Zoho latest news and updates

Zoho releases new updates for it's software constantly each month and we gathered all of the latest news and updates of Zoho on this blog post!

Zoho CRM updates

Important enhancements in Attachment

Users can now attach a video to a record, multi-select images and files with the help of new picker, and provide access only to a selected set of photos

Send email for confirmation of portal users' email address

On updating the email addresses of the existing portal users, you can now send them emails to get confirmation.

Migration from Act! and SugarCRM to Zoho CRM

The database from your former CRM providers - Act! or SugarCRM, can be migrated to Zoho CRM, directly using the respective migration channels present in the data import page.

Sequence assignment rules in numerical order

In addition to the drag and drop option, users can now reorder assignment rules by ascribing each rule with order numbers.

New enhancements to workflow rules

Two new instant actions have been added in workflow rules. They are 'Add a meeting' and 'Schedule a call'.
The mechanism to add additional fields to an action popup has been changed. Instead of adding system-defined fields, the update lets you choose the desired field to be added.

The "Reason for Loss" field in Deals, is now a picklist

The descriptive type field "Reason for Loss" in the Deals module has been changed to a picklist field with predefined loss reasons. You can add new values, edit existing values, or delete them as required. The contents of the descriptive fields for the records that already exist will still be stored in the notes section.

TeamInBox eWidgets

At Zoho TeamInbox, Zoho constantly explors different opportunities to help you reap the benefits of other applications to meet the needs of your business. Integrating your shared inbox tool with other workplace tools can help you get more done while you’re managing your emails and other tasks. As part of our efforts, we’re excited to introduce our integrations with these applications:

Zoho Desk
Zoho Meeting
Zoho Recruit
Asana
Trello

Calendar

Calendar inside your mailbox

Say you’re looking at an email inquiring about your availability. You can take a quick peek at your calendar while drafting your response.

With the new Calendar widget inside Zoho Mail, you don’t have to switch to a calendar app to see when you are busy and when you are free. View your schedule and agenda for the day and easily create new events from your inbox.

View meeting recordings in Calendar

Do you want to revisit that sales pitch you gave months ago? Or the team discussion you couldn’t attend last Thursday?

You don’t want to go through a pile of recordings to find that one brain-storming session you’re looking for. Zoho Calendar now lets you view and download your meeting recordings right from your calendar events. That’s right—if you choose Zoho Meeting as the conference in your event, the meeting recording gets saved to the event in Calendar.

Allow forwarding —the more the merrier!

When you’re holding a meeting or an event that would interest a wider audience, but you can’t reach everyone directly, we’ve got you covered. Allow forwarding in your event and let the participants bring in friends who are interested in attending, because the more the merrier.

Cliq’s Picture in Picture mode

Zoho Cliq have rolled out the awaited picture-in-picture (PiP) mode for our calls and meetings. PiP is a multi-window mode that allows users to browse material on the main screen and switch between apps while watching a video in a small window pinned to the screen’s corner.

Say, for example, you want to look for data that has been requested during an ongoing meeting. Instead of pausing the meeting to find or searching for it later, you can scale your meeting window down to a corner of the screen and access the app with your data in real time.

As a result, you stay attentive to the meeting while getting the necessary context. You can also move your PiP window to any tab you’d like to complete tasks simultaneously. This minimizes the effects of context switching and ultimately enhances your user experience.

Introducing Zoho Meeting’s Standard edition—starting at $1

Zoho recently made some enhancements to free plan, allowing users to conduct unlimited meetings and webinars for up to 60 minutes. While it’s great to start with, as your business grows over time, you may need additional collaborative features with no time limitations.

Well, if you’re interested in having advanced collaborative and security features on your online meetings without spending a fortune, we’ve got some exciting news for you.

We’re thrilled to introduce Standard editions for Meeting and Webinar. With the all-new Standard editions, you’ll get the unlimited meetings and webinars of the Free plan combined with advanced features like session recordings, multiple co-organizers, and co-branding.

With the Standard edition for Meeting, you can:

Bring your team together: Get a multi-users account for your workforce with the Standard edition starting at $1 per host/month. Take advantage of volume-based discounts based on the number of hosts and by opting for a yearly subscription. Also, you can add up to two co-hosts and delegate hosting responsibilities on your online meetings.
Customize your plan based on participants: Do you find 100 participants too limiting for your growing workforce? You can now upgrade to the Standard edition and choose a customized plan based on the number of participants. Also, you can have up to two co-hosts per session.
Conduct longer meetings: Don’t let time constraints derail your online business meetings. Upgrade to the Standard edition and conduct remote meetings for up to 24 hours, compared to the traditional 1-hour meetings on the free plan.
Engage participants using polls: Take your audience engagement to the next level using meeting polls. Apart from the Raise hand and allow to talk features, allow your meeting participants to interact with real time polls, exclusive for the Standard and Professional editions.
Use dial-in numbers to attend meetings: You can now join online meetings right from your phone using dial-in numbers for more than 40 countries across the globe. You can also try our toll-free add-on for country-specific toll-free numbers.
Lock and conduct secure meetings: You can stop worrying about intruders when you conduct locked meetings with limited participants. By upgrading to the Standard edition, you can have closed meetings and allow participants in only upon request.
Record meetings and share recordings: Record your online meetings including audio, video, and screen sharing, and access them later. With a cloud storage of 10 meetings/host included in the Standard edition, you can choose to download recordings in MP4 format and share them with other members of the organization, if needed.
Add custom virtual backgrounds: Unlike the free plan that restricts you to using the default virtual backgrounds, you can upload custom images as virtual backgrounds using the Standard edition. You can add your business branding to the virtual backgrounds and improve overall visibility.

