Leverage layout rules to customize workflow

Layout rules in Zoho Sprints primarily aim to customize the field layout of your creation forms to meet complex requirements. But it doesn't stop there. Its customization can push the boundaries of how your fields behave, how data is gathered, how processes are branched out, and how workflow is channeled.

Based on conditions, you can tailor field behavior, direct the life cycle of an item, mandate specific actions, restrict the field options, or auto-assign users. The possibilities are aplenty.

We've tried to provide a few sample scenarios that help you automate your data collection and progress tracking flow. If you have any specific requirements, please state them in the comments, and we'll find out if layout rules can help you.

Use case 1: Restricting item statuses based on work item types

With layout rules, each item type can have its own workflow. This means it can have its own unique set of statuses that align with its specific lifecycle.

Let's assume you have three item types: Bug, Story, and Task.

Each type follows its own lifecycle, represented by the following statuses.

• Bug goes through the To Do, In Progress, Bug Fixing, Bug Testing, and Done statuses.
  
• Story has To Do, Ideation, In Progress, Development, Review, and Done.
  
• And Task moves through a simple To Do, In Progress, and Done.
  

To align with these flows, certain statuses should not be available to specific item types. For instance, a story or a task should not be moved to the Bug Fixing status. Similarly, a bug or a task should not be moved to the Development status.

To enforce this, we can create layout rules that control which statuses are available based on the item type.

So, we'll create three conditions with each item type as the primary field.

• If the item type is Bug, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to To Do, In Progress, Bug Fixing, Bug Testing, and Done.
  
• If the item type is Story, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to To Do, Ideation, In Progress, Development, Review, and Done.
  
• If the item type is Task, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to To Do, In Progress, and Done.
  

Together, these conditions control the status progression for each item type. So, when you create a bug, it will only progress into the statuses that belong to the Bug lifecycle.

Use Case 2: Restricting future statuses based on the item's current status

When your team requires a pre-defined strict workflow where an item can be moved from a specific status to only a few statuses, layout rules can help implement this. For example, an item in the Bug Fixing status should only move to Bug Testing, and no other status. This way, each status controls the next status in the workflow.

To ensure this, create layout rules specifying conditions for each of the item status:

• If the status is To do, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to In progress and Rejected.
  
• If the status is In progress, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to In progress and Development.
  
• If the status is Development, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to Review Level 1.
  
• If the status is Review Level 1, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to Reopen and Review Level 2.
  
• If the status is Reopen, specify the condition with the trigger action to restrict the status pick list to In progress.
  

Use case 3: Making a field mandatory based on item status or item type

Let's assume you want a field to be made mandatory only when the item is moved to one particular status. Which implies the field will remain non-mandatory during other statuses and will be mandatory only at that particular status. So, the progress to that status must be allowed only when the mandatory field is updated.

For instance, when an item is moved to the Done status, the Approver field must become mandatory to record completion approval. To ensure that this process is executed, you can create a layout rule where the primary field is the Status Name. If the status field is updated to Done, specify the condition with the trigger action to set the Approver field as mandatory.

​

​

Use case 4: Showing or hiding a section or field based on item types

Layout rules enable you to show or hide fields or sections based on item type conditions.

Let's say a section with fields related to a new feature should only be visible when the item type is New Feature.

Similarly, when the item type is Security Issue, the section with fields related to Security issue must be visible.

To achieve this, create a layout rule with Item Type as the primary field.

• Create a condition for the New Feature item type with a trigger action to show the New Feature Details section.
  
• Create a condition for the Security Issue item type with a trigger action to show the Security Issue Details section.
  

Use case 5: Selecting specific assignees for item types and priorities

Layout rules can help you assign users based on the item type and priority. Let's say your team has a group of developers with varied levels of experience and expertise. You want to assign the high priority items to a more experienced member like John, while assigning low priority items to a novice like Peter.

If the item type is Bug and the priority level is Critical, you can assign the bug to John. If the priority level is High, it goes to Peter.

To meet this requirement, you can create a layout rule with Item Type as the primary field.

• Create a condition for the item type Bug with a subcondition where the priority level is Critical and the trigger action has the Set Field Value Assignee as John.
  
• For the same condition, add a subcondition where the priority level is High and the trigger action has the Set Field Value Assignee as Peter.

Similarly, say you want the Task item type with a medium priority level to go to Helen, and a low priority level should go to James.

