Zoho Developer Community Monthly Digest - October 2023

Zoho Developer Community Monthly Digest - October 2023



Hello everyone!

Welcome to the spooktacular October edition of the Zoho Developer Community Digest. October is a month when technology and cybersecurity awareness take center stage, as it is globally recognized as Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It's a time when developers don their virtual capes, not only to embrace the eerie vibes of Halloween but also to stand guard against ghoulish hackers. We'll be exploring how to stay safe in the digital realm and unveil some exciting updates in the developer world at Zoho. Let's get down to business!

Techtober Highlights

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

With the emergence of a multitude of cyber threats, it's paramount to reinforce the importance of cyber safety and decipher the malicious threats and vulnerabilities. Zoho's dedication to data security and privacy is widely known. To uphold this commitment, Zoho participated in the Cybersecurity Awareness Month campaign. Read through this blog to understand the history of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Zoho's theme this year, and how to leverage tools and practices to improve online security.

Zoho Developer Hangout - Episode 10

In this episode, our community member @Anonymous User, CRM Engineer at Vaspian, offers insights on developing maintainable applications, and imparts a great deal of  knowledge from his experiences in handling errors in Deluge. He goes on to talk about different scenarios where tools like Zoho Catalyst, GCP, AWS, and other serverless functions come in handy, and their effective utilization for different business use cases. 

Zoho QEngine

We're thrilled to introduce a test automation software to run your entire testing lifecycle. Check out what's in store for developers and quality teams as the beta version of Zoho QEngine is now open to public. 

Catalyst 2.0

The all-new Catalyst brings you a host of services that are designed to fuel your ideas and accelerate your app development. From powerful AI/ML tools, to browser automation, to seamless application hosting, there's a solution for your every need. Read more about it here.

Zoho Cliq 5.0

An enterprise-ready and AI-driven solution designed to make your communication smarter and more efficient. Cliq 5.0 is tailored for enterprises with advanced AI features to make work effortless including additional features for smarter meetings, and a revamped developer platform. Check out what's new here.

Upcoming Events

Here are the exciting events lined up for the community in the coming weeks:
  1. Zoho Cliq for Developers 101: In this season's Developers 101 series, we're focusing on Zoho Cliq developer platform. This is a three-part series, curated to provide a comprehensive understanding of the various Cliq Platform components, such as slash commands, bots, widgets, and more. Beyond that, it elucidates specific business problems these features address. For registration and more detailsclick here.

  2. Zoho Developer Hangout 11: In this episode, Zoho MVP @Bhoomi Joshi and her teammate @Ram Adarasupally, are set to share their take on the significance of custom portals, integration of Zoho applications with third-party web portals, and the technology stack involved in the underlying architecture. They will also review the business process of a custom portal in a demo that focuses on banking integrations and custom API. Register here and know more.

  3. Extensions 101 (continued): The first five sessions of this series provided an overview of several key features within the Sigma platform, such as building extensions, authentication mechanisms, authorization methods, and creating widgets. The next two sessions in this series will focus on an authentication mechanism and its relevant authorization approach for integrating Zoho CRM with other applications. Register here to participate in this exciting series.

  4. Creator Tech Connect Series: Creator's tech connect series would comprise of technical sessions that provide immersive training on the key essentials and technical nuances of building a solution in Zoho Creator. This is a great opportunity for our developer community to stay informed about Creator's new feature releases, product roadmap, best practices to follow while scripting in deluge, new deluge concepts, and cloud functions. Click here for more information. 

    Date: November 16th, 2023

    Topic: Catchup and Release Updates in Zoho Creator

    APAC & ANZ: 11 AM to 12 PM IST - Registration Link

    Americas & EMEA: 9 PM to 10 PM IST - Registration Link


  5. Creator Learning Table Series: This series is designed to provide users with valuable insights and knowledge about Creator's capabilities in various business use cases and applications. This year we've adopted the "12 Months, 12 Industries" concept. Each month, we will focus on a specific industry, illustrating its unique processes with real-time business scenarios and how to make best use of Creator for that industry.

