Event Management System using ZDK CLI

Event Management System using ZDK CLI



Hello Everyone,

Welcome back to yet another post in the Kaizen Series!

As you already may know, for the Kaizen #200 milestone, we asked for your feedback and many of you suggested topics for us to discuss. We have been writing on these topics over the past few weeks. One of the feedbacks asked us to cover "more on ZDK CLI". In this post, we will discuss building an Event Management System in Zoho CRM Using ZDK CLI.

Consider the case of Zenith, a Zoho CRM partner who is also partner for Zoho's competing products. Zenith is hosting a conference in which their representatives are inviting speakers from Zoho and also other competing products. The attendees of the conference will be either external attendees or leads or contacts of Zenith. For this purpose existing meetings module of Zoho CRM (previously called Events) can not be used as it is not a good fit for this case. Custom modules and fields are required for this. In this post, we’ll discuss how to create a Event Management System that is complimentary to Zoho CRM using ZDK CLI. 

Why Use ZDK CLI?
ZDK CLI allows developers to:
  1. Create and edit CRM metadata (modules, fields, roles, profiles, and widgets)
  2. Define relationships between modules (lookups, multi-select lookups)
  3. Push and sync metadata changes to sandbox.
  4. Resolve conflicts when multiple users work on the same metadata.

This makes it ideal for building reusable CRM systems such as event management.

Initial Setup

As the initial setup, initialize the ZDK CLI project directory using zdk init command and create a new ZDK Project folder "Zenith". 

     zdk init




Then, login to the sandbox environment for Zenith using zdk auth:login command. 

     zdk auth:login


When you execute zdk auth:login, you can either select any org that is already signed in or select NEW LOGIN to visit the login page and select the sandbox org you will be working on.




After logging in to Zoho select the sandbox environment and give required permissions.
Notes
For the current beta release, ZDK CLI is exclusively available for Sandbox environment and is not operational in Production environments. 



You will be redirected to the terminal after successful login and you can start working on ZDK CLI.



Notes
Change the api_version to 8 in zdk-project.json file.

Step 1: Define the Modules

For an event management use case, we will need the following custom modules:
  1. Conference – Stores details of each event.
  2. Attendees – Tracks participants, whether leads, contacts, or external.
  3. ConferenceAttendees (Linking Module, not created) – Connects conferences and attendees with registration status.
  4. Venues – Captures details of event locations.
  5. Speakers – Stores details of invited speakers.

This has been visualized in the data model below.


To create a module, use the command

     zdk meta:create modules




This creates the json file for module metadata : Conference.modules-meta.json  in the path Zenith/crm/meta/modules/Conference 

Conference.modules-meta.json content

{
    "singular_label": "Conference",
    "plural_label": "Conferences",
    "api_name": "Conference",
    "profiles": [
        {
            "api_name": "Administrator"
        }
    ],
    "display_field": {
        "api_name": "Conferences"
    },
    "show_as_tab": true
}

Similarly create modules Attendees , Venues, and Speakers modules

Step 2: Customize Fields

To create a field, use the command

     zdk meta:create fields

Conference module:

Conference modules's fields are:

  1. Attendees (multiselectlookup to Attendee module) 
  2. Speakers (multiselectlookup to Speakers module) 
  3. Venue (lookup to Venue module) 
  4. Date (datetime) 
  5. Duration(double) 
  6. Description (textarea) 
  7. Status (picklist: Planned, Ongoing, Completed)


Attendees field
Let us check how to create the field attendees of type multi-select lookup (to Attendee module)




The json file Attendees.fields-meta.json created in the path Zenith/crm/meta/modules/Conference/fields will look like this


To provide dependent details for the multi select lookup, add the multiselectlookup json object to the Attendees.fields-meta.json file as below:

{
    "field_label": "Attendees",
    "display_name": "Attendees",
    "api_name": "Attendees",
    "type": "used",
    "data_type": "multiselectlookup",
    "multiselectlookup": {
        "connected_details": {
            "module": {
                "api_name": "Attendee"
            },
            "field": {
                "field_label": "AttendingConference"
            }
        },
        "linking_details": {
            "module": {
                "plural_label": "Conferences_X_attendees"
            }
        }
 }
}

Speakers (multi-select lookup to Speakers module)
Similar to Attendees field, create Speakers field and modify the json file Speaker.fields-meta.json created in the path Zenith/crm/meta/modules/Conference/fields:

{
    "field_label": "Speaker",
    "display_name": "Speakers",
    "api_name": "Speakers",
    "type": "used",
    "data_type": "multiselectlookup",
    "multiselectlookup": {
        "connected_details": {
            "module": {
                "api_name": "Speaker"
            },
            "field": {
                "field_label": "AttendingConference"
            }
        },
        "linking_details": {
            "module": {
                "plural_label": "Speakers_X_attendees"
            }
        }
 }
}