Introducing breached password detection in Zoho Vault

Did you know that billions of online accounts get breached every year, exposing the passwords to the breached accounts wherever possible? These passwords are available on the dark web, publicly traded by attackers, for as little as $15. Given the magnitude of passwords available in the public domain, it shouldn’t be a surprise if an attacker has access to your passwords as well.

Zoho come across multiple data breaches—even at major corporations—on a regular basis. These breaches might expose our credentials as well. While setting strong, unique passwords for every account is a great first step, verifying if your passwords have been exposed through third-party data breaches is essential.

To make this process seamless for users, Zoho Vault now integrates with haveibeenpwned.com (HIBP), a breached password aggregator. Using Vault, you can identify breached credentials and instantly reset them with unique, strong passwords.

Why the integration with HIBP?

HIBP is an open-sourced service that hosts millions of breached credentials in its database. Its complete transparency, coupled with frequent updates to its database of newly exposed passwords, makes it the perfect fit for our service. HIBP is trusted and employed by 30+ governments across the world to monitor and safeguard their accounts’ integrity.

Zoho Books – Mexico!

Zoho Books is 100% adapted to the Mexican market, and is one of the best solutions that meets the requirements of Mexico’s legislation.

Zoho Books uses the CFDI (Comprobantes Fiscal Digital por Internet) format and is in line with with SAT (Servicio de Administración Tributaria) regulations. Zoho Books is 100% adapted to the Mexican market, and is one of the best solutions that meets the requirements of Mexico’s legislation.

E-invoicing is no longer a headache with Zoho Books. Zoho Books uses a PAC (Proveedores Autorizados de Certificación) to connect with SAT. All businesses have to do is:

Register in the SAT and obtain a digital seal certificate. (Certificado de Sello Digital – CSD).
Get their SAT credentials and upload them to Zoho Books.
Create an invoice and send it automatically for validation with the SAT through the PAC.
Get the invoice validated and stamped with their SAT folio and share it with their client.

Zoho Books is completely VAT ready and complies with all current Mexican tax regulations. Setting up VAT, default rates, and applicable exemptions is easy in Zoho Books. Businesses can calculate their VAT liability, create VAT invoices for clients, and generate comprehensive VAT reports with our software. Zoho Books also helps keep a track of withheld taxes while creating invoices, and generates summaries of withholdings.

Zoho always believes in providing our customers with the best value for their money. We have customized pricing plans for businesses of all sizes. Check out our prices and different plans here. As an introductory offer, Zoho is providing a 50% discount on any of the annual paid plans of Zoho Books for the first six months to Mexican businesses that sign up on or before the 31st March, 2023.

Zoho People for Microsoft Teams

How does Zoho People for Microsoft Teams work?

As soon as you configure Zoho People for Microsoft Teams, your users will be able to find the chatbot named Zoho People in the chat space. This Zoho People chatbot will help users find key HR information from their Zoho People account. By using the Zoho People chatbot in Teams, your employees can:

Check in and check out to mark their attendance
Submit attendance regularization requests
Check for their leave balances and apply for leave
Fetch their upcoming holiday list to plan their responsibilities
Find details about a project that they are working on
Search for their peers and know if they are present or on leave to collaborate with them seamlessly
Track the status of timesheets, attendance regularization requests, and leave approvals
Remind their managers about pending approvals

In addition, managers will be able to view and approve/reject the leave, timesheet, attendance, and shift change requests they receive from their team members through Teams without having to move to Zoho People.

Zoho Cliq named leader in business instant messaging software

We are elated to announce that Zoho Cliq has been listed as a leader in the Business Instant Messaging category in the G2 Grid and Index reports.

Zoho raises the bar for business apps on iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura

Work smarter with Stage Manager, Continuity Camera, external display support, and more on iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura for Bigin

One of the iPad’s new features opens a world of opportunity for devoted multitaskers. We know that one screen is never enough when you need to work across different tabs with the Bigin app, or use it alongside other productivity apps. Now you can connect your iPad to an external display to make full use of the extra screen real estate.

Continuity Camera! This useful feature enables you to use your iPad or iPhone as remote extensions of the Mac camera. We jumped at the chance to integrate Bigin with this feature because we didn’t want you to have to twist and tilt your laptop in all kinds of odd ways to snap a photo of the price quote on your desk, scan important documents, or capture the products resting behind your laptop screen. Now you can use the cameras on your iPad and iPhone to take photos and have them instantly transferred to where you want them on your Mac. To use these features and more, update to the latest version of Bigin for your preferred Apple devices.

