could be transformed to look like this,
this, 
or this? 
Great, right? Yes, it is possible to revamp your forms into stunning works of art. The actual forms displayed above can be accessed from
Zoho Creator offers a plethora of customizing options for your forms. You can find these options in the embed dialog. Click on the "Customize Form Properties and Look and Feel" to reveal the options. The customization options are divided into 4 sections, each section offering customization parameters for various parts of the form.
The first section offers modifications for some basic configurations for your form like the page/iframe to which the user should be re-directed to, on submitting data into the form, the success message to be displayed when data is submitted in the form, the background and border color to be applied to the form etc. For specifying any attribute involving color, you'd have to specify the rgb or hex code. You can use guides like this or this to give you the exact color codes. For example, you can specify the background color for the form in the box provided as #FF9999 or rgb(255,153,153). For standard colors like teal, cyan etc you can use the color names as well. Once you key in the color code and click outside the textbox, you can notice that the text box where you entered the code displays the color specified by you. This way you can make sure you are setting the desired color.The height, width attributes can be specified in pixels or % e.g., 50px or 50 %. And did I mention, you can also hide the form header as well? Yes you can do that too!
Coming to the most important part of your form. The fields. The third section deals with giving the field labels and the fields themselves the right look. You can set a background color for the field labels so that they are highlighted and stand out from the background, the font family, font size and font color and also the width of the label. Supposing you have a loong label and if you'd like to wrap it to your convenience, you can give a small value for the width. Or if you would not like the field label to wrap then you can give the value accordingly. For the fields, you can specify the background color, width, the font color,family and the size as well.
Now that you've splashed enough color in your form, you can set right some heights and widths. In the final section, for each field type supported in Zoho Creator, you can specify the width and height attributes. e.g., if the form contains 5 Single Line fields, the specifications mentioned here will be applied to all five fields.
Once you have picked and chosen the attributes from the various sections, you'd notice that some parameters have been appended to the code snippet. Copy the code snippet as is and paste it in your blog/website and boom! Your colorful form, looking just the way you want it to is ready to go!
Have you ever felt that it would be nice if your Zoho Creator application could do with a different layout or color or font? Think no more. You can apply different layouts, colors, fonts and loads of other customizations to your Zoho Creator applications. No you don't have to be an html or css expert to do that. As is the norm at Zoho Creator, all this is possible at the click of a mouse.
Zoho Creator offers 6 different layouts for your applications. You can choose from Pane Left, Pane Right, Tabs,Tabbed Pane Left, Tabbed Pane Right and Dropdown menus. You can segregate your forms/views into various sections and apply the required layout so that your application gets the right look.
Did you say what about the feel? Of course of course. We took care of that too. Zoho Creator offers 3 built in themes which can be applied to an application. Themes define the colour scheme of the application viz the colors that will be applied to the header strip, the component header, the buttons on the forms, etc., the over all font that will be applied to the application, the different styles that will be applied to the headers/tabs/ component headers/ forms/ views etc and so on.
The above one is what we call the Classic theme. Simple, straightforward, official looking which uses the Arial font across the application. The field labels are left aligned. Each form/view has a prominent looking header strip. And the views have borders on all sides.
The one below is the Gradient theme. A soft looking theme with Verdana font used across the application and a gradient applied to the header strip of the application. The field labels take the color of the theme.
The last but definitely not the least is the Contemporary theme. With Georgia font for the application and a very vibrant looking header strip for the application. The field labels/fields are center aligned and the rows in the view come with alternate row colors.
For now, the themes are available in 5 vibrant colours.
The readymade themes don't quite hit home? Not a problem. You can also mix and match the various attributes and create your own themes. Again all these involve mere mouse clicks and no geeky coding!
As you can see, we have ten attributes that you can play around with and come up with astounding themes for your application.You can also refer our help wiki for more details on creating different looks for your application..
So what are you waiting for? Give that plain looking application a dash of color and some style :)
Medicfusion has integrated Zoho Creator into their EMR (Electronic Medical Record) system to offer their customers the ability to design their own intake forms, questionnaires and basic patient surveys. Says Melisa Kirby Rottinghaus, Medicfusions's CEO,
For the first time ever, fully custom intake, exam forms and patient research studies are integrated into an electronic medical record. Exciting "in the clouds" integration between Medicfusion EMR and Zoho Creator makes it possible. [...] Until now, integration of a physician’s proprietary forms into an EMR wasn’t possible. Not without many thousands of dollars in custom form development and even then, not fully integrated. Now it’s possible, thanks to the roll-out of a revolutionary and very exciting integration between Medicfusion EMR and Zoho Creator. [...] For Medicfusion and Zoho Creator, it represents an important technical advancement, utilizing "cloud computing" in exciting new ways with important market implications.
