Some of you would have tried to unsuccessfully login to Zoho CRM by giving your credentials at the http://zoho.com url. You are unable to login because Zoho CRM still does not support SSO (Single Sign On). 

Kindly use the http://zohocrm.com url to sign in to your Zoho CRM account.

In the meantime, we are working on providing an alternate solution.

Thank You

How to send and receive mass mails using Zoho CRM?

Let me clear the air with some facts that one has to live with today while using Zoho CRM :-

• One can send mass mails ONLY if one is a paid user with Zoho CRM.

• One can send 250 mails/day ONLY using the mass mail feature in ONE day as of now (Think of mass mail as a 1-shot use tool to be used once a day. You can break the 250 into 100+100+50 or any other permutation that you want)

• One can send unlimited number of mails if mails are being sent individually ie without using the mass-mail feature.

Okay, the air is cleared now. What next ?

Zoho CRM cannot receive emails as of now. So how to address this problem? Hmmm.

There is a work-around for this!

1. Assume that you have logged in as joeblogs@joeblogs.com and using mass-mail feature have sent 200 emails. Please note, the from address will be set as joeblogs@joeblogs.com. Configure your Outlook Mail Client to receive the responses to those 200 emails sent with the from as joeblogs@joeblogs.com id .
2. Now login to Zoho CRM Server. Download the Outlook Plugin from Setup --> Personal Settings --> Outlook Edition.
3. Go to Setup --> Subscription Manager --> Users Activation and enable the Plugin for the account joeblogs@joeblogs.com.
4. Next install the Outlook Plugin into your Outlook Mail Client.   Now you are set to work with the Outlook Plugin!
5. Go to the Outlook Mail Client and invoke the Plugin and login with joeblogs@joeblogs.com id. Now you can synchronize the Tasks, Events and Emails from Outlook to Zoho CRM and vice-versa.

Note:- It is preferable to sync mails 1-by-1 since you may experience performance problems otherwise.

More info available at http://www.zoho.com/crm/outlook-edition.html

Paul Greenberg mentions that CRM is getting more credibility now and the credibility has come over a period of time. Companies like Cisco (non-traditional vendors - the not-necessarily-CRM vendors or not-really-social media vendors) are jumping into the pool as they find that they need to tap into the unstructured conversations happening and mine that for information thereby helping them provide better services/products. This is good news for all around.

Paul also says the following :-

"... mega-giant companies like Oracle and SAP are integrating those tools because they see it makes good business sense. I'm excited that NetSuite went public and was successful as was salesforce when it went public a couple of years ago as was RightNow when it went public in 2006. Meaning that not only has the on demand market arrived but it has its own suburbs. There is a real place for software as a service or even simpler for data and applications being hosted on someone elses servers that is being provided for an affordable price. Its the real deal fo' shoh, Jack."

You will find the full post here :- http://the56group.typepad.com/pgreenblog/2008/01/signs-of-life-d.html

Integration with social tools is something that is going to happen across the board. The line between CRM and the social networks are getting more and more fuzzier. CRM is gerrymandering into the social networks now on the pretext of mining the data to get a more wholesome customer experience for the company (primarily) and the customer next.

What do you think about these changes?

SaaS:  Software as a Service

It means, to put it very simply, software available for use online. There is no need to download it. Just signup on the internet and use it. It is similar to using yahoo/gmail; both are email programs running online and one just has to signup to them and start sending/receiving emails. You do not download gmail/yahoo to your system  do you?

Now, why this whole noise about SaaS?

Earlier on, software used to be of the downloadable kind. Big bulky softwares that used to burn holes in your pocket since one had to regularly upgrade their Hard Disk size. And, how can one forget the bandwidth issues - to download a 6MB software, it used to take ages, the dial-up connection used to click only when it wanted to or God wanted to.  Now, there is no need to do any of these acts.Things have improved on the bandwidth front, the speeds are faster, one is able to download software a lot faster but also at the same time, one does not want to maintain software on their own. So the shift is towards (re)using software that is already available and hosted somewhere.  Now, hold on, Saas did not come up just yet.

