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!

• Topic Participants

• Swetha S

  

• 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,

• Recent Topics

• Create Project while winning potentials - Projects v3 api updated code

  Hi all, I've been using the built in function to create a project while a deal is closed won and noticed it had some missing fields when trying to reference the zoho projects v3 api documentation. Specifically the project group had some issues when adding

• [Free Webinar] Zoho RPA - OCR, PDF Automation, & More

  Hello Everyone! Greetings from the Zoho RPA Training Team! We’re excited to invite you to our upcoming webinar on the latest release updates for Zoho RPA, where we’ll unveil powerful new capabilities designed to make your automation journey smarter, faster,

• Merge feature parity with writer

  Hello Zoho team, I have run into a workflow limitation with Zoho Contracts and the lack of merge feature parity with what Writer can do. We have created a fairly complex merge process to create a statement of work based on several fields in our CRM which

• Export option in Contacts is missing

  Hello - I've been clicking around Zoho all morning trying to find the export option. It formerly was in the right hand corner, above the search box, but now I don't see it. I've looked everywhere - Am I missing it somehow? I've attached a screenshot.

• Formatting of cells changing by itself and formulas not always calculating automatically

  I'm new to Sheets and have been setting up a budgeting template that has many linked tabs. It's going fairly well except certain quirky things have been happening from time to time. 1- sometimes when I scroll up or down I lose formatting from a random

• Unable to open iOS Zoho CRM app

  i am unable to open Zoho CRM iOS App in iPhone 14 Pro Max v18.5 and it is crashing immediately after i click to open

• Whatsapp BOT with CRM

  Hello, how do you use Whatsapp integrations in zoho CRM?

• sync two zoho crm

  Hello everyone. Is it possible to sync 2 zoho crm? what would be the easiest way? I am thinking of Flow. I have a Custom Module that I would like to share with my client. We both use zoho crm. Regards.

• Side-by-Side view on Windows 11

  Is there a way to open two notes in a side-by-side view? I'm running Notebook on a Desktop running Windows 11. If this feature doesn't exist, do you have plans for it?

• Value shows in balance sheet for Goods in Transit

  We have transferred goods from one warehouse to another warehouse and accepted the same at another warehouse. Although my balance sheet shows X amount as goods in transit value. I don't understand, how to clear that  Can anyone guide us please?

• Resolution Time Report

  From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports What are time-based reports? Time-based reports are valuable tools that help us understand how well things are going by breaking down key metrics over specific periods. By tracking, measuring,

• Ask for a quote to multple vendors

  We are able to send a Purchase order, but How can we Send a quote request to our vendor, once the value changes every time? I didn't see any feature like this in Zoho Books/ Inventory. Send this request with the Items that we want to know the cost, to

• Bigin merge field in email template for subject line to match lead name

  Hello We Are using email in to automatically create leads in our pipelines. When we want to reply from conversations, and apply an email template, it’s not matching the original subject line. It should be lead name to match. But it’s not working. Even

• How to create auto-link between Invoice and Quote in CRM

  It's strange that when you 'convert' a quote into an invoice, it doesn't auto-link the two. How can we develop an auto sync so we don't need to manually link each invoice to their respective quote?

• Why Are Columns Reset When Deleting Entry

  Hello, this is quite annoying. We use forms as a questionnaire for candidates, we filter entries by removing columns, when we delete an entry the columns reset. Every "delete" the columns reset, why!? Thank you

• Pi or Pie? A slice of infinity in customer service

  Hey everyone! While Pi Day is on March 14 (3.14), July 22 marks another special occasion: Pi Approximation Day! On this day, we recognize the mathematical constant π (pi ≈ 22/7); a number that's infinite, irrational, and never-ending. Pi is essential

• Configuración

  Hola acabo de instalar Zoho CRM y quiero configurarlo correctamente. Al respecto me surgen algunas dudas tales como la diferencia entre: Cuentas, posibles Clientes y Contactos. ¿Conceptualmente que son cada uno? ¿Como se se relacionan entre ellos? Si

• Why Can't I add unicode emoji's to my signature?