The videos below explain in detail how the custom forms built using Zoho Creator form an integral part of the Medicfusion system.
Thanks to Pascal Veilleux of NSI Solution, the man behind this integration, who is doing a great job as a Zoho Reseller, and to Medicfusion for using the Zoho Creator Platform. Pascal has a detailed blog about this project too.
Zoho Creator, Platform-as-a-Service has successfully deployed 100,000 database apps and has helped more than 400,000 users (individuals and small businesses) to build and deploy business applications that are flexible and affordable.
Zoho Creator partner program is quietly and steadily growing, adding new resellers from around the world. Our Partner Program is targeted to drive Value Added Resellers (VARs), IT Consulting Services, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and industry solution providers to build a variety of business apps within days and deliver to customers across regions. With Zoho Creator, VARs will be able to sell customized and robust apps to their clients in minimal time.
Check out what Mark of Credible Systems (one of Zoho Creator's Partners) has to say about the platform:
Benefits of Zoho Creator Partner Program
Interested to join the program? Please fill in this form and our representative will get in touch with you.
Did we say that Zoho Creator is a lot cheaper ($3.5 per user) than Force.com ($7.50 per user)?
One feature request that we receive frequently from our customers is the ability to send SMS from Zoho Creator apps. The solution is to have a third-party SMS Gateway service that supports HTTP(s) or SMTP API integrated with the Zoho Creator app.
Clickatell is one such service and we'll explain below how a Zoho Creator application can be configured to use Clickatell's SMTP API to send SMS. We have created a simple Zoho Creator application for this. The script (.ds file) for the application is available here. Download the .ds file and open it in a text editor of your choice. In the sendSMS function,
void sendSMS(int to, string text)
{
sendmail
(
To : "sms@messaging.clickatell.com"
From : zoho.loginuserid
Subject : "SMS"
Message : "user:clickatellusername\npassword:clickatellpassword\napi_id: " +
"APIKEY\nfrom:ZohoCreator\nto:" + input.to + "\ntext:" + input.text
Content type : Plain Text
)
}
After doing the above changes, import the ds file to your Zoho Creator account. The SMS feature can be tested by adding a record in the SMS Details form. Once the sendSMS functionality is tested, this SMS app can be integrated to any other Zoho Creator application by invoking the sendSMS function and passing the mobile number & the text message as arguments.
For example, in a Help Desk application built using Zoho Creator, let's say an SMS is to be sent to a technician whenever a new ticket is assigned to him/her. The function sendSMS should be invoked with the mobile number of the technician from the onSuccess action of the Assign Technician form.
Please note that you can use any SMS provider by modifying this example SMS application. Try this app and let us know your feedback.
How
many corporate websites have you seen featuring customer quotes on the
home page? How about those quotes in press releases we see every day?
The quotes we see day to day from websites to press release are
obviously 'processed' by individuals or teams before they show up
publicly. They obviously are highlighted because the quote conveys
something good about the company.
The
question is, how authentic are these quotes? How many times did you try
to contact the person who was quoted on a website or an article or a
press release?
When a customer or a user is
willing to say something publicly, that becomes a quote. When this user
automatically compresses his opinions to less than 140 characters, it
is even better. This is basically what a tweet is. A Tweet is a quote
because it is a public statement coming directly from the user with no
marketing polish around it. While a quote becomes public after a
company approval, a tweet is the opposite. The best part is, you can
contact the person quoted for a followup discussion.
With
this in mind, we list tweets from our users as quotes. Obviously, we need an application to do this,
so what better application platform than Zoho Creator to build
something like this. So we quickly created a creator app that lists user's tweets on Zoho. We will soon publish this app in our marketplace.
My all time personal favorite though is this tweet from one of our users @chrismunns. It makes me chuckle.
Now,
can you imagine seeing something like this on a press release or a
website? But that is what makes it authentic. Because this is a tweet
coming from a live user, you can respond for a followup conversation.
This actually makes a Tweet better than a Quote.
Microsoft Access is
basically a database application on the desktop. Where as, Zoho Creator is a
powerful, scalable, and secure cloud computing platform that lets you
build and run database applications online. Some of our users call it
as 'Microsoft Access + Visual Basic for the web' (Sorry, PDF).