An enhancement to Live Text and the all-new Quick Actions for Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice (iPadOS 16)

No more filling in details manually for your expenses; with the Live Text feature update, it’s easy to copy and paste expense details from the receipt images you’ve attached to your expense. We’ve also introduced another new feature–Quick Actions—to help you execute multiple actions on a customer’s transaction list.

Finally, there are app intents, by which you can call on Siri to take specific actions. Simply say, “Hey Siri! New invoice” or “Hey Siri! Start Zoho Books timer,” and Siri will do it immediately. Upgrade your Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice apps to the latest versions now.

Smart Continuity Camera, multitasking assistant Stage Manager, and more for Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice (macOS Ventura)

ou can now scan business cards and bar codes by connecting Mac and iPhone. With the new update, you can add customers’ business cards, add items to invoices from bar codes, and include attachments with transactions—all by just scanning. If your iPhone is connected to your Mac with the same Apple ID, you can simply click the scan icon and your iPhone’s camera will automatically open to scan the document you want. You can also keep your workspace organized using the much awaited Stage Manager feature. Open the apps that you usually use and switch among them with just a single click—but that’s not all! Now you can perform quick actions on customers’ details pages. Navigate to a customer’s transaction list, select a few customers, and right click on them to view the list of actions you can perform right away.

Hassle-free document signing with App Intents, Quick Notes, and more in iPadOS 16 and MacOS Ventura

As a digital signature solution, Zoho Sign strives to provide users with an effortless signing experience. And with the release of MacOS Ventura and iPadOS 16, users can now set up conversational Siri shortcuts to perform various actions, such as autofilling basic fields and signing the document, assigning document ownership to someone else, and declining to sign a particular document.MacOS and iPadOS users can also filter the notifications they want to receive from the application by setting filters for each Focus. To level up your productivity, Zoho Sign now offers the Quick Note feature, available in both MacOS and iPadOS, which enables you to add documents and frequently used templates and access them anytime.

Add more convenience to your authentication with the new OneAuth updates for macOS Ventura and iPadOS16

Zoho OneAuth, the multi-factor authentication app from Zoho, that is available across platforms, helping you secure all of your online accounts.

Passkeys: Enhances your login experience across all Zoho apps. (Available in both iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura)
Continuity Camera: Seamlessly transition from your Mac to iPhone camera and quickly scan QR codes to add OTP accounts or sign-in to Zoho.
Stage Manager: With the all-new Stage Manager, you can now complete your authentication quickly by switching between OneAuth and your browsers/apps on your Mac and iPad. (Available in both iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura)
Focus filters: Allows you to associate the appropriate Zoho account for each Focus mode. (Available in both iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura)
Quick Notes: You can now intuitively edit 2FA accounts with seamless deep linking on your iPads.

Stage Manager for Zoho Campaigns in iPadOS 16

iPadOS 16’s new multi-tasking UI enables you to get to your email marketer hat in a single click. Simultaneously create a campaign or list, check the reports of your previous campaigns, and much more with the help of this update.

https://www.zoho.com/blog/campaigns/ios-16-and-ipados-16-updates.html

Streamline your productivity with Notebook’s updates for iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura

SharePlay: Now, you can share Checklist Cards during FaceTime using SharePlay, and make edits with the help of your peers, and save the changes with you in that notecard.
Focus Filters: You can apply Focus Filters in your Notebook app by setting customized themes like light/dark mode, font sizes, image scaling sizes, default color to notes, default notebook on your Mac, and also save photos to your Photos app in Focus Mode.
Live Text: Extract text from images in your Text and Photo Cards to copy any content without hassle, search for text in your Text Cards on your device’s keypad, and check out your words any time.
Siri Intents: With the help of Siri, you can now add shortcuts and manage reminders with zero user set up, and also access them from your Home Screen.
Photo Picker: Now, you can add images to your notes from the Photo Picker option available on your Mac. This applies not only to notecards, but also to your notebook covers–choose your own customized cover from your library!
Stage Manager: With the Stage Manager feature, you can easily split up your notes in Notebook into multiple resizeable windows and work on different notes in each window at the same time. Manage different types of notes in less time and stand at the top of your work using iPadOS 16.

Make your scanning experience more handy using exclusive Doc Scanner updates for iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura

With Doc Scanner’s new updates, you can manage your app’s behavior by applying Focus Filters–setting themes like light/dark mode and app theme colors in Focus Mode. Extract live text from any image that you add to your documents, and find and replace text in your documents from your iPad’s keypad in no time.

Apple’s Continuity Camera paired with Doc Scanner is absolutely the icing on the cake. You can scan documents on your iPhone and add them to your Mac app when both devices are connected to the same network and iCloud. This is one of the features we’ve enhanced for this year’s updates from Apple.