The CRM Zen Show Episode 428 – With A Little Help From My Approvers

Zoho News

Zoho CRM: Ad-Hoc Approvals in Approval Processes

When a quote needs a second set of eyes, approvers can now add someone to that one approval on the fly without rebuilding the whole process. Unlike delegating, the original approver still gets the final click.

Zoho Projects: Expanded Finance Management within Projects

Long requested and finally here, a new Finance tab shows sales orders, invoices, POs, bills, and expenses right inside the project. Before this, they launched over to Books never to be seen again.

Zoho Community Digest: September 2026 Part 4

The standout in this digest is that the full Zoho Books record page now loads inside CRM, with custom buttons, approvals, and extra line item columns included, so no more cloning the same script into two places.

Zoho Bigin: Q3 2026 Updates

Siri got a lot smarter in iOS 27, and Bigin came along for the ride. Siri can now read your Bigin data and whatever’s on screen, which earned Bigin a nod from Apple as one of the best apps adapted for iOS 27.

Zoho Inventory: September 2026 Updates

Multi-warehouse teams can now receive a PO at any warehouse in the same business location without editing the original order. Early access also adds packages created from invoices and auto-generated SKUs.

Zoho Recruit: New Zoho Cliq Bot Notifications for Hiring Updates

Filed under things we’d have sworn already existed, Recruit can now push hiring updates like new applicants and assessment submissions through a Cliq bot. Start with fewer notifications, or you’ll mute that bot forever.

Zoho CRM: Field Masking for Sensitive Customer Data

Enterprise and Ultimate admins can now fully or partially mask sensitive fields like phone numbers and account IDs, choose which profiles can unmask them, and control how masked data behaves in exports, APIs, and integrations.

Zoho CRM: Arattai Business Messaging Integration

India DC customers on Standard and above can now receive and reply to Arattai Business conversations in the CRM Messages module, alongside WhatsApp and LINE.

Zoho Invoice: Q3 2026 Features Recap

The quarter brings a new Nigeria edition, a Super Admin privilege shared across Zoho Finance apps, France e-invoicing via B2Brouter, and subtotal rows for line items.

Zoho Billing: September 2026 Updates

Billing adds omnichannel subscriptions that sync App Store and Play Store purchases, usage limits on Hosted Payment Page links, and volume and tiered pricing for usage-based addons, several of them in early access.

Zoho POS: September 2026 Updates

A new Global Edition of Zoho POS for Retail is live on the US and EU data centers, and Register Profiles is now out of beta.

Zoho Projects: Q3 2026 Feature Recap

Beyond the finance integration, Q3 adds a time log grid view, Zia-suggested weekly time logs, time log restrictions by IP and project status, skill sets, and CodeX Scripts for custom modules.

Zoho CommunitySpaces: Live Chat Powered by Zoho SalesIQ

Community members can now open a live chat with your team through Zoho SalesIQ, with the Answer Bot replying when everyone’s offline.

Zoho Social: September Social Wall

Snapchat is now on Zoho Social, so you can create, schedule, and queue Spotlights and Stories alongside your other channels.

Zoho Social: Q3 2026 Feature Recap

Alongside Snapchat, Q3 brings Arattai publishing, WhatsApp bulk messaging, automated private replies to comments, and Instagram Trial Reels.

Zoho Writer: Android Q2 2026 Updates

The Android app catches up to the web with richer formatting, bookmarks, camera text scanning, and Track Changes on the go.

Zoho Backstage: August and September 2026 Updates

A new AI Console controls features like the Content Assistant and an attendee-facing Event Chatbot, plus RSVP confirmation that stops email security scanners from accidentally RSVPing for guests.

Zoho Mail: Data Subject Requests for Compliance and Legal Searches

Admins can now create Data Subject Request cases to pull every email tied to an address for legal or compliance needs, then export them as password-protected PDF or HTML.

Zoho Mail: iOS Shared Mailboxes and Calendly Integration

The iOS app now supports shared mailboxes and Calendly sync with Zoho Calendar.

Code Share of the Week

Standalone Function: Find or Create a Google Drive Folder from Deluge

Andrew is back with the Google Drive sibling to last week’s WorkDrive code share. It’s a standalone function that searches a parent folder for a folder by name, then returns its ID or creates it if it doesn’t exist. It’s handy for the plenty of clients who stayed on Google Drive because their whole file structure already lives there. This version uses Google’s search API, which doesn’t have the indexing delays that made the WorkDrive search unreliable. The catch is that Google’s query is an exact match, so folder names are case and space sensitive. Pass in the parent folder, folder name, and shared drive ID, and you’ll get back the folder ID or an error to handle.

This Week’s Blog

The Zoho Solutions Library

Our new Solutions Library organizes 71 build concepts across sales, ops, finance, analytics, customer support, and custom development for 12 industries. Each one includes under-the-hood technical details, and we’ll keep adding to it in rounds.

Tips and Tricks

Zoho MCP in 2026: What Claude Can Actually Do Inside Zoho CRM

Tyler seeds a demo CRM and puts Claude to work fixing overdue closing dates, prepping for sales calls, and building out module fields over MCP. He wraps up with the security steps worth taking before you plug Claude into all your stuff.

This Week’s Quizzes

• Monday Quiz: What is the primary purpose of the upcoming Zoho One App Adoption and Feature Discovery components?
• Wednesday Quiz: Which of the following features is being permanently deprecated during the platform framework migration?