So, what happens when you migrate data from Microsoft Access to Zoho
Creator? Well, it can become a powerful web application. This is
basically what we are doing with our announcement today. We are excited
to announce the latest addition to our family of Microsoft plug-ins - Zoho Plug-in for Microsoft Access (EXE link).
Two weeks back, we integrated our collaborative productivity applications into Microsoft SharePoint. Last week, our project management application added the capability to import your existing projects from MS Project to Zoho Projects 2.0. This week, we have a new add-on that imports your data effortlessly from Microsoft Access to Zoho Creator and Zoho Reports and does much more.
To summarize the core functionality of this plug-in in three short points, this is what it does...About the application
The Student Management application comprises of the following forms :
The Country Chart view displays a 3D Bar Chart
which depicts the total number of students enrolled in each course for
the selected country, as shown in the image below. The bar chart is
created by passing the required data as parameters to the Zoho Sheet
chart API.
To learn about the steps in creating a chart in Zoho Creator using the Zoho Sheet API, refer this Wiki Page.
Creating charts using Zoho Sheet API
1. To set default values for form fields
The default values for form fields can be set by passing additional parameters to the form URL. For example, to automatically load a value for Employee ID field in http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#Form:Employee the default values is passed as querysting(Employee_ID=1234) to the url, where Employee_ID is the script name of the field in your name.
The form url with query string will be,
http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#Form:Employee?Employee_ID=1234
The
url to view and edit individual record using its record ID is given
below. This will display the zoho creator form in edit mode.
http://creator.zoho.com/<zoho username>/<applinkname>/#Form:<formLinkName>?recLinkID=<recordID>&viewLinkName=<viewlinkname> |
Refer the topic Editing Records via Record ID for more information.
3. To set criteria for a view
The
criteria for a view can be passed as part of a query string to a view
url. Multiple criterias can be specified by appending it along with the
URL using '&'
The URL format for setting criteria with "=" (Equal) operator is given below:
| http://creator.zoho.com/<zoho userName>/<applinkname>/#View:<viewlinkname>/<FieldName1>=<FieldName1 Value> &<FieldName2>=<FieldName2 Value> |
where, FieldName1 & FieldName2 are the Deluge script names for the field in the form and multiple criterias are specified by appending it along with the URL using '&'
Example:
The view http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#View:Employee_View lists all the records in the Employee View. To view records with Name EQUALs Henry and Employee ID EQUALs 1234, we need to pass the field name and value as querystring.
The complete url for this example is,
http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#View:Employee_View?Name=Henry&Employee_ID=1234
The URL format for setting criteria with operators other than "=" (Equal) is given below:
| http://creator.zoho.com/<zoho username>/<appLinkName>/#View:<viewLinkName>/<FieldName1>=<FieldName1 Value> &<FieldName2>=<FieldName2 Value>&<FieldName1_op>=<constant>&<FieldName2_op>=<constant> |
where,
FieldName1 & FieldName2 are the Deluge script names for the field in the form.
FieldName1_op & FieldName2_op are parameter names for the operator (fieldname appended by _op).
constant is the value assigned for each operator. Refer the table to view the list of all operators and their constants.
Example1:
The view http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#View:Employee_View lists all the records in the Employee View. To view records with Employee ID GREATER_THAN 1235, we need to pass the field name, value, parameter name for the operator and its value as querystring. The parameter name for Employee_ID is Employee_ID_op and the constant for GREATER_THAN is 21.
The complete url for this example is,
http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#View:Employee_View?Employee_ID=1235&Employee_ID_op=21
Example2:
The URL to view records with EmailID ENDS_WITH zoho.com and Roles CONTAINS Supports,
http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#View:Employee_View?EmailID=zoho.com&EmailID_op=25&Roles=Support&Roles_op=26
Note:
For some operators like EMPTY, NOT_EMPTY, YESTERDAY, TODAY,
NEXT_YEAR, TRUE, FALSE, etc. the criteria value need not be specified.
For example, the following URL will display records from the
"Employee_View" whose "Date of Joining" falls on the "CURRENT_YEAR".
http://creator.zoho.com/zchelp/employee-manager/#View:Employee_View?Date_of_Joining_op=52
Over the past year or two we have had some initiatives on mobile capabilities for selected Zoho applications. With Zoho Mobile, we are aggregating all our previous initiatives with consistent user interface and extending it to multiple applications and mobile
platforms.
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