Neil Weston, Clareti Ltd.
Dear All
A welcome to those of you reading one of the Clareti Blogs for the first time.
As always, have a quick read and if anything catches your interest – let me know – or skim over it!
This item is about Zoho – things that have been added or changed, new integrations and some things you may not have known about.
Changes and Enhancements
- Server location
You may remember that Zoho is trying to introduce a European data centre for those of you who would prefer data stored in the EU rather than the US. I am told that this is still going to happen but has been delayed. We’ll just need to watch this space…..
- VOIP
There is still a move within Zoho to introduce more options for integrating your phone systems with your CRM system. In particular they are trialing RingCentral which is a great system. There are some teething problems however so if this is important to any of you let us know and we will talk to you about how it can be implemented.
- Mail magnet
For those of you who use email from within Zoho I have been asked about the little red indicator on the task bar. This is called Mail Magnet and allows you to see at a glance the number of new emails from recognised leads and contact email addresses. Hover over it and you can reply to an email and/or mark it for follow up, add tasks etc. right from the main Zoho screens without going into the mail application.
- Quote display
If you hadn’t noticed already the way that quotes and other commercial modules are previewed has changed. The new interface is much slicker and more user friendly. Take a look!
Allowed IP addresses – This is an enhancement that allows the system admin to restrict access to Zoho to certain locations/devices. It has the potential to make access more secure for those of you who want to adopt the ‘belt and braces’ security approach.
- Buttons
New in the enterprise edition is the introduction of custom buttons. In some ways this is an answer looking for a question but the possibility to add a custom button to fulfill a certain user-instigated task may be a benefit to some of you!
- Zoho Chrome® extension
In the Google Play store is quite a useful application that allows users to highlight someone’s contact details from their signature (or anywhere else on a website) and auto-fill these details whilst adding them as a contact or lead. It is quite good but struggles with complicated signatures or indeed any that involve a logo. A good addition though to avoid typing.
- New layout customisation
Zoho will soon be introducing a more user friendly way of customising layouts and fields. I have it now on my account and it really is a much better way of seeing your data input sheets and re-arranging or adding to them. It should be live by the end of July for everyone.
Things you may not have found yet
- Web tabs
For those of you on the Enterprise edition you may be interested in using web tabs. This is a way to incorporate any other web-based application into its own tab in Zoho meaning that you don’t have to navigate away from Zoho in order to access another system. There is no automatic data integration of course but it can provide a convenient shortcut for those who use multiple web-based systems for internal or external purposes.
- Zoho help
There is of course a lot of help online for Zoho applications but here is a link to a variety of ebooks that some of you may find helpful. Nothing earth shattering but they may help a fuller understanding of the way that Zoho works.
As always do feel free to get in contact about any CRM or Marketing questions you may have. Clareti doesn’t just do Zoho but has extensive experience across the whole area of marketing and/or business strategy. Just an example – I was part of the M&A team for a large US tech company that during the peak of the tech boom was making an acquisition every 3 weeks! Crazy times but it taught me a lot.
With thanks to you all for being Zoho users (or potential users!)
Clareti quick update – Zoho new features, issues – September 2015
