the data quality.

Basically, you should use Zoho DataPrep because it helps in doing the below-mentioned things.
  1. Empowers business users with a self-service data preparation
  2. Offers high-quality data for any business need
  3. Helps in identifying the next step with augmented data preparation
  4. Brings unstructured data into the fold
  5. Helps in being expansive scale with the cloud
  6. It is an extensible data preparation platform with powerful APIs.
Zoho DataPrep is multipurpose software by design. It can fit in wherever it is needed. It helps in:

1. Advanced Analytics
The high data quality helps the data analyst to get deeper insights from business intelligence and analytics tools. The use of Zoho DataPrep reduces the time and effort needed to prepare the data.

Basically, data analytics enables organizations to interpret and analyze the data and make data-driven decisions. The data analysts can clean and prepare inconsistent and invalid data before coming on to analysis and insights.

The data analysts and scientists spend around 80% time preparing data and the use of Zoho DataPrep helps in speeding up the process and improving the data preparation experience.

2. Data Warehousing
You can run automated data pipelines from various sources to Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Azure SQL, and other popular cloud data warehouses.

It is also possible to build resilient and end-to-end data pipelines while connecting multiple siloed data sources to the data warehouse of an organization. This can be done with easy to maintain and low-code platform.                      

3. Machine Learning
The overall efficiency of the machine learning model is dependent on the quality of the data used for training it. The use of Zoho DataPrep helps the data scientists with data cleaning at a full scale without any need for coding.

Zoho DataPrep can be used to perform data collection, cleaning and pre-processing, feature engineering, and data labeling with the Zoho DataPrep.

4. Business Processes/Migration
You can migrate data between business apps using the DataPrep. It can be used for cleaning and enriching the data in business applications such as CRM, help desk, and survey tools for weeding out any duplicates and validating records.

Hence, the Zoho DataPrep can be used for enhancing the data quality, improving data flows, inefficiencies, and removing any redundancies across an organization.

Now that we have had a look at Zoho DataPrep in complete detail, let us now have a look at the features of Zoho DataPrep in complete detail. This will help in understanding what Zoho DataPrep can do for us.

1. Connecting to Multiple Sources
You can eliminate data silos in an organization, connect to it and a variety of other sources including feeds, files, cloud storage, warehouses, databases, and business applications.
  1. Import Files: It is possible to import files from anywhere in a wide range of formats including CSV, XLS, TSV, TXT, XML, XLSX, HTML, JSON from local storage, URLs, FTP servers, or from cloud drives such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box
  2. Warehouses and Databases: It is also possible to import data from a wide range of warehouses and databases.
  3. Tight Integration: Zoho DataPrep allows in connecting and cleansing data directly from Zoho Analytics using the built-in connectors.
2. Improving Data Quality
With Zoho DataPrep, you don’t ever have to miss out on important data with an intelligent solution.
  1. Data Quality: Zoho DataPrep helps in viewing valid, invalid, and missing data from each column using the data quality bar. You can filter and cleanse data using intelligent suggestions while improving the data quality and removing duplicate and invalid data.
  2. Smart Modelling: You can automatically find data types, create custom data types to find and fix invalid data, and get suggestions for joining the datasets.
  3. Data Distribution: Zoho DataPrep helps in understanding your data better with the help of multiple widgets like value distribution histogram, outliers, text patterns, value statistics, and more.
3. Transform and Enrich Data
Using the interactive data preparation studio, the data can be transformed without any code.
  1. Smart Selection: You can highlight the required part from the data and DataPrep helps in looking for selection patterns to offer accurate suggestions for extracting, counting, replacing, and splitting data.
  2. Transforming: It is possible to format and change the data using more than 250 transformations without the need for any coding. The data can be reshaped using pivot, unpivot, and summary transforms.
  3. Blend Data: The data can be blended from a wide range of sources using the join and append transforms.
  4. AI-Powered Enrichment: The data can be enriched with AI-powered transforms such as keyword extraction, language detection, sentiment analysis, and much more.
4. Automating Workflows
The automation of mundane tasks is one of the quickest ways to reduce time in preparing data. With the use of Zoho DataPrep, it is possible to schedule the data preparation workflows and receive alerts as well.
  1. End-to-end Data Pipelines: You can set up end-to-end data pipelines by connecting data from multiple sources, blending and cleaning data, and syncing to various destinations.
  2. Monitoring Data Quality: The use of Zoho DataPrep helps in continuous monitoring of data quality while sending alerts anytime the quality drops.
  3. Tracking and Reusing: The rulesets can be used to track any changes made to the data and reusing them across datasets.
5. Catalog Data
The built-in management capabilities help in classifying, cataloging, and governing data using the Zoho DataPrep.
  1. Discover Data Easily: The data can be discovered easily using a system-wide search capability powered by Zia.
  2. Mark as Ready: When the data is all prepared and set, it can be marked as ready for letting your team know that the data is available for sharing and exporting.
  3. Data About Data: More metadata can be added to the datasets and workspaces using the tags and improving searchability and filtering. All the important details about the datasets and workspaces can be found in a single overview pane.
6. Safe Data Sharing
You can collaborate seamlessly with the teams and offer fine-grained permissions for ensuring that the users access the data intended for them.
  1. Setting Access Permissions: You can set access permissions for sharing data, share workspaces with users and groups in an organization, and set role-based access controls to share data securely.
  2. Data Audit: You can get a detailed report of changes made to your data. The datasets when shared and exported can be tracked and exported. In addition, you can also verify if the security measures are applied to protect personal data before sharing or exporting the datasets.
7. Security and Compliance
The Zoho DataPrep enables you to find personal data in your dataset, ensure privacy by masking or tokenizing sensitive data, and also enables to adhere to privacy policy and data protection regulations such as GDPR.

