Zoho Creator charting functionality helps you to quickly and easily analyze data in a visual format using a variety of graph types. To create charts with data from multiple ZC forms or to display grouped data, you can use the chart API supported by Zoho Sheet. The  Sample Application named "Student Management" demonstrates this functionality. In this application, we have defined a function called "getChartUrl" (you can see the function used in the application under the Script -> Functions tab in edit mode), using which the required data is dynamically submitted  to Zoho Sheet API, which creates the required chart as an image.

About the application

The Student Management application comprises of the following forms :

• Student Form to enter the name of the students and the country they belong to.
• Course Form to enter the name of the courses offered.
  
• Student Course Form to enter the course details enrolled by each student. 

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

2. To edit individual records by passing record ID in the URL

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.

Zoho Mobile can be accessed from your favorite smart phone @ http://mobile.zoho.com (or http://m.zoho.com to keep it short). In the current version of Zoho Mobile, the following applications are available.

• Zoho Mail
• Zoho Calendar
• Zoho Writer
• Zoho Sheet
• Zoho Show
• Zoho Creator

These browser-based applications come with a consistent user interface across multiple mobile platforms. We currently support the following mobile platforms.

• iPhone
• Android
• BlackBerry
• Windows Mobile &
  
• Symbian (S60 Platform)
  

We certainly plan to expand the coverage to other platforms like Palm moving forward. Also, the applications we support on these platforms will be expanded further as some of our Business applications make their way into Zoho Mobile. We also have plans to offer some native applications for selected platforms under Zoho Mobile.



Zoho Mobile is also localized to Japanese. We plan to make this available in additional languages soon.

Do give Zoho Mobile a try from your mobile phone and let us know your feedback.

The knowledge about the URL of the various Zoho Creator application components like Forms, Views, PDF report etc., will help in providing quick access to the application and its forms, views and report formats. 

The image given below conveys the url pattern of the various Zoho Creator application components. The wiki page Zoho Creator URL Patterns lists and explains in detail the URL structure of the various Zoho Creator application components. Please feel free to post your comments on that page.



In the next series, we will cover more advanced URL patterns for forms and views, like setting form properties, look and feel, view criteria etc.  Stay tuned...

Jane McCarty's Webappsatwork has a blog post that says - Zoho Creator Marketplace for millions "for free" seekers. Marketplace?. She mentions that the below 300,000 claim which we have in our website has triggered her for the post

Zoho Creator offers you the flexibility to add new records to your database, in multiple ways.  You can,

• Add data through onlilne HTML forms from your PC or from your mobile
• Add records through email
• Add records by importing from Excel file
• Add records by executing Deluge script
• Add records using Zoho Creator APIs

1. Add record through online HTML Forms 

Zoho Creator provides drag-n-drop Web Form Builder to easily create custom HTML Forms in minutes. You can access the online HTML form from your PC or right from your mobile. The data submitted through these forms will be directly added to your database. Here is a sample form created with Zoho Creator.

If you do not like the default positioning of the form fields, you can customize the same using the Zoho Creator Client API and create your own custom form.  The Client API allows field level embedding to customize the look of your HTML forms to suite your website. Each field in the form can be individually positioned, providing a perfect fit and finish to your web page.  

2.  Add record through Email 

Every form in Zoho Creator has its own email address, so you can just sent an email to submit form data. Zoho Creator checks for form updates via e-mail, once in every ten minutes. The data submitted through e-mail will be directly added to your database. Refer the Help link for more information. 

3. Add record by importing from an Excel file

If you want to create an online database application from your .XLS files, you can paste data from these files and directly create your application with Form and Data. Comma separated values (.csv) or Tab seperated values (.tsv) stored in other file formats can also be used to create your application with data. Refer Help Link for more information. 

You can also add new records to an existing application by importing data from a .xls, .csv, .tsv file.  Refer Help Link for more information.  

4. Add record through Deluge Script 

Zoho Creator offers the flexibility to add dynamic data to your web forms by writing a bit of Deluge Scripting.  The add record  Deluge task offers the flexibility to add new records to a form, with the given values or with dynamic values and is triggered by form actions, field actions or functions. For example,  the script can be executed when form data is submitted or when a field value is updated  or from user-defined functions . A few common scenarios where the add record Deluge task can be used:

• Add data submitted from different Stateless forms in one main table. Refer Stateless forms for more information.
• Add a record to a form by invoking a Custom Action in the view. Refer Tips & Tricks for more information.

5.  Add record using Zoho Creator APIs 

Zoho Creator - RPC Web API allows client applications to add record to a Zoho Creator form, using the HTTP POST method. You can add multiple records to multiple applications and multiple forms, at a time.    

The Deluge postURL task can also be used to add a new record to another Zoho Creator application, using Zoho Creator API.  Refer Add Record using API, for more information on using the POST URL task with Zoho Creator XML RPC API.

It's good to see such comments after a long, hard and tiring month for Zoho Creator team, which is working hard on performance enhancements of the apps. Did we succeed? Updates on that front later. First let us take a quick sigh of relieeeeeef reading these comments.

