The CRM Zen Show Episode 425 – Your Business Has Entered The Chat

Zoho News

Zoho: New App! “Talk” To All Your Data With Zia Chat

Ask one question and Zia Chat goes digging across CRM, Desk, Books, and the rest of your org to answer it, draft follow-ups, or even run on a schedule, all while respecting each user’s existing permissions. It runs on Zia’s own LLM or your pick of frontier model, though for “find me the churn risks” type queries you probably don’t need to pay up for the fancy one.

Zoho CRM: Native AI Agents for Faster CRM Customization

Type what you want in plain language and the new customization agents will set up profiles, roles, data sharing rules, review processes, and segmentation for you, though for profiles we’d suggest having the agent interview you about permissions first.

ZeptoMail: Renamed to Zoho CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service)

The transactional email service formerly known as TransMail, then ZeptoMail, now goes by Zoho CPaaS as it expands into WhatsApp, SMS, and voice, and it’ll even handle SMS compliance so you can skip that particular headache.

Zoho: Now Entering Vertical SaaS Solutions

Retail IQ, Auto DMS, lending, and real estate are among the new industry-built CRMs, and we’re curious how flexible they’ll be once deployed, since every business runs things a little differently.

Zoho CRM: Timeline Support for Subform Changes

Sometimes the building blocks bring the most joy, and now subform row additions, deletions, and edits show up right in the record timeline, labeled by a primary field you choose (Tim, we know you’re already remaking that field history code share).

Zoho CRM: Introducing Partner Relationship Management (PRM)

For companies running a partner network, this CRM add-on bundles a partner portal, deal registration, tiered programs, and automated commission calculations, starting in the India data center with other regions to follow.

Zoho Projects: CodeX Scripts for Custom Modules

Not to be confused with OpenAI’s coding model, CodeX Scripts are JavaScript snippets that validate Projects custom module data before a record saves, like blocking a security deposit that’s less than three times the monthly rent.

Zoho Billing: Introducing Omnichannel Subscription Management

If your mobile app sells subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play, the new in-app purchase SDK syncs those purchases into Billing so every subscriber lands in one place, no matter where they signed up.

Zoho Creator: Mobile Authentication for Portals

Portal users in the US and India data centers can now log in with a mobile number instead of (or alongside) email, because giving people the easiest way in is always how you cut friction.

Zoho Marketing Automation: WhatsApp Message Pricing Changes

Starting October 1, 2026, Meta will charge per message for utility templates sent inside the 24-hour customer service window, which affects every WhatsApp send through Marketing Automation.

Zoho One: Zoho Apptics Now Available

Apptics joins Zoho One, bringing crash reporting, performance monitoring, user behavior analytics, push notifications, and app store insights for mobile, web, and desktop apps into one privacy-focused console.

Zoho Projects & Sprints: September 2026 Feature Roundup

Projects picks up CodeX Scripts for time logs, layout rules for phases and custom modules, Zia time log suggestions, and a Time Log Grid View, while Sprints adds related lists, custom detail view layouts, and OKR layout rules.

Zoho Billing: August 2026 Feature Roundup

Share one hosted payment page for multiple items, name a Super Admin across your Zoho Finance apps, transfer active subscriptions between customers, and apply renewal pricing to advance invoices automatically.

Zoho Contracts: DocuSign Integration for Electronic Signatures

Connect your DocuSign account to send negotiated contracts for signature straight from Contracts, with signing activity tracked right on the contract record.

Zoho Mail: Malware Processing for Enhanced Email Security

Admins can automatically route emails containing JavaScript, macros, web bugs, or risky HTML tags like frames and forms straight to spam.

Zoho Mail: Display Name Spoofing Protection

Map key names like your CEO’s to their authorized addresses, and any email using those names from somewhere else gets sent to spam or quarantine.

Zoho Social: Snapchat is Now Available

Publish and schedule Snapchat Spotlights and Stories alongside your other channels, available on Standard plans and up.

Zoho Workplace: August 2026 Feature Roundup

Cliq 7.0 arrives, Mail lands on AWS Marketplace, Writer gains DocuSign signing and per-subform-record merges, and Sheet now works offline on iPhone.

Code Share of the Week

Create a Zoho Books Project from a Zoho CRM Deal via API

Written by Adam on our team, this snippet kicks off the work on a won deal by creating a matching project in Zoho Books (a Books project, not Zoho Projects, which works a lot like a reporting tag for grouping related transactions). It reads the CRM deal, finds the Books customer through the synced account (falling back to the contact if there’s no account), sets the deal amount as a fixed-cost project rate, and assigns the deal owner as project owner, with a default user as backup for new salespeople who aren’t in Books yet. Once created, the project ID gets written back to a custom field on the deal, and you should leave that part in, because you’ll never be mad about having a breadcrumb trail of record IDs. Fill in your Books org ID, connection name, data center API domain, default user ID, and field API name in the config block at the top. Then attach it to your Closed Won trigger, or turn it into a button function if you’d rather fire it manually.

This Week’s Blog

Zoho for Finance

Our new Zoho for Finance industry page walks through how payroll processors, accounting and bookkeeping firms, tax firms, and wealth managers commonly put Zoho to work, with high-level flows showing what’s possible (and often quicker to set up than you’d think).

Energy Security – Case Study

Big shout out to Zach and the team at Energy Security in Santa Cruz! We built out new sales workflows, sales cycle reporting, and company-wide automation across CRM, Projects, Analytics, Creator, Flow, Forms, Sign, Writer, Mail, People, and WorkDrive, and we’re still riding that continuous improvement loop together.

Tips and Tricks

Build & Deploy Custom Apps with AI in Zoho Catalyst 3.0

Catalyst 3.0 adds an MCP server plus prepackaged skills for Claude, Cursor, Gemini, and more, so your AI tools already know Zoho’s own components, and Tyler throws in a few minutes on when to build custom versus sticking with native apps (don’t vibe code Zoho Books).

This Week’s Quizzes

• Monday Quiz: What major change has been implemented for sharing Tasks, Meetings, and Calls in the CRM?
• Wednesday Quiz: What functionality does the introduction of Merge Field support provide for workflow field updates?