All the data associated with the Zoho DataPrep is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Zoho DataPrep In Sum

An important part of any business analytics tool starts with preparing the data for insights. Zoho’s DataPrep is an AI powered data preparation platform that takes out a lot of manual work for correcting formatting, updating fields, and determining missing values. This enables the clients to set up once and save time without being dependent on difficult processes and inaccurate spreadsheets.

The Zoho DataPrep platform is on its way to becoming AI-driven data analytics and self-service tool through data preparation and augmented analytics. It is a BI platform that will allow its customers to clean, unify, and analyze cross-departmental data and obtain an encyclopedic view of the company.

This is a solution that combines Zoho DataPrep which automates and simplifies challenges of importing data sources along with an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics 5.0. The users launch queries for a deeper understanding of data by using the graphical tools or using Ask Zia which is Zoho’s conversational AI platform. The end goal is to make things simple for end-users so that they can construct and share analytics featuring pre-built visual dashboards for data integration and flexible deployment.

Conclusion
Zoho DataPrep is advanced self-service data preparation and pipeline service that helps organizations prepare and manage huge volumes of data. In case you wish to implement Zoho DataPrep then get in touch with a qualified and certified Zoho partner who can guide you at each step.

I hope that you learned something new 
Cheers!
Abhi
(Seasoned Zoho Authorized and Certified Partner)

Feel free to contact me if you have any queries
Email: abhishek(@)encaptechno(dot)com
Call: +1-416-405-8185


      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          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

                                  • Help - Zoho CRM notification on mobile (IOS/Android)

                                    Hello Community! Can I get the IOS/Andoid CRM app to notify me of events, calls, etc. due as I can with MANY other apps?   I am running the free Zoho I would like this to be native to the Zoho CRM app. I do not want to write a sep. mobile app
                                  • Zoho Books Idea - Include another field in Bank Details for Address

                                    Hi Books team, Currently use the Description field in the Bank Details to store the bank's address. This works fine but it would be great if you could add another field for Bank Address, so that other notes about the bank account could be stored in the
                                  • Reverse payment on accidentally closed invoice.

                                    An invoice was closed accidentally with the full payment added. However, only partial payment was paid. How can I reopen the invoice and reverse this to update it to show partial payment?
                                  • a question about the COQL API v8

                                    When I specify eight or more values in a WHERE IN clause and execute it, an error occurs. Is there a limit to the number of values that can be specified in a WHERE IN clause? ↓Error select * FROM Vendors WHERE (id in (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)) ↓Success
                                  • Zoho Books Idea - Bank Details Button on Banking

                                    Hi Books team, Sometimes I'm asked to share bank details with a customer or a colleague. So I go to the Banking Module, find the correct bank account, click Setting > Edit, then copy and paste the bank details. Wouldn't it be great if there was a button
                                  • JS SDK 8.0 – TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'getCacheStore') with sample code

