Zoho CRM Community Digest - July 2025 | Part 1

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

• Set Default Status of Assembly to "Assembled" When Entered in UI

  I've just discovered the new "confirmed" status of Assemblies within Inventory. While I understand the intent of this (allowing for manufacturing planning and raw material stock allocation), it was initially confusing to me when manually entering some

• How to apply customized Zoho Crm Home Page to all users?

  I have tried to study manuals and play with Zoho CRM but haven't found a way how to apply customized Zoho CRM Home Page as a (default) home page for other CRM users.. How that can be done, if possible? - kipi Moderation Update: Currently, each user has

• Plug Sample #14: Automate Invoice Queries with SalesIQ Chatbot

  Hi everyone! We're back with a powerful plug to make your Zobot smarter and your support faster. This time, we're solving a common friction point for finance teams by giving customers quick access to their invoices. We are going to be automating invoice

• Enrich your contact and company details automatically using the Data Enrichment topping

  Greetings, I hope you're all doing well. We're happy to announce the latest topping we've added to Bigin: The Data Enrichment topping, powered by WebAmigo. This topping helps you automatically enhance your contact and company records in Bigin. By leveraging

• Zoho Billing Partial Proration...

  Hi, In Zoho billing, we offer upgrades, downgrades, suspends, and resumes. We use online payment for most subscriptions, but have only a few that are offline, but we treat them the same either way.. We prorate only parts of these changes.. Right now zoho

• Any update on adding New Customer Payment Providers who support in store terminal devices?

  Currently there is only one Customer payment provider listed for terminal devices in USA- Everyware. They charge a monthly fee of almost $149 minimum. Will you add other providers - like Zoho Payments or Stripe or Worldpay that would allow integrated

• Getting Subform Fields to Display Top to Bottom

  I have a form where the fields are all in one column. I want to insert a subform where the fields are stacked in one column as well. I have built both the form and subform but the subform displays the fields from left to right instead of a stacked column. This will cause a problem displaying the subform correctly on mobile apps. How can I do this please?' Here is my form with subform now. As you can see the subform "Follow Up Activity" is displaying the fields left to right. I need them to go top

• [Feature Deprecated] Gamescope in Zoho Projects

  This feature is no longer available. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well, yes. That's true! Tiring work, buzzing coffee makers, busy turnstiles , occupied meeting rooms, back-to-back status updates and what not. Your everyday routine need not have to be this hectic. It can be more rewarding. It can be more fun. Zoho Projects believes in this fact and hence has launched Gamescope - A module that turns every project into an exciting game and boosts the spirit of your team by leaps and

• Creating a task, i can not work out how to get ID for What_Id

  hi From Module A function I map Module B record reference membershipid (ours). I need Module B Zoho ID to create the related to on task. All examples i've seen start with the Zoho ID. void automation.LTM_Assign_Dispute_Task(String membershipid) { try

• Can't connect to POP and SMTP over VPN

  I use Thunderbird to access Zoho Mail via POP and SMTP. I have configured an app-specific password for Thunderbird to use. Everything is properly configured and works correctly — until I enable my VPN. I'm using a paid commercial VPN service (Mullvad).

• my zoho mail is hacked

  my email is sending my username and password to people i dont know

• Suministrar accesos

  Asunto: Enable UPLOAD_RULE for API Attachments Mensaje: Hola, Necesito habilitar la capacidad de subir attachments vía API en Zoho Mail. Actualmente recibo el error: "UPLOAD_RULE_NOT_CONFIGURED" al usar el endpoint: POST /api/accounts/{accountId}/messages/attachments

• Introducing real-time document commenting and collaboration in Zoho Sign

  Hi, there! We are delighted to introduce Document commenting, a feature that helps you communicate with your recipients more efficiently for a streamlined document signing process. Some key benefits include: Collaborate with your recipients easily without

• Ticket Loop from Auto Responce

  We’re seeing an issue where a client’s help desk triggers a ticket loop. When they email us, our system creates a ticket and sends the acknowledgement. Their system then creates a ticket from that acknowledgement and sends one back to us, which creates

• How to make rule to filter out some emails from receiving the notification "Receiving a new ticket"?

  Good Morning, We are currently using the "Receiving a new ticket" notification rule to provide that auto reply template to a customer that emails us for support. However, there are some emails we don't want to receive this auto-reply. Where can I set

• Zoho Signatures Missing

  In the past after collecting signatures from two different PDFs I would merge them by calling an api and the signatures would appear in the combined PDF. Recently the signatures have disappeared whenever I combine the PDFs together. Why did this randomly

• Filter button in the Zoho Sheet Android App doesn't toggle on

  I am a new Zoho Sheets user and experiencing a specific issue with the filter functionality in the Android mobile application. Detailed Issue Description: The filter icon appears correctly in the toolbar. Upon tapping the filter icon/button, the toggle

• Automate pushing Zoho CRM backups into Zoho WorkDrive

  Through our Zoho One subscription we have both Zoho CRM and Zoho WorkDrive. We have regular backups setup in Zoho CRM. Once the backup is created, we are notified. Since we want to keep these backups for more than 7 days, we manually download them. They

• Exciting Updates to the Kiosk Studio Feature in Zoho CRM!

