CRM Zen Show Episode 271 – BackStage MAD-ness

Zoho News

• CRM & Bigin News
  • Zoho CRM A/B Testing Enhancements
    • Test which CRM form engages better now with A/B testing built into CRM Forms.
  • Zoho CRM Wizard Enhancements
    • Lots of little enhancements and bug fixes to Wizards in this update.
  • Bigin Adds New Target Meter Component in Dashboards
    • Most of these enhancements are features that are included with Zoho CRM.
  • Bigin iOS/Sonoma Updates
    • And if you are an Apple & Bigin user, you will want to check these updates out.
• Zoho Desk
  • Zoho Desk Enhanced Views and Filters
    • It’s great to see the desk team working on some help center functionality.
  • Zoho Desk IM October’23 Updates
    • Facebook messaging is almost here!
  • Zoho Desk iOS v2.8 Update
    • Interactive widget support and a couple more minor enhancements were added.
• Other Product News
  • Zoho Creator October’23 Updates
    • A significant update features a menu builder that allows for the creation of hierarchical menu structures.
  • Zoho Doc Scanner Updates
    • We love this technology that Apple has continued to approve, and it is great to see Zoho following suit.
  • Zoho Payroll October’23 Updates (India & US)
    • South Carolina is joining the ranks of supported states for Zoho Payroll.
  • Zoho Writer Smart Composing with Zia
    • Essentially, this update Writer is using ChatGPT within Writer.
  • Zoho Notebook Enhancements For The Latest Apple Updates
    • Drop a Notebook checklist widget straight on your home screen and more.
  • Zoho Backstage Introduces Lead Capture
    • We saw this in action at Zoholics, and it worked great!
  • Zoho Sign itsme Integration
    • Continuing to improve its regional compliance, EU users can now integrate with itsme.
• September Round-Ups
  • Zoho FSM September’23 Updates
    • Shoutout to the FSM team for rolling out the API integration to Books/Voice.
  • Zoho Backstage September’23 Updates
    • If you are a backstage user, there are a handful of minor updates here you will want to check out.
  • Zoho Developer September’23 Community Digest
    • For all you devs out there, don’t miss this month’s community digest.
• Sridhar Vembu Sounds Alarm Over Global Economic Slowdown
  • This tweet got a lot of hype last week, Sridhar seems to believe an economic slowdown is on its way.

Implementation of the Week

• Zoho Bookings to Zoho CRM Integration for Automated Deal Creation
  • In this implementation, our goal was to integrate ZBookings and ZCRM in such a way that specific types of bookings generate CRM activity
  • For this specific build, the Meeting being booked would indicate that the specific Prospect is “pre-qualified” and should skip the Leads module
  • To accommodate this, we use custom functions in Bookings to run a custom routine when the meeting is booked
  • This function first checks if the Email address on the booking is associated with an existing Contact
  • If there is an existing Contact, a Deal is created under that record. If there is not an existing Contact, then both a Contact and Deal are created automatically

Code Share of the Week

• Power of Automation:: Automate the process of updating project status based on a specific task status.
  • This week’s code share is actually from Zoho.  Learn how to automate updating project status in this Zoho Projects code share.

This Week’s Read

• What is business process management (BPM), and why should you care?
  • This week, Zapier’s blog excellently outlines the five steps of Business Process Management (BPM): Design, Model, Execute, Monitor, and Optimize.

New On Zenatta

• Zenatta Blogs
  • Automating Your Invoicing: How Zoho Books streamlines your billing process
    • Are you still using another platform other than Zoho Books for your billing process?  Learn how Zoho Books can streamline your billing process in this week’s blog.

Tips and Tricks

• Custom Buttons For Reports In Zoho Creator
  • We have been receiving a lot of requests for Zoho Creator content, so Josh is back at it again in this week’s tip on how to create custom buttons for reports in Zoho Creator.