Zoho CRM Community Digest - July P1 | 2025

Zoho CRM Community Digest - July P1 | 2025



Hey everyone,


The start of July 2025 marked a special milestone: 200 posts in our Kaizen series! For those new here, Kaizen is a go-to series for Zoho CRM developers, where we regularly share best practices, tips, and expert insights to help you build better with CRM.

Reaching 200 wouldn’t have been possible without your support, curiosity, and encouragement. So, here’s to your curious brains and to this series never stopping!

Now, let’s dive into the product updates lined up for this fortnight.

Product updates:

Enhancements in Portal User Group creation in flow:

Zoho has revamped the portal user group creation flow to make it clearer and more user-friendly. The term “User Type” has now been renamed to “User Group,” and “Portal Tab Configuration” is now renamed to “Portal Module Configuration.” The setup flow has also been reorganized for better clarity. A new Settings tab has been added: if invites are sent via Email, it includes Portal Forms and Email Templates; if sent via Phone, you'll see an SMS Templates tab instead. 

You can see a complete before-and-after view of the changes in the post.

Smarter Scoring with Zia:

Zoho CRM now offers advanced scoring factors, including Zia Scores for all modules, making lead and record scoring smarter and context-aware. Scoring Rules under Automation now bring Manual and Zia Scores together in one place, simplifying the management of all factors, whether based on custom conditions or VoC-driven insights like sentiment, intent, or competitor mentions. Zia automatically applies the right rule using conditions you define, ensuring scores are relevant to each context. This update also enables Zia Scores to trigger automations across all modules. Check out the post to learn more.. 

Static Subforms are here!

Tired of repeatedly entering the same data structure in subforms? With Static Subforms, you can now predefine rows with fixed values, ideal for cases where your team consistently captures the same type of information across different records. This is especially handy when tracking items like tax breakdowns, standard fee structures, or routine checklists. It streamlines data entry, reduces errors, and saves time. Admins can lock these static rows or allow edits, offering both structure and flexibility. Read the full post to learn more.

Custom Views can now be deployed from Sandbox to Production!

That’s right! Zoho CRM now lets you create and test custom views inside your sandbox and directly push them to your live setup. No more manually recreating views after testing! Explore more about it in this post.


Community Discussion Highlights!

Quick Wins:

Export Just What You Need from Accounts Module:

@Ian B asked how to export specific information from the Accounts module. Take a look at this post where @Pheranda share a helpful screenshot to show exactly how it's done.

Avoiding Duplicate Accounts from Forms:

@Ian had a question about preventing duplicate account creation when someone submits a Zoho Forms application? @Max Tyack offered a solid solution using the Upsert Record option in the Zoho Forms integration, and even suggested creating a custom module to track submission, using workflows to update or create accounts only when needed. Take a look at the post to know more.

Tracking training and certification expirations in Zoho CRM:

@Patrick Meyers asked how to track customers' training certificates that expire after 2–4 years, while also keeping a log of every course taken. The goal was to capture registration details, certification dates, expiry dates, and trigger reminder emails three months before expiration while keeping past records intact. If you're looking to automate renewal and follow-up reminders in Zoho CRM, this post has some practical ideas worth exploring!

 

Functions:

Want to copy related records from a custom module into Deals automatically?

@Emma had a custom module for capturing some data but felt it would be better to capture this data using a separate layout in the Deals module. The data transfer involves notes, subforms, and attachments, and importing them through the back-up process requires updating the parent record ID properly. @Bhoomi Joshi offered a practical Deluge function that moves the record from custom module to Deals, copying over relevant fields including sub-form data, notes and attachments. Take a look at the post for the code!


Developer's Corner:

Searching Call Records by Phone Number with COQL API:

@Clark Janes was having trouble searching Call records by phone number using the calls/search Web API, encountering errors like INVALID_QUERY and FIELD_TYPE_UNAVAILABLE when using criteria or phone parameters. @Jeganprabhu recommended using the COQL API to query the Calls module directly using From_Number or To_Number fields to retrieve matching call records even without linked contacts.

Take a look at this post for details.


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!


    • 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,

    Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


      • Recent Topics

      • Contacts Don't Always Populate

        I've noticed that some contacts can easily be added to an email when I type their name. Other times, a contact doesn't appear even though I KNOW it is in my contact list. It is possible the ones I loaded from a spreadsheet are not an issue and the ones

      • Cannot add zoho email to gmail acc

        I'm trying to set up my zoho mail to connect to my gmail acc but no matter what I try I always get this problem. What should I do now? Password is up-to-date. Authentication failed. Please check your username/password. [Server response: 535 Authentication

      • 553 Relaying disallowed - Invalid Domain

        I have this error "553 Relaying disallowed. Invalid Domain" when sending an email to any email address. But I still receiving email from other emails. I checked MX, DKIM, SPF and it's ok. Could you check and help? Thanks