Once people wanted to (re)use software developed by others, there came the time for the ASP or the Application Service Providers. These were something similar to middlemen in the sense that A would develop the software, B will host it for a set of users ie he will provide the infrastructure where he can install A and start it.  B is now called as an Application Service Provider since he is providing access/Service to an Application. But hey, this sounds same as Saas, is n't it?  Smart! Yes, it does but the key difference is that B will have multiple installations of A running to cater to a wider audience (perhaps, B will have 20 customers/logins in a single installation of A. So when 100 customers are needed to be served, B will have installed 5 installations of A each serving 20 customers).

In a typical Saas setting, there is ONLY one instance of service running and that ALONE caters to all the customers. This concept is called multi-tenant architecture as each tenant is a set of users who belong to a particular company/entity. The data for each tenant is secure from the other.  In the ASP model,  sure the data is secure from the other but you needed to have multiple installations too remember? So scaling up was a problem.  Saas was the evolved answer to the problem.

Hope that solves some queries at the least ;-)

We have updated the Outlook Plugin.
The login screen has been made more user-friendly.

Earlier there was confusion as to which username and password one ought to use in the Outlook Plugin to sync with Zoho CRM.

We have also given the facility to register with ZohoCRM from the Outlook Plugin login screen.

A new Help Link too is introduced which takes the user to the wiki spot handling the Outlook Plugin issues.

Some of the issues that have been fixed are as follows :-

• "Session Expired" problem fixed.

Earlier while synchronizing contact, task, calendar and etc., while the session used to get expired, it returned error message for each item(Invalid return value). Now it returns the message - "Session Expired and login again" . It also logsout automatically when this message gets popped-up.

• Duplicate contact check has been made faster.

Hope you liked the new changes to the website.

It was too bland earlier and now we have added some 'spice' to it.

For every detail that you click, towards of the bottom of the page, you will find the navigation links now (With this, I hope you will not get 'lost' in the site as I used to ;-) )

We have given the ability to sign up to Zoho CRM on all the pages so that one need not go back and forth to sign in to Zoho CRM.

The Wiki too is being worked upon and we hope to have it steady by the end of this week.

One of the key ideas was to focus more on user-friendliness.

We would love to get your feedbacks on the changes.

• Does it make life any better for you?
• What other information would you like to see on the site?

PS: The traffic to the site has reached the highest levels last month and we hope to better them this time too. This can happen with your support only. So do give your feedback please.

We are using Zoho Wiki for the Zoho CRM Help Documentation. So, when you click on the Help link, you are actually directed to http://zohocrm.wiki.zoho.com.

The Wiki-approach helps achieve collaborative editing. The knowledge of the masses is easier to collate and aggregate with this method. So, even you can edit the Wiki document and add/edit to it. There may be times when you would like to share how to achieve a particular implementation. Then, go ahead, edit the wiki! This will enable others to grow with you too as others benefit from your experience. This makes the entire experience with the product more wholesome.

We plan to enable the users to register  for Zoho CRM right from the Zoho Wiki pages too! Gopal is working on it and we hope to have that feature integrated by EOD today.

The Outlook Plugin is one of the core add-ons provided by Zoho CRM. I firmly believe that the Oultook Plugin is a force-multiplier and can dramatically enhance productivity. Hence, I would like to understand what all are the features that you would like to see in it at the very earliest. A priority-wise list will be very helpful.
Currently we have a bidirectional sync facility but this will not suffice. We are working on providing pull and push facility from- and to- Outlook to Zoho CRM and vice-versa.

We are working on adding some of the other planned features as well.

We have been getting some mails wherein the main thrust is addressing the How-To? behaviour.

I would like to know in what manner should this requirement be addressed to satisfy most of the community. I know that we can provide textual documentation but then this seems so passe'. I am certainly not going to write this off but then there certainly are other modes of conveying the message too like contextual help. Any other ideas would do good too please.
Any reference sites will be good to have.

Things were pretty hectic over here for the update. The update happened after almost 40 days or 1.5 months.  We were working on Saturdays and Sundays too. Everyone was keen to get the update out at the earliest but without compromising on the quality.
We fixed close to 40 bugs and added close to 20 features. There are some usability issues in the product that we plan to address as well.

We have not yet decided on the next update dates as there are too many variables that we need to consider. In case there is something pressing on your mind, do let us know.