Venue (lookup field to Venue module)
Similarly, create the Venue field with type as "lookup" The json file Venue.fields-meta.json created in the path Zenith/crm/meta/modules/Conference/fields will look like this


To provide dependent details for the lookup, add the lookup json object to the json as below.
{
    "field_label": "Venue",
    "display_name": "Venue",
    "api_name": "Venue",
    "type": "used",
    "data_type": "lookup"
    "lookup": {
        "display_label": "Venue",
        "api_name": "Venue",
        "module": {
          "api_name": "Venue"
        }
      }
}

Description (textarea)
After create a textarea field Description using zdk meta:create fields command, add textarea json object to the field meta json file as below :

{
        "field_label": "Description",
                "display_name": "Description",
                "api_name": "Description",
                "type": "used",
                "data_type": "textarea",
                "textarea": {
                        "type": "rich_text"
                }
}

The possible values for text area are small, large and rich_text.

Status (picklist)
After create a picklist field Status using zdk meta:create fields command, add pick_list_values json array to the field meta json file as below:

{
    "field_label": "Status",
    "display_name": "Status",
    "api_name": "Status",
    "type": "used",
    "data_type": "picklist",
  "pick_list_values": [
    {
      "display_value": "Planned",
      "actual_value": "Planned"
    },
    {
      "display_value": "Ongoing",
      "actual_value": "Ongoing"
    },
    {
      "display_value": "Completed",
      "actual_value": "Completed"
    }
  ]
}

Date and duration fields of type datetime and double does not require any edits to the created meta.json file.




Attendees Module

Similarly, add fields for attendees modules
  1. Phone (phone)
  2. Company (text)
  3. EventsAttended (multi-select lookup to Conference module)
  4. Attendee Type (picklist with options Lead, Contact, External)
  5. Leads (lookup to Lead module)
  6. Contacts (lookup to Contact module

Venue Module

  1. Location (text)
  2. Capacity (integer)
  3. Contact erson (text)
  4. ContactNumber(phone)
  5. Description(textarea)

Speakers Module
  1. Phone (phone)
  2. Company (text)
  3. SpeakerStatus (picklist with options Confirmed, Pending, Canceled)

Step 3: Create a Custom Role


To create a field, use the command

     zdk meta:create roles


This ensures event managers have the right access without interfering with other CRM operations.

Pushing changes to the sandbox environment

Once all changes are done execute zdk org:push and zdk org:push result --{jobId} command to deploy the changes to the sandbox environment. Once the changes are verified in your sandbox environment you can deploy it to the production environment.




You can extract this metadata zip file, that is created using zdk org:export command to your own ZDK project directory and try pushing the changes to your sandbox environment.

Building the Event Management System for "Zenith" illustrates the core strength of ZDK CLI. It brings software engineering best practices to Zoho CRM customization. By defining modules/fields/roles as json files directly or creating them using the command, the source truth of the metadata is available in local system. The same can be tracked via version control systems like GIT for better collaboration among the team.

    • Sticky Posts

    • Kaizen #198: Using Client Script for Custom Validation in Blueprint

      Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – 1 More to the Big Two-Oh-Oh! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

    • Kaizen #226: Using ZRC in Client Script

      Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. In today's post, lets see what is ZRC (Zoho Request Client) and how we can use ZRC methods in Client Script to get inputs from a Salesperson and update the Lead status with a single button click. In this

    • Kaizen #222 - Client Script Support for Notes Related List

      Hello everyone! Welcome to another week of Kaizen. The final Kaizen post of the year 2025 is here! With the new Client Script support for the Notes Related List, you can validate, enrich, and manage notes across modules. In this post, we’ll explore how

    • Kaizen #217 - Actions APIs : Tasks

      Welcome to another week of Kaizen! In last week's post we discussed Email Notifications APIs which act as the link between your Workflow automations and you. We have discussed how Zylker Cloud Services uses Email Notifications API in their custom dashboard.

    • Kaizen #216 - Actions APIs : Email Notifications

      Welcome to another week of Kaizen! For the last three weeks, we have been discussing Zylker's workflows. We successfully updated a dormant workflow, built a new one from the ground up and more. But our work is not finished—these automated processes are

    • Recent Topics

    • Newby Questions - Vendors, Customers, and Income vs. Other Income Clarifications

      Q1. For Deposits, there does not seem to be an option for "Income". "Other Income" is an option however. What is the process to add the option to assign a deposit to type "Income"? Q2. In many cases Vendors and Customer are the same. Vendors may purchase

    • yodlee bank fees

      My bank feeds have been pretty much error-free until this recent Yodlee update.  I have configured it as per the information however nothing comes through. It says that bank feeds have been refreshed as of 30th June, 2022. It is the end of the financial

    • Deleting, Adding and Changing a Zoho Books Entry

      Zoho Books Community & Support, If a bulk upload of entries were added to an account, what is the process to: - Delete an entry - Change the amount of an entry - Is there a means to manually add an entry other than upload?