    Date: November 9th, 2023

    Topic: Learning Table Series: Creator For Hospitality

    APAC & ANZ: 11 AM to 12 PM IST - Registration Link

    Americas & EMEA: 9 PM to 10 PM IST - Registration Link

Community Discussions

Zoho Developer Forum

Developers ZUG Cliq Channel

Note: These conversations are confined to the Developers ZUG Cliq channel members. If you're keen on becoming a part of this space, please fill in this onboarding form to receive your invitation to join the channel.
  • Following the Zoho Developer Hangout - Episode 9, @Anonymous User shared an article that explains how to send JSON parameters from Client Script to a Deluge function when using ZDK.Apps.CRM.Functions.execute(). Get access to the well-regarded article here.
  • When @Anonymous User encountered difficulties updating an integration field in Zoho Projects using API (Deluge scripts)Tasha Willows-Staples stepped in and pointed him in the right direction in this conversation.
  • Take a look at the suggestions given by @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, and @Anonymous User when Anthony wanted to trigger a notification in Zoho CRM when the current owner changes from a specific set of owners.
  • @Anonymous User was experiencing issues with Zoho CRM Client Script's "setValue" function on the Detail Page, and @Anonymous User provided a helpful workaround, which you can find in this conversation
  • Looking for a way to add alerts when users click the cancel or submit buttons in Zoho Creator and understand how to call these buttons in Deluge? Find the solution in this conversation.
  • @Anonymous User thoughtfully curated a repository of support email addresses for various products that would prove beneficial to the community. Click here to access the sheet.
  • Wondering what's the best approach to setup sales territories based on Zip Codes? You're in good company! When Brian reached out for advice, Jessica provided a starting point.
Resource Spotlight

We've consolidated all the resources from the developer community learning series into a centralized hub for your convenient access. Consider bookmarking the Zoho Developer Community website to stay informed about the latest updates in the developer community.
  • Zoho CRM Developer Updates:
    • Record Locking APIs were released in versions 3, 4, and 5, that allow you to lock, unlock records, view and edit locking information of locked records.
    • Upgraded the PHP SDK supporting v5 APIs to version 3.0.0.
    • Upgraded the Java SDK supporting v5 APIs to version 4.0.0.
    • Upgraded the NodeJS SDK supporting v5 APIs to version 3.0.0.
    • Released the Python SDK supporting v5 APIs, with support for new APIs.

Community Spotlight

ZDH Speakers

The contributions of our ZDH presenters have been instrumental in the success of the this segment. We extend our heartfelt appreciation for their efforts.

As a continuation of featuring a ZDH presenter each month, this time, we would like to introduce our third ZDH presenter, Christopher Mowers. Explore this post to discover the knowledge and insights he shared with the community.

Cliq Channel Contributors

The Developers ZUG Cliq channel has consistently served as the primary hub for community members seeking technical assistance and engaging in savvy discussions. Here are our top contributors who have gone the extra mile to support and assist the Zoho Developer Community:



We want to express our sincere appreciation to all our community contributors. Your commitment, expertise, and the time you invest are invaluable to the community. 


For those who are new to the Zoho Developer Community, check out this post to get started. 


We appreciate you dedicating your time to peruse this month's digest. Make sure to follow the digest each month for the most recent insights and conversations. Stay connected and participate in the forums to be featured in the upcoming month's digest. Wishing you a fantastic month ahead!


Happy coding!


SEE ALSO

    • Recent Topics

    • Zoho FSM API Developer Needed

      Hi, I’m looking for a developer with experience using Zoho FSM APIs. Scope: Connect WordPress website booking form to Zoho FSM Check availability (date, time, region) Create Work Orders + Service Appointments automatically Notify both customer and scheduler
    • Revenue Management: #4 What if there are uncertainties in project or service delivery?

      Our previous post taught us how Zoho Billing makes life easy for businesses with its automated revenue recognition rule. However, certain businesses have more challenges that an automated system cannot handle, and there are certain situations where automated
    • This mobile number has been marked spam. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com

      Bom dia, estou tentando colocar o número 11 94287-6695 e esta com erro "This mobile number has been marked spam. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com" pode me ajudar, por favor?
    • Items Serial Tracking Issue

      We enabled Zoho Items inventory tracking then disabled it after some time now we want to enable it again When I check the missing serial number reports I see one item But I cant see any option to Add the serial numbers Where and how to add the serial
    • Zoho Payroll integration with Zoho Books - unable to match multiple bank feeds to one wage payment

      For one employee's wage, I make two partial payments. Those bank feed transactions come into Zoho Books via bank integration. I make one pay-run for the month in Zoho Payroll and that comes into Zoho Books via the Zoho integration. Zoho Books doesn't let me match multiple bank feed transactions against a single wage item. Please fix urgently. I can't complete my books because of this.
    • Add Checkbox Selection & Bulk Actions to Delivery Challans Module

      Hi Zoho Team, I’ve noticed that in the Sales Orders module, there are checkboxes beside each entry that allow users to select multiple records for bulk actions such as print, email, or delete. However, in the Delivery Challans module, this option appears
    • Can't be able to check-in in laptop

      even after giving location access still i can't be able to check-in in laptop.
    • Compensation Cess on Coal ₹400 per tonne. ?????