• Create a condition for the item type Task with a subcondition where the priority level is Medium and the trigger action has the Set Field Value Assignee as Helen.
  
• For the same condition, add a subcondition where the priority level is Low and the trigger action has the Set Field Value Assignee as James.
  

These are just a few examples of how layout rules can streamline your project management. Do you have any particular scenario that needs resolution? Please share it with us.

Thanks,

Zoho Sprints Team

• Topic Participants

• Neethinila R

  

• Sticky Posts

• Tip #28 - Plan less and deliver more using WIP limit in Zoho Sprints

  Hello, It's been a while since we met with a quick, interesting tip. As the saying goes, "Too much of anything is good for nothing", today the focus is on delivering your outcomes with the right amount of planning. Your plan should be practical, calculative, and achievable for driving a qualitative success.    Laura's plan   Laura has a habit of planning her project deliverables before assigning work to her team-mates. Once the plan is finalized, she schedules a general meeting with her team and

• Tip # 3- Working on the Scrum board

  Continuing from our Tip #2 on leading to a sprint, let's see how to manage the work items on the Scrum board.  Once you start the sprint your work items are automatically displayed on the Scrum board where you will actually manage the work items. It is a snapshot of the backlog items identified for the current sprint.    The layout of the Scrum board Simply put, the scrum board is just like a physical board with sticky notes on which the work items of the active sprint are displayed.  The scrum board

• Tip#2- Leading you to a Sprint

  Product Backlog After the user stories are written and finalized, they are sorted to create the Product Backlog for the project during the Backlog Grooming meeting. This is a master list of all the work items that have been identified for the project and sorted by priority. Requirements are not constant during this period.The Product Backlog is dynamic and is an ongoing process. Every user story in the Product Backlog is customer centric. The Product Backlog includes: User centric stories based on

• Tip #1- Why swimlanes?

  Lanes define a clear path to reach your destination. In Agile, swimlane is one such concept that sets a simple and clear process of the work that you do.   The concept of swimlane can be related to the pool, where the swimmers gather in their respective lanes to start off. Similar to the pool, work items are grouped in different categories. Each category is referred as a lane and is displayed in horizontal format. Swimlanes are effective in categorizing the work items with respective to specific

• Recent Topics

• can I link a contacts to multiple accounts

  can I link a contacts to multiple accounts

• Free webinar! Digitize recruitment and onboarding with Zoho Sign and Zoho Recruit

  Hello, Tired of being buried in onboarding paperwork? With the integration between Zoho Sign and Zoho Recruit, a powerful applicant tracking system, you can digitize and streamline the entire recruitment and onboarding process, all from one platform.

• Open Activities view.

  I really like the new views for the open and closed activities inside the deals. But when you are in the tab view instead of the column view you can only complete and edit the open activity there isn't the 3 dot option to be able to delete the activ

• Potentially Outdated and Vulnerable Chromium Engine Installed by Ulaa Browser Installer

  I just installed Ulaa Browser a few minutes ago. Whats My Browser page shows I am using an outdated Chromium engine meaning I might be vulnerable for security exploits that might have got fixed in the new version.

• Potentially hardcoded list of Browsers to import from (after Ulaa Setup)

  I have just installed Ulaa Browser and found that the list of browser to import data is potentially hardcoded ones rather than looking at the system. I do not have FF, IE and Edge is not my default itself. I would appreciated if Ulaa detected my browsers

• From Layout to Code: Finding Custom Field IDs in Zoho Projects.

  Hello everyone! Ever found yourself wondering how to get the API names and IDs of custom fields in Zoho Projects while working on custom functions? Here’s a simple and effective way to do it! This method makes it super easy to locate the right field details

• Can I create multiple Zoho mail accounts?