    • Create Item group from a composite Item

      I have applied my mind for hours but cannot figure this out. Can you have a composite item in an item group?. E.g. We bundle different color and size SKU's together as composite items. Also Using composite items as Bill of Materials. We want to create

    • Better use of contacts

      Zoho inventory has the ability to add multiple contacts to customers. However Zoho inventory doesn't currently provide a way to link a contact to objects like sales orders. This means that while you can tell what company has placed a sales order you can't

    • Amazon.in FBA multiple warehouse integration with Zoho Inventory

      My organisation subscribed to Zoho One looking at the opportunity to integrate Amazon.in with Inventory. But during the configuration, we understood the integration has severe limitations when it involves multiple warehouses in the same Organisation.

    • Feature Request - Make Available "Alias Name" Field In Item List View

      Hi Zoho Inventory Team, I have noticed that the "Alias Name" field does not appear on the list of selectable columns in the Customise Columns feature in the Items module. This would be very useful to see for businesses who are using the Alias Name field

    • Feature Request - Option To Hide Default System Fields on Items

      Hi Zoho Inventory Team, As far as I know it is not possible to hid some of the defult system fields on Items, such as UPC, MPN, EAN, ISBN. A good use case is that in many cases ISBN is not relevant and it would be an improved user experience if we could

    • OpenAPI Specs are just plain wrong

      The provided yml files for generating the OpenAPI specs are absolutely riddled with errors and inconsistencies. From missing fields on the objects, to just incorrectly named resource objects. I'm having to go through and manually changing the spec to

    • Zoho Inventory - Composite Items - Assembly - Single Line Item Quantity of One

      Hi Zoho Inventory Team, Please consider relaxing the system rules which prevent an assembly items from consisting of a single line item and outputting a quantity of 1. A client I'm currently working with sells cosmetics and offers testers of their products

    • Categorize Items with Item Headers

      Hello customers, Did you ever want to classify items based on specific categories to help your customers understand your invoice better? With the new Item Header feature, you can easily categorize items in your invoices and estimates and give them a common title.  Item Headers are available in the Invoices, the Recurring Invoices and the Estimates module. It can be carried forward from estimates to invoices at the time of converting the estimates.  To add an item header: Go to the Estimates, Invoices

    • Push Forms to CRM

      Hello, I created a Form but forgot to integrate to CRM before many of the Forms were filled out. Is it possible to push those entries to CRM or should I just export a CSV then upload to CRM?

    • Zoho Creator Developer Console | Improved Distribution and Lifecycle Management for apps

      Hello everyone, We're excited to introduce new enhancements now in the Zoho Creator Developer Console. These updates strengthen private app distribution through licensing controls and extend environment support across all installed apps, helping teams

    • Logged out

      Hi, just been working on a sheet when a pop up box appeared telling me I'm going to be logged out in x number of seconds and if I reload I may lose any edits, or words to that effect. It did indeed log me out and I did indeed lose my last edits. Any idea

    • 554 5.1.1 – Mail sending blocked for the domain(s): [gmail.com]

      Here's your corrected text: Hello, I hope you are doing well. I was unable to send a message and received the following error: "554 5.1.1 – Mail sending blocked for the domain(s): [gmail.com]" I tried to send and deliver an email but got this error. I

    • You have reached the maximum limit of bank accounts that can be connected to Zoho Books through token.

      I can no longer connect to my bank account to download transactions into Zoho Books. I egt the error message: "You have reached the maximum limit of bank accounts that can be connected to Zoho Books through token. To connect more accounts, write to us

    • First Name in Mail

      While sending a mail/message to the user, I want only the first name to be displayed—for example: “Hi John” instead of the full name using "Hi ${Name_Field}"

    • Can you import projects into Zoho Projects yet?

      I see some very old posts asking about importing project records into Zoho Projects. But I can't find anything up to date about the topic. Has this functionality been added? Importing tasks is helpful. But we do have a project where importing projects

    • Connectivity issues with Google Calendar and third-party integrations

      Description: We are currently experiencing a critical failure with Zoho CRM third-party connections. This issue is heavily affecting our primary workflow. Symptoms: Sync Failure: Existing Zoho CRM to Google Calendar connections have been failing for approximately

    • Add Reauthentication Option for Zoho Bug Tracker Integration in Zoho Desk

      Hello Zoho Desk Team, We hope you're doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the Zoho Bug Tracker integration within Zoho Desk. Current Limitation: At the moment, there is no option to reauthenticate the Zoho Bug Tracker integration in

    • Newby Questions

      Q1. The top bar of Zoho Books has a "Search in Banking (/) " field. What is the proper use of this text box? - Searching for Amazon for example has no results but there are transactions. - Is the search case sensitive? - Are regular expressions allowed?