                                    Hello Zoho Support Team, I’m integrating the Zoho CRM JavaScript SDK v8.0 and I’m getting the error below when running your official sample. I tested directly from: https://github.com/zoho/zohocrm-javascript-sdk-8.0/blob/main/samples/create_records_sample/create_records.js
                                  • Function #55: Convert multiple quotes to single SO using Custom Button

                                    Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series! In Zoho Books, after a quote is accepted by your customer, it can be converted into a sales order or an invoice. Often, a customer might have multiple quotes, and for easier billing or upon the customer's
                                  • Zoho One - Syncing Merchants and Vendors Between Zoho Expense and Zoho Books

                                    Hi, I'm exploring the features of Zoho One under the trial subscription and have encountered an issue with syncing Merchant information between Zoho Expense and Zoho Books. While utilizing Zoho Expense to capture receipts, I noticed that when I submit
                                  • More controls for User Fields in CRM

                                    Dear All, We are here with a minor but crucial enhancement to the user fields—now set accessibility permissions to the records for user field. User field allows you to extend co-ownership of records to your peers. You can collaborate with them for certain
                                  • Rich Text For Notes in Zoho CRM

                                    Hello everyone, As you know, notes are essential for recording information and ensuring smooth communication across your records. With our latest update, you can now use Rich Text formatting to organize and structure your notes more efficiently. By using
                                  • Time based workflow without edit/action

                                    Hello I need help solving this problem if possible. We have Deals come into the CRM via Live Transfer which have the field properties: Stage = New Channel = Inbound Some of them don't get answered so we want these to automatically go into our Outbound
                                  • What's New - August 2025 | Zoho Backstage

                                    Every month, Zoho Backstage grows with you. These updates aren't just features and fixes, they're about making your workday smoother, your events more impactful, and your attendees happier. We’ve listened, learned, and shaped this release to keep things
                                  • Introducing notifications in the vendor portal

                                    Imagine this: You're a recruiter working with multiple vendors on a high-volume hiring project. You’ve just updated a job description after a last-minute change from the hiring manager. One of your vendors, however, is still working off the older version
                                  • prevent selling expired items

                                    Hello. I need to make a constraint on expired batch items not to be sold. Is it possible in Zoho Inventory? if so, then how? Thanks for further help.
                                  • ZOHO BOOKS - EXCESSIVELY SLOW TODAY

                                    Dear Zoho Books This is not the first time but it seems to be 3 times per week now that the system is extremely slow. I work on Zoho Books 95% of my day so this is very frustrating. Zoho you need to do something about this. I have had my IT guy check
                                  • Product details removed during update from other system

                                    We maintain our product details in an other system. These details are synchronized with Zoho at the end of each day, through an API. This has worked perfectly sofar. But last Monday, all product codes and some other product data have been wiped during
                                  • Client Customer

                                    I purchased a customer user license, but we cannot see the project I added in the customer account. I would like to ask for support on what we should do.
                                  • Add Ability to Use Zoho Finance Tags

                                    For Zoho Finance (Books and Inventory), the current actions do not allow us to affect the tags associated with the entities in question (customers, vendors, items, etc.). Please consider adding this functionality into the actions.
                                  • Embeded Signing doesn't work on Safari Browser

                                    We have implemented Zoho Sign in our website by using embeded signing, It works perfectly on Chrome. But it fails on Safari, We get stuck on Zoho Sign Page during redirection from Zoho Sign to our website after signing the document, Please let us know
                                  • Dataprep Webhook Limits and Cannot update column with Dataprep

                                    I have two problems : 1 - I am using Airflow to trigger my pipeline, and when I tested it, it worked fine a couple of times. However, after that, I received an error: {"code":429,"message":"Request rate limited"}. I didn’t send too many requests — maybe
                                  • Power of Automation :: Automatic removal of project users once the project status is changed.

                                    A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and
                                  • New in Zoho Forms: Google reCAPTCHA v3 for smarter spam protection

                                    Hello form builders, Spam submissions are one of the biggest challenges when you share your forms online. They not only clutter your data but can also waste valuable time. To help you combat this without making life harder for genuine respondents, we’re
                                  • Project Management Bulletin: August, 2025

                                    We’ve touched a grand 19 years since we started pioneering project management solutions with Zoho Projects. What started as a simple one-page interface is now a suite of products with Zoho BugTracker, Zoho Sprints, and our new debut Zoho Projects Plus,
                                  • Zoho Sign and Zoho Workdrive Integration