  Hey there I've searched the FAQ for this but didn't find the answer I was looking for. I like to have a different e-mail address for personal stuff, for creating account on websites, and for online banking / e-commerce. Is it allowed to create three accounts for one person on Zoho? I already have one personal e-mail address, can I sign up two more times from the homepage? Thanks

• Employee type and source translation

  In Zoho People, when I fill in the employee’s information, there is the option to determine the type of employment (employee type) and the hiring source. Both options ALWAYS appear in English. It is extremely inconvenient to deal with poorly translated

• Sync Issue Between Zoho Notebook Web App on Firefox (PC) and Android App

  Hi Zoho Notebook Community, I'm facing a sync problem with Zoho Notebook. When I use the web version on Mozilla Firefox browser on my PC, I create and save new notes, and I've synced them successfully. However, these new notes aren't showing up in my

• Request for Clarity on Timeline for True GPT/Zia Auto-Response Capabilities

  I appreciate Zoho’s steady innovation, but I’m concerned that Desk and Zia remain well behind modern AI capabilities. For years, GPT-based tools have been able to generate and send contextual responses, yet Zoho Desk only supports summarization or suggested

• Notebook audio recordings disappearing

  I have recently been experiencing issues where some of my attached audio recordings are disappearing. I am referring specifically to ones made within a Note card in Notebook on mobile, made by pressing the "+" button and choosing "Record audio" (or similar),

• Has anyone built a ticket export that allows Help Center users to export the tickets shown in the My Area list they are looking at?

  Hi, We are moving to Zoho Desk soon. Our current support system displays an option in our help center allowing customers to export their Open, Closed, or all tickets based on which list they are looking at. We need to offer the same in Zoho Desk help

• Zoho Desk: Q2 2025 | What's New

  Hello everyone, We are excited to announce Zoho Desk's 2025 Autumn updates. This release brings new features and enhancements that improve work management and enable businesses to provide a better overall support experience. Spanning from Zia Agents to

• Checkboxes not adhering to any policy in mail merge - data from CRM

  I want checkboxes to appear depending on whether the checkbox in the CRM module is ticked or not. However, the tickboxes that appear are either ticked or not, but don't correlate to the actual selections in the CRM module. This is is despite updating

• Items Landed Cost and Profit?

  Hello, we recently went live with Zoho Inventory, and I have a question about the Landed Cost feature. The FAQ reads: "Tracking the landed cost helps determine the overall cost incurred in procuring the product. This, in turn, helps you to decide the

• CC and/or BCC users in email templates

  I would like the ability to automatically assign a CC and BCC "User (company employee)" into email templates. Specifically, I would like to be able to add the "User who owns the client" as a CC automatically on any interview scheduled or candidate submitted

• Create Contract API Endpoint Unclear "inputfields" Requirements

  Hello, I'm trying to create a Deluge function that accepts inputs from a form in Zoho Creator and creates a barebones contract of a given type. See below for the current code, cleaned of authentication information. // Fetch form data // Hidden field client_name

• Kaizen #46 - Handling Notes through Zoho CRM API (Part 1/2)

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! This week, we will discuss Handling Notes through Zoho CRM API. What will you learn from this post? Notes in Zoho CRM Working with Notes through Notes APIs 1. Notes in Zoho CRM 1a. Why add Notes to records? Notes are a great way to summarize your observations on customer and prospect interactions and outcomes. By saving notes as CRM data, a sales rep will always be able to keep track of how a sale is progressing. To know more about notes in

• Marketer's Space - Why email marketing matters in ecommerce (and how to get started with Zoho Campaigns)

  Hello Marketers, Welcome to this week's Marketer's space post. Today, we'll discus why email marketing matters in ecommerce businesses. Running an online store is exciting but challenging. If you're running an online store, you've probably experienced

• Zoho Campaigns Event timestamps do not propagate to Zoho CRM

  We have integrated Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns. But when looking at Contact records, the Campaign event data is missing the actual timestamps: especially when a particular email was sent. They're not in the Campaigns related list, and the cannot be found

• Kaizen #121 : Customize List Views using Client Script

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another interesting Kaizen post. In this post, we can discuss how to customize List Views using Client Script. This post will answer the questions Ability to remove public views by the super admin in the Zoho CRM and Is

• Setting default From address when replying to request

  At the moment, if I want to reply to a request, the From field has three options, company@zohosupport.com, support@company.zohosupport.com, and support@company.com.  The first two are really internal address that should never be seen by the customer and

• Tip #45 - Explore Your Support Reach with Zoho Assist’s Geo Insights - 'Insider Insights'

  Understanding where your remote support sessions are happening can help you make smarter decisions, allocate resources effectively, and improve overall customer satisfaction. In this week's Zoho Assist's community post we will be exploring Geo Insights