      • Turn off Organization Contact List

        We need to be able to turn off the Organization Contact list for some of our staff. Once the Organization Contact list is turned off for a user, we would then like to be able to create a list of contacts on per user basis that would not be editable by

      • Unable to send massage Reason 553/ Relaying Disallowed. Invalid Domain

        Cant sed massages from my email. All massages from my domain received the same issue Unable to send massage Reason 553/ Relaying Disallowed. Invalid Domain

      • Kaizen #194 : Trigger Client Script via Custom buttons

        Hello everyone! Welcome back to another interesting and useful Kaizen post. We know that Client Scripts can be triggered with Canvas buttons and we discussed this with a use case in Kaizen#180. Today, let us discuss how to trigger Client Script when a

      • Make record entry more organized with the Sections component in Wizards

        Hello everyone! Wizards in Zoho CRM have always helped you break long record-detail pages or large sets of fields into multiple screens, making data entry smoother and more user-friendly. Now, we’re taking a major step forward with a new Sections component—giving

      • GSTIN Public Search API

        Does zohobooks have an api using which i can search GST numbers and get their details?

      • External @zoho.com mail stopped working today, yesterday no issues

        Hello, Over a sudden mail stopped being delivered to inbox. Domain is standard zoho.com worked no problem yesterday, today nothing in inbox. Sent several test emails from corporate account & from gmail.com, logs show acceptance by zoho mail server, but

      • Suggestion: Smart Purchasing Module for Zoho Inventory and Zoho Books

        Suggestion: Smart Purchasing Module for Zoho Inventory and Zoho Books As an active user of Zoho Inventory and Zoho Books, I’ve noticed that the suite already provides valuable tools for managing inventory, analyzing trends, and processing purchase orders.

      • Adding bank details to the contact through API

        How to add bank-related information to the contact while creating it using API? The account number needs to be encrypted before sending it through API but not sure how to encrypt and get those values. Please guide me in this.

      • average cost display

        Hello there, I'm using the average cost valuation method, and the cost price shown in the Items menu should reflect the latest WAC (Weighted Average Cost). However, it doesn't update automatically. Is there a way to display the current average cost without

      • Apple Mail issues

        Dear Sir or Madam, I am trying to configure my Zoho mail account to Apple Mail. It is not working. It seems to need more information (perhaps a path prefix?) than is shown in your tutorial (<www.zoho.com/mail/help/apple-mac-imap.html>). After plugging

      • Assistance Required for Migrating Data from Odoo Inventory to Zoho Inventory

        Hi Team, I previously used Odoo Inventory to manage my stock and transactions, and I’ve now moved to Zoho Inventory. I’d like to migrate my data from Odoo—including product details, stock, purchase, and vendor information- into Zoho Inventory for continuity

      • I need my entire Zoho Account (mail/organization) deleted!

        Hey! I used zoho for my email aaron@aaronglass.me with domain forwarding/mx all that. I got rid of the mx info on my godaddy account and still Google won't let me sign up with my aaron@aaronglass.me email. (I'm moving to Google for business) SO! I was

      • Error: "Invalid Element warehouse_id" when sending order to Zoho

        i'm getting the error "Invalid Element warehouse_id" when trying to send an order to Zoho via API. Has anyone faced this issue before? How can I fix it?

      • No way to sell individual and case units smoothly in Zoho

        Currently, Zoho Inventory handles inventory primarily at the case level, which can be challenging for businesses that frequently need to break down cases into individual units for retail sales or smaller shipments. Although Zoho Inventory currently supports

      • How to handle multiple languages (Resume parser, Job opening, job board, career site) ?

        We are looking to bring Zoho Recruit to a market that needs to support 2 languages. The first thing we need to make sure is that the Candidate be flag with the language they speak. This is easy enough make a custom field that as the desire languages.

      • Shipping Labels

        Hi, Can we generate Packing Labels for manual shipping same as the format as Airway Bill in zoho books or inventory?

      • Unit Measurement Sign,

        Dear Zoho Support Team, I hope you are doing well. We recently purchased Zoho Inventory based on recommendations of your team that “it would be a great fit for our Shopify operations”. However, we are currently facing several urgent issues that require

      • Leadchain into a custom module

        Hello ZOHO Community ! is it possible to put the leads collected by leadchain into a custom module instaed of leads module ? Best wishes Niels

      • Urgent: How to Bulk Upload Images in Zoho Inventory? Any Workarounds?

        We are currently onboarding 5,000+ items from Shopify into Zoho Inventory, but we’re struggling with the lack of a bulk image upload feature. Right now, we have to manually upload and assign images one by one, which is extremely time-consuming and inefficient.

      • Can I automatically update COGS and Inventory account when creating an item?