                                    Hello, there. I want to know if it's possible to save a signed document from Zoho Sign in an specific folder for each signer in Zoho Workdrive.  For example: If John Doe signs the document in Zoho Sign I want to save it automatically in a folder named
                                  • Office 365 and CRM mail integration: permission required

                                    Has anyone run into this weird problem? My email server is Office 365. When I try to configure Zoho CRM to use this server, a Microsoft popup window opens requesting user and password. After entering that, I get a message in the Microsoft window saying
                                  • Empowered Custom Views: Cross-Module Criteria Now Supported in Zoho CRM

                                    Hello everyone, We’re excited to introduce cross-module criteria support in custom views! Custom views provide personalized perspectives on your data and that you can save for future use. You can share these views with all users or specific individuals
                                  • How do you list multiple contacts for a lead?

                                    My sales team wants to be able to add additional contacts for leads, how do we do that? Is there a different way we should be using the lead / contact functionality? Moderation update (9th September 2025): Our developers have built an extension to achieve
                                  • Modifying Three Dot Menu Options

                                    Is there a way to modify the three dot menu options that display in a Report header? They currently display: Show As (List, Calendar, Timeline), Print, Import, Export. I'd like to remove the Show As and Print options, since they aren't applicable for
                                  • Elevate your CX delivery using CommandCenter 2.0: Simplified builder; seamless orchestration

                                    Most businesses want to create memorable customer experiences—but they often find it hard to keep them smooth, especially as they grow. To achieve a state of flow across their processes, teams often stitch together a series of automations using Workflow
                                  • Field Not Updating in FSM Script - Service and Parts module.

                                    Dear Team, I am reaching out regarding a script I have implemented in Zoho FSM to automate the calculation of the End of Service date based on the End of Sale date in the Service and Parts module. Overview of the script: Fetches the End_of_Sale__C and
                                  • Zadarma + Zoho CRM Integration – Missed Calls Saved as Contacts Instead of Leads

                                    Hello everyone, I’m looking for input from anyone with experience using the Zadarma + Zoho CRM integration. Currently, I’m seeing that missed calls are automatically being created as Contacts instead of Leads. From a CRM perspective, this doesn’t make
                                  • Zoho Books | Product updates | September 2025

                                    Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From PayNow payment method to applying journal credits to invoices and bills in other locations, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Integrate
                                  • How to update Multiple Users field in Quote Module from Deal Module

                                    Scenario : Deal Module having Multiple User Field (Presales Engineer) which having more than 1 User and through Deluge Script I need to get that Users Details and need to put into Multiple User Field (Presales Engineer) of Quote Module. Note: Both Module
                                  • Auto-sync field of lookup value

                                    This feature has been requested many times in the discussion Field of Lookup Announcement and this post aims to track it separately. At the moment the value of a 'field of lookup' is a snapshot but once the parent lookup field is updated the values diverge.
                                  • Clone a Module??

                                    I am giong to repurpose the Vendors module but would like to have a separate but very similar module for another group of contacts called Buyers. I have already repurposed Contacts to Sellers. Is it possible to clone (make a duplicate) module of Vendors
                                  • Advance PDF creation from CRM data

                                    I'm trying to create a PDF export of data in the CRM. My problem is I want a pretty complicated format for the data. I'm trying to export multiple modules worth of data, with nested one-to-many relationships between the modules. Along with that, I want
                                  • how to disable staff selection Zoho Booking integrated to SalesIQ?

                                    currently there is only one Consultant in my Zoho Bookings like this I integrate Zoho Bookings into Zoho SalesIQ to create a chatbot. Unfortunately, even though I only have one consultant for a consultation, the user have to pick the consultant. It will
                                  • How to change the text in WhatsApp Zobot integrated to Zoho Booking?

                                    I have integrated Zoho Bookings into Zoho SalesIQ, I want to change the text in WhatsApp when creating a booking in Zobot how to change those text?
                                  • how to differentiate if whatsapp comes from certain landing page?

                                    I create a Zobot in SalesIQ to create a Whatsapp bot to capture the lead. I have 2 landing pages, one is SEO optimized and the other want is optimized for leads comes from Google Ads. I want to know from which landing page this lead came through WhatsApp
                                  • YouTube Live #1: AI-powered agreement management with Zia and Zoho Sign

                                    Hi there! We're excited to announce Zoho Sign’s first YouTube live series, where you can catch the latest updates and interact with our Zoho Sign experts, pose questions, and discover lesser-known features. We're starting off by riding the AI wave in
                                  • Next Page