• Formatting of text pasted into Zoho documents

  Howdy, I'm a newbie and finding Zoho an improvement to MS Word. Consider yourself hugged. High on my wish list would be plain text cut-and-paste. When pasting text from the web to Zoho, presently Zoho imports the formatting along with the text. This means that every cut-and-paste operation brings in text in a different font, size, or style. Can we have at least the option of importing plain text without formatting (or better yet, is this option already out there?) ... Thanks Helen

• Add additional features to Zoho Tables

  Zoho Tables is a really great tool, why not add features like diagramming capability into the tool from applications like Draw.io which I believe is open source, you should be able to do wireframes, process flow diagrams, network design, etc. Please note

• The Social Wall: August 2025

  Hello everyone, As summer ends, Zoho Social is gearing up for some exciting, bigger updates lined up for the months ahead. While those are in the works, we rolled out a few handy feature updates in August to keep your social media management running smoothly.

• The Social Wall: July 2025

  Hello everyone! July has brought some exciting new updates to Zoho Social. From powerful enhancements in the Social Toolkit to new capabilities in the mobile app, we’ve packed this month with features designed to help you level up your social media presence.

• Use Zoho Creator as a source for merge templates in Zoho Writer

  Hello all! We're excited to share that we've enhanced Zoho Creator's integration with Zoho Writer to make this combination even more powerful. You can now use Zoho Creator as a data source for mail merge templates in Zoho Writer. Making more data from

• Tagged problem !!!

  Damn it, we're one of dozens of construction companies in Africa, but we can't link purchasing invoices to projects. Why isn't this feature available?

• Syntax for URLs in HTML Snippets

  What are some best practices for inserting a URL in an HTML snippet? I've looked at Zoho Help articles on navigation-based and functional-based URLs, but I'm still unclear on how to incorporate them in an HTML snippet. For example, 1. How do I link to

• The Social Wall: June 2025

  Hello everyone, We’re back with June Zoho Social highlights. This month brought some exciting feature updates—especially within the Social Toolkit—to enhance your social media presence. We engaged with several MSME companies through community meet-ups

• Make panel configuration interface wider

  Hi there, The same way you changed the custom function editor's interface wider, it would be nice to be able to edit panels in pages using the full width of the screen rather than the currently max-width: 1368px. Is there a reason for having the configuration panel not taking the full width? Its impossible at this width to edit panels that have a lot of elements. Please change it to 100% so we can better edit the layouts. Thanks! B.

• Tip 7: How to fetch data from another application?

  Hi everyone, Following our Zoho Creator - Tips and Tricks series every fortnight, we are back today with a tip based on one of the most popular questions asked in our forum. This tip would help you fetch data from another application(App B) and use it

• The Social Wall: May 2025

  Hey everyone, We're excited to share some powerful updates for the month of May! Let's take a look! Reply to your Instagram and Facebook comments privately through direct messages Are you tired of cluttered comment threads or exposing customer queries

• Sub-Form Fields as Filters for Reports

  Hi, I would like to use the Sub-Form Fields as Filters in Reports just like we do for Main Page Fields. Thanks Dan

• Zoho CRM Formula - Current Time minus Date/Time field

  Hello, I am trying to prevent duplicate emails going to clients when more than 1 deal is being updated. To do this, I would like to create a formula to identify if a date/time field is >= 2 hours ago. Can someone please help me write this formula? Example:

• Billing Management: #7 Usage Billing in Telecom & Internet Service Provider

  Telecom and Internet Service Providers operate in markets where usage varies drastically from one customer to another. While flexible, usage-based models align revenue directly with consumption, they also introduce operational challenges like real-time

• Zoho Sprints - Q3 updates for 2025

  The updates for the third quarter of 2025 are out. A few significant features and enhancements have been rolled out to improve user experience and product capabilities. The following are the updates: Manage tags and cluster tags Record and maintain project

• Kaizen #208 - Answering your Questions | Functions, AI and Extensions

  Hello Developers! Welcome back to a fresh week of Kaizen! We are grateful for your active participation in sharing feedback and queries for our 200th milestone. This week, we will answer the queries related to Functions and Extensions in Zoho CRM. 1.

• Zoho CRM still doesn't let you manage timezones (yearly reminder)

  This is something I have asked repeatedly. I'll ask once again. Suppose that you work in France. Next month you have a trip to Guatemala. You call a contact there, close a meeting, record that meeting in CRM. On the phone, your contact said: "meet me

• Next Page