      The compensation cess rate varies by the type of product. And the cess is calculated based on the value of the product without GST. Coal, for example, comes with a cess of ₹400 per tonne. That means that if you sell 2 tonnes of coal that have a value
    • 7 month over zoho book purchase but still not immpliments Golive

      7 month over zoho book purchase but still not immpliments Golive one problems zoho team short out then other problems come still very poor mangments and immliments team . struggling with the templates in ZOHO Books. Especially with the placement of some
    • SMS to customers from within Bigin

      Hi All, Is there anyone else crying out for Bigin SMS capability to send an SMS to customers directly from the Bigin interface? We have inbuilt telephony already with call recordings which works well. What's lacking is the ability to send and receive
    • Parent & Member Accounts (batch updating / inheritance)

      Hello, I find the Parent Account functionality very useful for creating custom views and reports, but was wondering if I can also carry out batch editing on all members (aka children) of a Parent Account at the same time. Alternatively, can I set members to automatically inherit the values of the parent? For example: We have a chain of supermarkets that buy our products. These supermarkets are all members of a Parent Account in our CRM. We release a new product and all of the member stores wish to
    • Edit Legend of Chart

      I would like to edit the legend of the chart. Every time I enable the legend, I get a very unhelpful (1), and when I try to type to change to what I would desire, nothing happens, which is very frustrating. I've gone through your online tutorials and nowhere can I find a legend settings button. This seems a simple fix, where can edit the legend? Thanks.
    • Extended timeouts for APIs beyond 40secs for to accomodate LLMs

      A 40 second max response time for API calls is fine when connecting to most services, however is unsuitable when dealing with LLMs (ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini) where the response timing is very uncertain. Is there any way to increase this? It would be great
    • Deletion of Zoho Account

      To whom it may concern, Good day, My account has been created incorrectly in Zoho and I am not able to join my Company's Zoho account - attached screenshot for your kind reference Alphatronmarine - Portal Kindly advise procedure to delete this current
    • Workflow for deposit to bank account

      Hello, Is it possible to make a workflow when a deposit is made to your bank account which is coupled to Zoho books? I want Zoho to sent an email each time a deposit is made to our bank account via a workflow. Regards, Steven
    • Marking Retainer invoice paid through Deluge

      Hey Everyone, We have a scenario where we are collecting deposit payments on our website. Now, in zoho books, we need to create a retainer invoice and mark it as paid automatically using deluge just like we can mark normal invoices as paid. I have tried
    • Create a new record in custom module vi custom button

      I have zoho books premium plan . I have 2 custom modules in zoho books. 1. Goods Receipt 2. Delivery Order, I need to select multiple records from Goods Receipt and create a new Delivery order from these multiple records. (like multilple sales order into
    • Profile date settings

      At present I have "EEE, MMMM dd, yyyy" but this takes an exessive amount of column space, we should be able to input our own format. I would like to use "EEE, MMM dd, yy" - a much shorter version of the above but with the same abbreviated info, requiring
    • Delivery Method Field in Sales Order Module

      In Books and in Sales orders, the "Delivery Method" field seems to allow for anything to be entered and it seems to store those entries for future use.  When you chose to convert a sales order to a purchase order, the related field is now called "Shipment
    • Editing / Removing stages for pipeline

      Hello, I'm trying to create a new pipeline. I created a new stage and made an error when entering the probability. How can I edit fields in stages that I created? Can I delete these stages from "Add Stages" list?
    • Dynamically Filter User Lookup in CRM Subform

      We have a subform called Pricing Calculator in the Zoho CRM Opportunity module and need some assistance. Current Setup: First column: Picklist (Level) Second column: User Lookup field When a Level is selected, we want the User lookup to display only users
    • change time zone

      can't seem to figure out how to change the time zone of the project
    • Bigin iOS app update: Built-in telephony and RingCentral support

      Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce Built-In Telephony and RingCentral support in the latest iOS version(v1.11.13) of the Bigin mobile app. Once the integration is completed on the Bigin desktop site(bigin.zoho.com), you can choose the Built-In
    • Add Image or Update Image API - for Items Module

      I am trying to add new Items to Zoho Inventory from Zoho Creator. I achieved this using Zoho Inventory Create Item API, but how to add or update the item image from Zoho Creator to Zoho Inventory Item Module?
    • Introducing Booking Pages—a topping for your Calendar Scheduling needs!

