Zoho Wins NASSCOM Innovation Award

Feb 02 2010 08:36:07 AM Posted By : Arvind
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NASSCOM (The National Association of Software and Services Companies, India) today announced the winners of 'Innovation Awards 2009'. We had submitted our unique way of recruitment (recruiting & training bright students who were definitely not going to college for whatever reason, usually economic), in the Process Innovation category. And we have been selected as a Joint Runners up!


We are honored by the recognition given and we hope this award will spur other companies to adopt a similar model of recruitment.

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Insert Watermarks in your Zoho Writer Documents

Jan 28 2010 02:08:28 AM Posted By : Arvind
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The importance and usefulness of embedded watermarks in business documents can't be stressed enough. From drafts to confidential documents to having organization logos, watermarks perform an important role in document management. Now, you can insert watermarks in your Zoho Writer documents. The Watermark option is present under Zoho Writer's Insert menu-tab.

You can include both text and picture watermarks.


Screenshot of a document with watermarked text in the background.

Other than when being shared online, the document's pages will contain the watermark when printed. Try the new watermark feature in Zoho Writer.

Using Dashboards in Zoho Reports

Jan 18 2010 07:30:04 AM Posted By : Arvind
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An organization's key information (data and reports) should be readily available at any point of time. A BI and reporting solution makes this possible through a dashboard. The below slide deck shows how easy it is to create dashboards in Zoho Reports and use the other features available (like inserting text/images and sharing/publishing of dashboards).


Some dashboard samples created using Zoho Reports

Create and Share Dashboards using Zoho Reports and let us know how it went.

Introducing Workspaces in Zoho Docs

Jan 07 2010 05:31:09 AM Posted By : Arvind
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Sharing folders is something we have been asked for repeatedly by Zoho Docs users. And the workaround we'd suggested till now is to choose all files in a folder and share them. Here's something more easy that solves this need - Workspaces. Zoho Docs users can now create workspaces and share them with colleagues and friends. Let's see how the workspace option brings in greater flexibility

  1. Whenever you add new files to a workspace, they get shared to all the workspace's members automatically. No need for you to share each file again to a set of email addresses.
  2. Consider a situation where a new member joins your work team. Whenever you add him/her to your workspace, he/she can see all the files that are there. The workspace acts as a repository.
  3. You can set different permissions (Viewer or Collaborator) for each of the members in your workspace
  4. You can better organize your files within a workspace by creating folders
  5. You can configure whether notification emails (sent each time a files shared) need to be sent to workspace members or not
Some screenshots that explain the new Workspace functionality.





Hope you like the new Workspace functionality in Zoho Docs. Enhancements like allowing members other than the workspace owner to upload files to the workspace are coming soon. Stay tuned!

Season's Greetings from Team Zoho!

Dec 25 2009 02:22:34 AM Posted By : Arvind
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Here's wishing you all Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year :)

A couple of wallpapers from our UI designer, Kabilan. Clicking on the images below will open wallpapers of dimension 1280x800.


A Million Toons at ToonDoo!

Nov 26 2009 06:24:00 AM Posted By : Arvind
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We’d previously blogged about our comic-based social network ToonDoo and its education-friendly version, ToonDooSpaces. Both of them are being creatively used to facilitate fun-based-learning in classrooms across the world. Today, ToonDoo celebrates the landmark achievement of a Million Toons created by users at ToonDoo! This toon (which is also featured on the ToonDoo homepage today) says it all.

We’re very excited to see ToonDoo’s growth and popularity! Here is a special mosaic of the Zoho logo created with the 3,600 best Editor Picked toons at ToonDoo. Click on the image below to view the toons that created this logo.

Join us in celebrating this achievement with ToonDoo! And if you haven’t already done so, try your hand at creating your own Toons at ToonDoo without having to draw.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

OOdesk and Zoho

Nov 19 2009 05:38:19 AM Posted By : Arvind
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OOdesk (pronounced as voo-desk) is a virtual desktop application offering free email, storage space, file sharing etc. OOdesk users can view and save documents, spreadsheets, presentations directly online without downloading. And this is done using Zoho's Remote API.

Once you are logged to your OOdesk account, you will be presented with a virtual desktop environment (a desktop-like feel within your browser window). Double click on My Documents and click on the Upload option. You can upload any file from your desktop into OOdesk. Shown below is a Microsot Excel file opened within OOdesk using Zoho Sheet's remote editor. You can view Microsoft Office or OpenOffice files, make changes and save them back to your OOdesk account.

[Click to enlarge image]

If you are an ISV requiring such a functionality, do have a look at our APIs. We have a good many vendors who have successfully implemented our APIs (recently Central Desktop integrated Zoho Sheet). And it's not just for ISVs, any enterprise can make use of our APIs too.

Chandoo writes a very interesting blog offering tips about how to make the best use of Microsoft Excel and to chart data in general. And he announced a data visualization contest yesterday. Contestants have to map the sales data of a fictional company using any software. The charts or dashboards created should help a senior manager understand how the sales people have done in the past 24 months. The winner gets an iPod Touch 8 GB. Cool, right?

Since Chandoo announced the contest is open for sponsors, we asked him if Zoho can be the sponsor. He immediately accepted. So, Zoho Reports is sponsoring this contest and we encourage all Zoho users and readers of this blog to participate in it.

Here's the details about the contest. If you are comfortable using spreadsheets, this should be easy for you. Try using Zoho Reports for the task and see how different/easy the charting experience is when compared to using Microsoft Excel. You can also try using our online spreadsheet tool, Zoho Sheet.

Your comments welcome on how you charted the data, the approaches you followed, the software you used etc.

Zoho API integration in FilesAnywhere

Nov 11 2009 04:46:45 AM Posted By : Arvind
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FilesAnywhere is a secure online file storage service. For documents, spreadsheets and presentation files, FilesAnywhere makes it easy for its users to edit and save files, directly online. Right clicking on a file brings the below menu.


Choosing Service Plugins -> ZOHO Editor opens the file (document, spreadsheet or presentation) in a new tab.


You can edit the file and save it back to your FilesAnywhere account. Give FilesAnywhere a try.

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New Trial Version
If you are a Zoho Wiki user subscribed to the free plan, you can now test drive the more feature-rich Basic plan for free. All you have to do is log on to your Zoho Wiki account and click on Help -> Pricing at the top-right.



You'll be taken to the pricing page with the prominent 'Let me try the 1 month trial version of Basic plan' at the top.



We are offering this one month free trial of the $12 Basic plan without you furnishing details of your credit card. And taking this trial plan will allow you to test the Custom Domain feature. That is, allow you map your domain to your Zoho wiki. And of course you have other options like creating 5 wikis and having 250 MB of attachment space.

Export/Import Wiki
Click on Wiki -> Settings and you will see the Export/Import option.

The export option allows you to take all your wiki contents (including embedded images, file attachments and comments) as a zip file whenever you need. And you can import the contents back (say copying it all to another Zoho Wiki) if need be. Going forward, we would be giving import function from other Wikis.


Newer Themes
In the menu Wiki -> Settings -> Wiki Themes, you have a variety of readymade themes to choose from. Recently added to the mix are two new themes in the Nature category - Green Valley and Penguins. The specialty of these two themes is that they are of fixed width (960px).


Give Zoho Wiki a try.