AND WY I AM SO ADDICTED TO ZC?

1º Because this tool is simple and easy to learn and, because of that, it is also easy to explain to non-developers how to setup things;

3º Because ZC have a free plan (despite the increasing of limitations);

 

Yes, we have limited some of the features in Free plan, reason being that we want to run the show so that small and medium business owners with an idea can create apps at low price and manage their business. Now we have introduced 3 user plan at $15 targeted to smallest business owners and home-based businesses. Marketplace is one of the kind of initiative where in business owners can buy apps from third party developers -or- get a custom made app by the developers at reasonable price.

And finally, i start to understand some programming logic and i started to make some progresses in coding... could you imagine that?!?!?!

 

The reason behind designing the contextual linking to Script Tab from 'Form/ View' tab is this. We wanted to introduce 'Deluge Script' at slow pace giving users time and flexibility to run their hands on it. Further splitting Script Tab into two - Script Builder (for novice scriptwriters) and Free Flow Scripting (for advance scriptwriters) makes it easier for them to get accustomed to Deluge Script quickly. Guess we have succeeded.

 Because of the dynamic of this forum, and some advanced users: Several shared doubts are posted, and we always have an answer, almost of the times with code examples. And the best part is that we can grant permissions to developers for helping us... (Thanks ZC team, Binarysprinter and Scriptlogic ;)).

 

Truly, they are the superstars in Zoho Creator Forum, helping users with the tips and tricks and offering solutions for user requirements at Zoho Marketplace. Thank you Binarysprinter and Gaev

More details about the Zoho Creator addict at forum titled - "Zoho support sucks" yes the thread started that way ;)

On behalf of the entire development team I thank the Zoho Creator Addict - Arcílio Silva, for making such an elaborate comment :) Hope we can live up to his expectations in future too.

A search interface comprises of a Search Form where users can enter a search term and view the search result.  Zoho Creator supports creating a Search Interface that display customized views based on the search keyword. Let us take the Employee Manager application in the Zoho Market place for illustration. 

The Dashboard page of the Employee Manager displays the Search form to search employees based on the specified Employee Name, Team Name or Department. On click of the Search button a custom HTML view is displayed, as shown in the screen-shot below.

Here are the steps in creating a Search Interface in Zoho Creator:

1. Create the Search Form

• Create a Search Form with the Fields that would make up a Search Dialog. A search Form is basically a Stateless form, that does not store data in the ZC database. Refer  Stateless Forms for more information on creating Stateless forms.

• Add a Custom Button to the Stateless Form. 

For example, in the Search form displayed below, we have a field with script name "searchEmployee" and Custom button named Search.



2. Create the HTML View with Search Parameter

• Create the required HTML view with parameter, e.g. searchParam to pass the search key (specified in the above Search form).
  

• Write the code for this view to retrieve the records from your Table whose value matches the passed parameter. 

You can use the drag-n-drop Script Builder in the HTML View, to add HTML and Deluge code and create the required view. Refer the Help link Creating HTML Views for more information.

For example, in the Employee Manager, the HTML view named Employee_Search is created to fetch and display the required data whose value matches with the search key that is passed as paramater to this view.  The screen-shot of the drag-n-drop UI to create the HTML view is given below:


 

3. Invoke the HTML view on click of the Search Form

• Add on click script to the Stateless form to display the HTML view, on click of the Search Button, as shown below:

• The on click script, uses the OpenURL Deluge task to redirect the stateless form to the HTML view.
  

• Click Save Script to update the script. In live mode, the Employee Search view will be displayed on click of the Search button.

Techcrunch has announced about Coghead, a online application development platform closing down their business.

We were watching Coghead's announcements and its progress closely since its launch and were really impressed with their 2.0 Launch. But sad that they're closing.

As Zoho Creator is competing in the same space of 'database application development platform'. We feel responsible to bail out all the Coghead users who have put their business critical data in Coghead. We can understand how shocking it would be to read the news that you no longer can use the service which you have been depending on.

Good news is that Zoho Creator is offering Free Migration For Coghead Users




How Zoho Creator can help you to migrate from Coghead?

• You will fill out the contact form embedded below
• Our representatives will get in touch with you at the earliest to discuss your project needs
• A team of experts will be assigned to help you to build apps and will offer free personal consulting
• The experts can also build your apps for free, if needed
• You can also post your requirements in the Marketplace to get it done by the developer community.

Here's why you should migrate to Zoho Creator?

Price Factor - Zoho Creator is priced at very affordable rate. Zoho Creator Pricing starts at $15/month for 3 users which is very much lower than the competition

Trust Factor - Zoho Creator is in business for more than 3 years with very strong user base. Zoho is part of AdventNet, a company that has a 11 year history of profitable organic growth.

Deployment to Google App Engine - A nice way for Zoho to demonstrate that we are not holding user's application hostage.  More here

Zoho Marketplace -  You can buy and sell off-the-shelf Custom Business Applications

TAKE ACTION NOW
Please fill out this form and we will get back to at the earliest.

We are looking forward to working with you
- Raffic Aslam