  Why would Zoho Mail prevent me from adding unicode emojis to my email signature? Every time I try to save the signature, Zoho Mail erases the emoji and any nearby content. Every time I setup something with Zoho, I know I'm going to run into some incredibly

• GL account associated to each supplier for new bill

  Hello I'm facing problem for all items of my bills that are not inventoried. The need is each time I enter new bill and after I select supplier the GL account section is autopopulated with default GL account (that I would like to add in supplier settings)

• LinkedIn verification link and otp not receiving

  For the last 2 to 3 weeks I'm trying to verify my LinkedIn account to access my company's LinkedIn page, Linkedin is sending verification links and codes to this email address but I have not received any codes or links. Please help me here. Looking forward

• Zoho reply to not working. just reply to my self

  Hello. i using on my wordpress website a contact form from Wsform. i can set the reply to email there. normally it works. but since i am using your wordpress plugin zoho mail it doesn`t work. its not using the reply to (email from customer). I just can

• Mail Merge Stuck in Queue

  I am trying to send Mail Merge's and it never sends out to the full list. It always hits a portion and the rest remain in the "Queue" - the emails I am sending are time sensitive, so I need this to be resolved or have a way to push the emails through

• SMTP Email Sending Not Working for My Domains and Apps

  Hello Zoho Support Team, I am experiencing a critical issue with sending emails via Zoho SMTP for my domain humanhup.com. Both of my applications, HumanHup and CheapUI, are unable to send emails using Zoho SMTP, even though the same setup was working

• Receiving too many Spam Leads. Why?

  I am receiving so many junk leads from web forms created by zoho's platform. The junk queries are increasing day by day and are affecting our business. I am continuously following up with zoho team from the past one year but not getting any satisfactory

• Why is Zoho supporting the Proud Boys?

  Hello. This is the only way I can find to contact your company. There is someone in Maine posing as a law enforcement officer, attempting to kidnap immigrants. They are also recruiting for a known hate group. They have an email address hosted by Zoho.com.

• Composite Item - Associated/Component Items

  I am trying to find the Associated Item/Component Item field in the Composite Item Table in Analytics. Has anyone been able to find and utilize this field in Analytics?

• What is a a valid JavaScript Domain URI when creating a client-based application using the Zoho API console?

  No idea what this is. Can't see what it is explained anywhere.

• 🚀 WorkDrive 5.0: Evolving from a file sharing app to an intelligent content management platform: Phase 2

  Hello everyone, WorkDrive's primary focus has always been to provide an intelligent and secure content management platform, simplify collaboration, and be the central repository of files for all Zoho apps. In our previous announcement, we unveiled the

• Use openUrl() to edit a specific record

  I am working on a queue app for my organization. I have a master queue that is a report of meetings with workflow buttons to manipulate the records. One of these buttons I would like to open the record and edit for the purpose of changing the queue lookup

• why i cant access my web without the www

  please help me

• Send Whatsapp with API including custom placeholders

  Is is possible to initiate a session on whatsapp IM channel with a template that includes params (placeholders) that are passed on the API call? This is very usefull to send a Utility message for a transactional notification including an order number

• Help Centre Articles in Desk, Zia and iframe

  Hi, We embed SOP documents into articles from Scribe into using iframe. We are looking at zia indexing articles to present to agents to aid their work. Please advise if zia can view and learn from the content within the iframe?

• Rich Text/WYSIWYG Input Area

  I'd like to have an option on ZoHo creator to create an input text area for HTML/rich text formatting. :)

• How to create a directory report from one-to-many relationship

  Hi all, Newbie here. I'm converting an Access DB to Creator. I've learned Forms are tables and Reports are used to edit table rows, not Forms. I've got the data loaded and can maintain it with the Reports already done. I've done filtering and sorting,

• Change Default Selection for Lookup field

  I have a Lookup field that I have locked, when I unlock it - the user can select the proper Zone but I need it locked, since this may change based on user selection of another field. Example. There are 3 potential zones. User A selects the Hospital Account

• Restrict visibility and user permissions Creator 5

  I don't understand how restrict visibility for reports interacts with the already established role permissions. It seems that the default on restrict visibility has everything checked for all users, but I cannot set up different levels of permission for different individuals.  Right now I have three different ways to manage users and their access and it's confusing because everything has not migrated to Creator 5. Don't the role permissions extend to the reports as well? Are the selections under

• LMS - Why do Trainers have to be Users?

  I'm not sure why the software is set up where trainers must be users (i.e., employees). This should really be changed, as there are many cases (the majority of cases for some companies) where classroom trainers are external or contractors. If this is

• ZOho mail not stopped working with my domain.

  i have changed my name server settings in my domain sigmasquaretec.in . After that my emails are not working with ZOHO.

• Request to Cancel Zoho Mail Subscription

  Hello Zoho Team, I have migrated to Google Workspace and would like to cancel my Zoho Mail subscription for my organization. Organization Name: AR Creators Media Admin Email: roman@arcreatorsmedia.com Subscription ID: RPUS2005901960812 Please cancel the

• zoho smtp limit for free users

  What is Zoho SMTP limit for free users?

• Next Page