  Hello Everyone, We are here again with a series of new enhancements to Kiosk Studio, designed to elevate your experience and bring even greater efficiency to your business processes. These updates build upon our ongoing commitment to making Kiosk a powerful

• New activity options for workflows

  Greetings, We are excited to announce the addition of two new dynamic actions to our workflow functionality: Create Event and Schedule Call. These actions have been thoughtfully designed to enhance your workflow processes and bring more efficiency to

• Remove the “One Migration Per User” Limitation in Zoho WorkDrive

  Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to raise a critical feature request regarding the Google Drive → Zoho WorkDrive migration process. Current Limitation: Zoho WorkDrive currently enforces a hard limitation: A Zoho WorkDrive

• Kaizen #228 - Process Large-Scale Migrated Data Using Catalyst Solutions

  Howdy, tech wizards! This week’s Kaizen explores how Catalyst Solutions in the Zoho CRM Developer Hub help import large volumes of data into Zoho CRM while improving data quality and simplifying the migration process. Why Catalyst Solutions? Catalyst

• Zoho Expense Import Reports Won't Work Because Default Accounts Already Exist

  Im trying to import reports from another Zoho expense account to mine and im getting errors that won't allow the import to happen The account name that you've entered 'Ground Transportation' already exists. Enter another name for the account and try again.z

• Inactive License for free account.

  I recently upgraded my Cliq subscription not my team (on the free version), are unable to login to their accounts. The error message received is Inactive License Looks like you have not been covered under the current free plan of users. Please contact

• Syncing zoho books into zoho crm

  I was wondering how I can use zoho books in crm as I have been using them separately and would like to sync the two. Is this possible and if so, how? Thanks

• Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.34.0)

  Hello everyone! We’re excited to introduce the latest updates to Trident, which are designed to take workplace communication to the next level. Let’s take a quick look at what’s new. Connect with customers using Zoho Voice integration. You can now easily

• The Social Wall: January 2026

  Hello everyone, We’re back with the first edition of The Social Wall of 2026. There’s a lot planned for the year ahead, and we’re starting with a few useful features and improvements released in January to help you get started. Create a GBP in Social

• How to block whole domain?

  I am getting at least 50-75sometimes over 100 spams emails a day. I see a lot of the spam is coming from .eu domains. I would like to block /reject all email coming for the .eu domain. I do not have any need for email from .EU domains. Why won't the BlackList

• How Zoho Contracts Makes Negotiations Clear, Secure, and Transparent

  Negotiation is one of the most critical—and often most chaotic—stages of the contract lifecycle. Multiple stakeholders review the same document, propose changes, debate terms, and exchange feedback. Without the right tools, this collaborative process

• Error: Invalid Element tax_override_preference

  In both Books and Inventory, we're getting the following error whenever we try to enter any Bill: I think this is a bug. Even cloning an old bill (that obviously was entered just fine), this error occurs.

• Assign Income to Project Without Invoice

  Hello, Fairly new user here so apologies if there is a really obvious solution here that I am just missing... I have hundreds of small deposits into a bank account that I want to assign to a project but do not want to have to create an invoice every time

• How to Print the Data Model Zoho CRM

  I have created the data model in Zoho CRM and I want the ability to Print this. How do we do this please? I want the diagram exported to a PDF. There doesnt appear to be an option to do this. Thanks Andrew

• our customers have difficult to understand the Statements

  our costumers have big problems to understand Zohos Statements. we need a text box after the payment number to explain what the payments are for. Is it possible to develop a version of the Statement with that kind of box and if so whu can do it

• How to track a list of ALL the items that ONE customer bought?

  Hello, I am interested in getting a list of all the items that only ONE of my customers bought, and the invoices are what show up instead. It's very tedious to go through every single invoice when we sell a lot of items to this customer. Surely there

• Exchange Rate Updates

  Hi, It would be great that when you work with multiple currencies, the exchange rate updates automagically every day (as seen on Zoho Books) or at least that when you create/update an opportunity the exchange rate could be manually updated, or maybe both!

• Locked Out of Super Admin Account

  I'm locked out of my Super Admin account and the external e-mail is no longer associated with it. There seems to be a problem during set up, the system ought to ask to assign a new password instead of using Google accounts. Please help me get back access.

• Emails are going to notification folder and not in inbox

  emails are going to notification folder and not into inbox

• 550 5.4.6 Unusual sending activity detected. Please try after sometime

  Hi, I am receiving this error message when trying to send my emails. The only reason I can think why this is happening is my previous two emails were bounced back to me due to a non working mailbox error. I have followed the online links for unblocking

• Projects Home Customization

  Hello! We've been in Zoho One since July of last year, and my team has started providing feedback on what they'd like to do. Their latest wish is that they could have more control over the Projects Home content. For example, they want a card that shows

• IMAP search support

  Does Zoho Mail support IMAP search? https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9051.html#name-search-command TEXT <string> Messages that contain the specified string in the header (including MIME header fields) or body of the message. Servers are allowed to implement

• Next Page