    • Transaction Rule Matching

      Q1. Is there a method to have the Transaction Rules applied across multiple Bank Accounts? Q2. To match "contains" text in Transaction Rules, is a wildcard or regular expression required? Is it case sensitive? Would searching for "issue" in the following

    • Introducing parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk [Early access]

      Hello Zoho Desk users! We have introduced the parent-child ticketing system to help customer service teams ensure efficient resolution of issues involving multiple, related tickets. You can now combine repetitive and interconnected tickets into parent-child

    • Three Zoho Billing Limitations Blocking Standard Subscription Operations

      After working through Zoho Billing support for over a year on these three issues without resolution, we wanted to flag them to the broader community. We are curious whether other businesses are running into the same walls. 1. Cannot Prepone (Move Earlier)

    • Automation #3 - Auto-sync email attachments to tickets

      This is a monthly series where we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Most of our customers use email

    • Can't add a sender adress from zoho campaigns

      hi, I need to change the sender address for a campaign.  When i try to add it i get a message to say 'duplicated email address found while adding your sender address'.  This is the first campaign i'm sending so I don't understand why this message is displayed? Thanks Jane 

    • Using a custom single line External ID form as merge fields in templates

      Hey everyone, We're looking to integrate a few external systems better with our Zoho CRM, and we had hoped to use external fields for this purpose. In this case, it would mean being able to use our own inoice system's invoice numbers are a direct id compatible

    • Introducing Workqueue: your all-in-one view to manage daily work

      Hello all, We’re excited to introduce a major productivity boost to your CRM experience: Workqueue, a dynamic, all-in-one workspace that brings every important sales activity, approval, and follow-up right to your fingertips. What is Workqueue? Sales

    • Zoho CRM - Feature Request - Analytics Components Group By Week Alternative Formats

      On the Zoho CRM Analytics Components, please consider adding an option to allow group by week format to be changed to other formats such as Week Commencing or Week Ending dates, rather than the current Week Number. This would provide improved usability

    • Dashboard target enhancements

      Often individuals in IT are creating dashboards for their sales team. The ability to create a single dashboard that can be used by multiple people is key. A components for a dashboard have the ability to filter by logged in user which is great. However

    • Zoho Campaigns - Feature Request - Re-Send Existing Email Action in Automations/Journeys

      Hi Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Marketing Automation teams, I would like to suggest a feature that would make building and managing complex automations significantly easier. The Feature Introduce a “Re-Send” or “Send Existing Email” action within Automations

    • Can I write a check in Zoho Books with no associated bill?

      This currently does not seem possible, and I have a client that desperately needs this function if I am able to convert them with Quickbooks. Thank you in advance for your reply. 

    • ISO 3166-2 Compliant Country and Regions

      Zoho should consider implementing ISO 3166-2 standards for countries and regions in address dropdowns. It adds a lot of noise in the data when items added programmatically conform to ISO 3166-2 (e.g., TX for Texas, CA for Canada, etc.), but the few items

    • US State abbreviations in Address fields

      In regards to all Address fields within Zoho, Is there a way to change the State field to be the 2 letter abbreviation vs the full spelled out US State name? Example: "Washington" should be WA. I am able to type in the abbreviated state, but it's not

    • Zoho Booking - TIN vs ATIN & ITIN

      Zoho Booking Vendors allows for TAX ID values of SSN, EIN, ATIN an ITIN. There is no option for TIN. What is the method to properly add TIN to the list of taxable values for companies? For reference: Social Security Numbers (SSN) Individual Taxpayer Identification

    • How to see Statement Details Shown in Unclassified Transactions in All Transactions?

      All, The list of Unclassified Transactions show the Statement Details and Descriptions. What is the method to see that column in the All Transactions list? -Thanks!

    • Zoho Books | Product updates | October 2025

      Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From iOS 26 updates to viewing reports as charts, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Zoho Books Updates for Apple Devices At WWDC 2025, Apple

    • Bill sent for Payment Approval

      Zoho Books currently supports three levels of transaction approval for bills: Draft, Submit, and Approved. We are looking to add a layer of approval like a bill marked for payment before initiating payment requests through HSBC Bank. Can you please guide

    • Ask the Experts - Live Q&A webinar

      Hello Community, We’re excited to host our very first Ask the Experts session! Join us on 7 April 2026 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. (IST) for this live webinar Q&A session, where you will have an opportunity to connect directly with our product experts, gain

    • All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

      Availability Update: 29 September 2025: It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition exclusively for IN DC users. 2 March 2026: Available to users in all DCs except US and EU DC. 24

    • Next Page