      Greetings, We're here with a new topping for Bigin! Let's dive into the details. What does this topping do? Scheduling appointments with customers is one of the most common challenges small businesses face on a daily basis, as it often involves frequent
    • Debugging `try` blocks : Tip

      I find it annoying that if one line inside a `try` block has an error, the Deluge arser points the beginning of the block to the location of the error. BUT, if you temporarily comment out the initial `try {`  The parser goes through the whole block and
    • Use approval workflow comments in record scripts

      Greetings, i'm running an approval workflow for my records, during approval/rejection there is a step where comments are entered. i want to add there comments to the record and to use them in various deluge scripts like sending emails and so on.  how
    • ZOHO Store

      Not able to make a payment We are using Zoho One, and we are from India. The payment currency, which shows for us, is in USD. But the system says we can choose Country/Region India if it shows INR only. Attaching screenshots for more info.
    • Support Migration into Aliases in Zoho Mail

      Hello Zoho Mail Team, How are you? We are in the process of migrating some of our users from Google Workspace (Gmail and Google Drive) to Zoho. During this process, we noticed that Zoho Mail currently only supports migration into a primary mailbox and
    • API for Z Workdrive Flow Make-Integromat ?

      We are zoho workdrive fans Also we would like to have an api to work with Zoho Flow or with Make better known by its old name INTEGROMAT Is it planned and when? 3 months -6 months or more?
    • Apps Pane no longer visible

      I have read all the info and help and nothing works, I do not have a "show apps" anywhere and I can no longer see my Apps pane in the left hand side of mail, please advise how to get this back
    • Canvas View - Print

      What is the best way to accomplish a print to PDF of the canvas view?
    • 5名限定 課題解決型ワークショップイベント Zoho ワークアウト開催のお知らせ(8/21)

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。Zoho ユーザーコミュニティチームの藤澤です。 8月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにてオンライン開催します。 ▷▷参加登録はこちら:https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/eVOEnBsSQ2uvX4WN5Z5DeQ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは? Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目的とした「Zoho
    • New in Zoho Forms: Inline OTP Verification

      Hello form builders, We are excited to announce the launch of Inline OTP Verification in Zoho Forms, a smarter way to ensure the authenticity of the contact details you collect. Until now, OTP Verification in Zoho Forms worked as a pre-access step: respondents
    • Zoho Mail : Associate emails with Meeting records and allow multiple emails to be assocaited at once

      Is there a workaround that would allow either of these? I want to associate emails with Meeting records. I also would like to be able to select multiple emails at once for association with a record.
    • Create task from email

      Is there a way on mobile to create a task from an email? I use this feature a lot and when traveling now I read email on mobile. By the time I get to my office I forget about them since I didn't add it to a task. Is this feature missing on moble?
    • Zoho Socials - Unable to view Channels and SmartQ

      Hi, The channel Facebook has been added by the admin, however, it is not visible on the User level (employee). Other channels are visible. Also, we have the premium account, and SmartQ is not working. Can anyone help? Regards, Priyanka
    • Eliminating Manual Consolidation: Automating Currency Field Sync from Task to Project

      Hello Everyone, A Custom function is a user-written set of code to achieve a specific requirement. Set the required conditions needed as when to trigger using the Workflow rules (be it Tasks / Project) and associate the custom function to it. Requirement:
    • We want to set the "Converted from Lead" value in Deals using a Workflow or via a Deluge script. How?

      For use in Zoho Analytics, we need the field "Converted from Lead" filled in our deal records. This field is empty everywhere, because we do not create deals directly when converting a lead to a contact. We want to do that using the API or a workflow
    • Sales Orders: Quoted_Items + items in another subform -> into Ordered_Items ?

      hello, When creating Sales Orders, is it posible to inherit/fill the Ordered_Items with all the items from Quoted_Items + all the items from a customized subform with similar fields? Since you can create a sales order in different ways (convert, new -
    • Next Page