        I have been trying to get Zoho to update the other two fields when I update one (Sales Account, COGS account, and Inventory Account). I know this seems like not a huge time saver, but I am all about efficiency and being an independent taproom, I create

      • I'm looking for a Microsoft List alternative in Zoho One to manage large lists of repetitive tasks

        I've used Microsoft Lists to manage lots of tasks that need to be completed several times for different users. We started with a large spreadsheet and then discovered lists, which worked pretty well. I was wondering if there is a similar products in Zoho,

      • Zoholics Europe and UK Awards 2025: Honouring our loyal customers!

        We're excited to announce that at this year's Zoholics events across Europe, we're holding customer awards for the first time ever! This is your chance to shout about the amazing things you've created, connected, or achieved with Bigin! And if you win,

      • Fillable template with dynamic tables?

        Is there a way to build a fillable template so that users can add rows to a table? To describe what I'm trying to accomplish the table has 3 sections; a header row, some number of rows with custom information, and a summary row with totals. I can't figure

      • How to store API keys in zoho?

        Hi everyone, I'm currently building an integration using Zoho Flow and I need to securely store several API keys that will be used to make external service calls from my flows. I would not like to hardcode the values in the code of custom function. What's

      • Zoho RPA is now available in your Zoho One bundle!

        Hello All! Of late, it's been quite a stint of new app integrations in Zoho One. This announcement pertains to the addition of another Zoho application, the most sought-after Zoho RPA - Robotic Process Automation, to the bundle. What is Zoho RPA? Zoho

      • is there an easy way to embed a zoho analytics report into a widget (or inside the "account" page) of Zoho CRM

        Hi, I have built a report that is specific to an account in Zoho CRM but I would like this to be built into the Zoho CRM front-end. I have looked at the widget concept but it seems quite complicated (see attached screenshot but I need to filter this view

      • Bigin iOS app update - Introducing Card Scanner and initiating WhatsApp conversations using pre-approved templates.

        Hello everyone! In the latest iOS (v1.11.3) version of the Bigin app, we have introduced the following features: Card Scanner Initiating WhatsApp conversations. Card Scanner: Our new Card Scanner feature extracts contact information from business cards.

      • Introducing card scanner in Bigin Android app

        Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce the card scanner feature on the latest Android version(1.7.26) of the Bigin app as well. Card scanner extracts contact information from business cards and allows you to save them as contacts in Bigin. You can

      • Full RTL and Hebrew Translation Support for Zoho Creator User Portal (Including All System Pages, Templates, and MFA Screens)

        Dear Zoho Creator Team, We kindly request comprehensive support for right-to-left (RTL) languages, particularly Hebrew, across the entire Zoho Creator user portal. This includes system-generated pages, templates, and multi-factor authentication (MFA)

      • ZUG real estate virtual meetup 2025: Sign documents, collect payments, and automate workflows with Zoho Sign

        Hi there! Are you in real estate and looking for a secure, compliant way to manage all your paperwork? In such a fast-paced industry, timing, compliance, and client trust are everything. Handling paperwork has always been a challenge, whether you're finalizing

      • OCR (Optical Character Recognition), automatisation des PDF et autres améliorations de Zoho RPA

        Zoho RPA est une plateforme d'automatisation des processus robotiques conçue pour accélérer et simplifier vos workflows. Elle permet de connecter facilement vos applications cloud à vos systèmes existants, même ceux qui ne disposent pas d’API, afin d’automatiser

      • 📞 Call + 💬 WhatsApp + 📲 SMS in Zoho CRM – All in One Place!

        We’re excited to introduce HelloSend, a powerful communication extension for Zoho CRM that brings SMS, WhatsApp, and Voice Calling directly into your CRM workspace. Whether you're in sales, support, or service delivery, HelloSend helps you connect with

      • Automation#24: Auto-Update custom field from Accounts to Tickets

        Hello Everyone! Welcome back to the Community Learning Series! This episode dives into how Zylker Techfix streamlines account-related ticket references. Previously, employees had to manually check account details to retrieve specific customer information,

      • Product Updates in Zoho Workplace applications | May 2025

        Hello Workplace Community, Let’s take a look at the new features and enhancements that went live across all Workplace applications this May. Zoho Mail Increased Preset Limit for Reminder and Snooze Options Preset limits for the Reminder and Snooze options

      • Outlook 365 ('classic') won't connect to Zoho email

        New computer, fresh install of Office desktop. On the old computer Outlook was working fine with Zoho, retrieving/sending mail, etc. On the new one I can't connect the accounts in Outlook--Outlook just keeps popping up the box asking for a password. All

      • login email

        Never logged into email says last log in never loged into

      • Installment plans

        Hi I am looking for a way to allow my customer to make equal monthly payments. For instance if I create an invoice for customer Y for $1000 I want to allow them to make equal monthly payments for the next 6 months. I need those payments to be auto charged

      • Next Page