Free your teams from manual business processes with Connected Workflows

Free your teams from manual business processes with Connected Workflows

Hello Everyone,

We’re thrilled to introduce the next big evolution in Zoho CRM for Everyone -- Connected Workflows. This new feature builds on our commitment to deliver a CRM that’s truly inclusive, adaptable, and designed for consistent collaboration across your entire organization and not just your sales team.

With the launch of Connected Records, we enabled teams to share contextual information and stay aligned through record connections across modules. Now, with Connected Workflows, we’re taking it one step further by enabling Zoho CRM to coordinate work across teams and enable them to deliver their best for customers.

What are Connected Workflows? 

While Connected Records make it easy to share customer context across your customer journey, however, many of the processes involved in your customer's journey need to be consistently carried out. That’s where Connected Workflows come in.

Connected workflows help free your teams from manual coordination by enhancing coordination across multiple teams and improving customer relationship management. They allow you to automate your entire customer journey that spans across multiple customer-facing teams.

With Connected Workflows, you can build smooth coordination between departments like Sales, Marketing, Legal, Onboarding, and Training  so that each step in the customer journey is coordinated without manual follow-ups or miscommunication.


How to create Connected workflows? 

"Users should have the Connected Workflows permission enabled in their profile settings."

Every connected workflow begins with a primary module, either an organization module or a team module, depending on your customer journey.

Triggers : Initiate by setting up triggers by configuring either a single trigger or multiple triggers for a module. The triggers are :
  • when a record is created in the module
  • When a record is edited record in the module,
  • When a record is created or edited in the module, or
  • When a field in the record is edited in the module.

Multi-module criteria for Triggers : You can configure multiple criteria for triggers to execute actions in any other related modules; Enable other module criteria option for this. This ensures actions run when related modules are updated with values matching the trigger.
 
Actions : Assign one or more actions for each trigger . The actions are :
  • Creating a new connected record in the associated module
  • Updating an existing connected record in the associate module, or
  • Notifying users via email. 

Use Case: Automating the customer journey from a sales enquiry  to customer success

A typical customer journey goes through four stages, and we know that even though the sales team is the initial point of contact, multiple teams are involved and will support the sales team to win the customer.                                                        

Involved Teams
Initial Evaluation
Sales Team is the point of contact
Marketing team supports with customer-facing content in the Case Study Module
Demo Request
Sales Team schedules a product demo
Pre-sales team provides product demos in the Product demo module
Customer Onboarding
Sales Team updates the sale cycle stage to 'Closed Won'
Onboarding team helps the customer get started post-sale in the Onboarding Assistance module
Product Training
Sales Team arranges for training sessions
Training team helps the customer to be fully equipped to use the product in the Training module
 
Here's how Connected Workflows can automate the sales process and achieve coordination between the multiple teams involved.  

We’ll create a connected workflow with Deals as the primary module and configure three triggers:

Trigger 1: When a new record is created → Create a connected Case Study record for Marketing (Action)

Trigger 2: When Lead Status is "Qualified" → Create a Product Demo record and notify the Pre-sales Team(Action)

Trigger 3: When Deal Stage is "Closed Won" → Create an Onboarding record for handoff prep(Action)

This sets up three connected modules: Case Study, Demo Request, and Onboarding, as shown in the image below.

 Now we will configure the associated modules.
  • Case Study
    Trigger : When status is "Completed" → Notify Sales Team about availability(Action)

  • Demo Request 
    Trigger : When status is "Completed" → Notify Sales Team that demo was given(Action)

  • Feedbacks (manually created from Demo Request)
    Trigger : When new record is created  → Email lead with feedback form(Action)

  • Onboarding 
    Trigger :     When status is "Completed" → Notify Training Team to start sessions and Sales Team of onboarding completion; also create a Training record(Action)

  • Training (automatically created from Onboarding)
    Trigger :     When new record is created → Update Account type to "Customer" and notify Sales Team of training completion(Action) 


Now let's look at how all these modules have been connected to carry out a customer journey in the GIF below.



In this entire customer journey, there is no loss of customer context, no repeated back-and-forth between teams, and no delays due to miscommunication. Each team receives a connected record with all the relevant data they need to execute their part of the process.
Here is another video with a detailed explanation on how connected workflows works :

How Are Connected Workflows Different from Traditional Workflows?     

  • Connected Workflows go beyond one module; they’re designed to coordinate across team boundaries and hence use multiple modules to build a workflow.
  • Connected workflows trigger follow-up tasks/actions in both org and team modules.
  • Connected Workflows generate connected records as part of the process, so new requests are automatically created in modules, and those teams will have full context from day one. Users can save the time they take to create requests from the Request tab with this feature.

Why use connected workflows for your business? 

  • No more manual follow-ups because of automating cross-team coordination and reducing dependency on reminders or emails.
  • Achieving consistent execution across your customer's journey.
  • Providing end-to-end visibility where teams see the full customer journey, not just their part in the entire journey.
  • Above all, providing contextual coordination among multiple teams by minimizing delays between hand-offs.
 

We believe Connected Workflows will be a game-changer in how you deliver exceptional customer experience. We’re excited for you to start building your first Connected Workflow. Let us know in the comments if you have any queries.

Availability :
  • This enhancement is available only in Zoho CRM's new UI.
  • The number of connected workflows that can be created edition-wise are :
    • Standard Edition.      : 2
    • Professional Edition : 2
    • Enterprise Edition    : 10
    • Ultimate Edition.      : 10
    • Click here to learn about others limitations for this feature.

Early Access for Connected Workflows

We are in the process of opening out connected workflows for our customers, however, if you’d like early access to explore and use this feature, we’ve got you covered!

Fill out this form to get early access.

We’d love for you to try it out and share your feedback.


Regards,
Serena Woolridge
Zoho CRM Marketing Team