Zoho DB & Reports offers a wide range of data types (column types) to store your tabular data. So far, the options offered for formatting the data stored in these column types have been limited. We have addressed this in our latest update.

Zoho DB & Reports now offers a wide variety of formatting options for each data type. With these options you can choose how you would like to have your data displayed in the various reports created.

How to format a column?

1. Select the table or tabular view in which the columns are to be formatted
2. Right click on the column that is to be formatted
3. Set the necessary formatting option in the dialog that pops up
4. Click OK to apply the formatting changes

Immediately you will see the formatting options being applied over the column. Zoho DB & Reports also ensures to carry over this formatting set for a column across all the reports (chart, pivot, summary & tabular) created including this column.

Formatting options supported include Text Alignment, No. of Decimal places (for all numeric data types), Currency Symbol (for currency type), Negative Number Display (for currency type), Date display format and Include thousand separator (for all numeric data types).

Customize Chart Coloring:

In Zoho DB & Reports the colors used in charts have been system generated so far. With the latest update you can now change the colors used in a chart to suit your taste. Follow the below given simple steps to customize the color in a chart:

1. Select the Chart whose colors are to be customized
2. Click Edit Design and go to edit mode
3. Click on any of the category colors listed in the legend (seen on the right side of the chart) to change the same.
4. A color chooser will pop up
5. Choose the color required
6. Click Apply to apply the color Or Click on Use Default if you would like to revert to system generated colors.

Auto-recognizing currency data during Import:

Now Zoho DB & Reports has included the intelligence to auto-identify a data column as currency when you import it into Zoho DB & Reports. You do not have to manually set the data type of those columns as currency, which had been the case so far. The data could be in any of the accepted currency formats (with currency symbol or abbreviation eg., $, USD etc.,) of any country. Auto-recognition would be applied when you import data into Zoho DB & Reports from any of CSV or .XLS or HTML files

Hope you find the above features useful. As always do give it a try and let us know your comments….

With regards,
Clarence
Zoho DB & Reports - Online Reporting & BI Service

Popularity: 3% [?]

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We get this question quite often -

Does Zoho offer a backup function which will let me download all my data?

We have various options depending on each Zoho service.

Zoho Writer : Offers a variety of different formats that you can export a document to - doc, docx, pdf, odf (odt), latex, sxw, html, rtf & txt. Click on Export to see the options.

Also integrates with Google Gears. Offers upto 50 documents to be downloaded to your desktop. You can access these documents from http://writer.zoho.com/offline. Click on Go Offline to download Google Gears and your Zoho Writer documents

Zoho Sheet : Click on Export. Again offers a wide variety of options from xls to pdf to ods to xml. There is also a batch export option available from the sidebar.

Zoho Show : Open a presentation. Click on Export and you will see the options available (ppt, pdf, pps and odp)

Zoho Projects : Export all your tasks as an xls or csv file. Under Tasks and Milestones, click on Export button

Zoho Creator : Export all your data as xls, pdf. Also as RSS, JSON feeds etc.

Zoho Wiki : You can download all the pages of your Wiki as a zip file. Available under Settings -> Click to download the backup

Zoho CRM : Choose the module (Leads, Contacts etc) and click on Export. You can also export all your CRM data in one go also. We charge a nominal fee of $10.

Zoho DB & Reports : Export your reports as csv, pdf or an image file

Zoho Invoice : Export each invoice, estimate as pdf. Export customer’s info as VCard (vcf).

Zoho Notebook : Has an Export as mht option. The exported page can be viewed in Internet Explorer.

We will be coming up with more export options in upcoming updates.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator, Zoho DB, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Notebook, Zoho Projects, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Wiki, Zoho Writer  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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Printing the reports created in Zoho DB & Reports has been one of the most requested features by our users. And this is now available. You can export any of your reports created (be it chart, pivots, table … ) into a printer friendly PDF file for printing. We offer a good set of options to customize your print outs too. Settings include Page Size, Headers, Footers, etc.

How to Take a Print?

1. Select the report to be printed from within Zoho DB & Reports
2. Select the “Export” -> “Export as PDF” menu
3. You will see a PDF Export settings dialog as below
4. Provide the necessary settings like file name, page size, margins, footer and header
5. Click OK to generate the PDF
6. Save the PDF file generated into your local folder or Open it from within your browser
7. You can print the PDF generated anytime

Hope you find this useful. Take a Print out and let us know how you like it.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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After the recent Zoho Sheet Pivot Table support which is based on Zoho DB & Reports, we have rolled in good set of useful features into Zoho DB & Reports. I have summarized the important ones here below. 

Copy Database:

With the new Copy Database feature, you easily create a copy of an existing Zoho DB & Reports database. This feature provides an option to make a copy of the database with or without existing data. If you copy without data, then only the tables and report definitions are copied. If you copy with data, then all tables, reports along with existing data in the database would be copied.

You can make a copy of a database following the steps given below:

• Go to “Existing Databases” section in the home page
• Under each database that is listed you will find a “Copy” link
• Click on the “Copy” link for the database that you wish to copy
• It will popup a dialog where you could provide the name and description for the new database that is to be created
• Check/Uncheck the “Copy with Data” option depending on whether you would like to make a copy of the database with tables, reports and existing data OR just the tables and reports definition alone

With this option you could also copy any of the demonstrative Sample Databases that is provided by Zoho DB & Reports.

HTML Import:

Zoho DB & Reports now supports importing HTML table contents into Zoho DB & Reports. This enables importing data in any HTML table into Zoho DB & Reports as you import CSV data. The HTML file should contain at least one Table inside it for importing.

You can import data from a HTML file through any of the following means:

• Copy/Paste the HTML code into the “Import Wizard”
• Load a HTML file from a local folder
• Load a HTML from any publicly accessible Web URL

More intelligence & convenience for designing Chart/Pivot/Summary views:

So far, while designing chart or pivot or summary view, you had to drag and drop fields listed on the left to the right-side design area and construct the view. Now we have provided checkboxes to just select the fields that are to be used to design the chart. This is apart from the existing drag and drop support.

Zoho DB & Reports intelligently identifies the appropriate position to place the selected field in the design area. Also as another step of intelligence, Zoho DB & Reports even selects the right function to apply on the field which is added to the design area.

Filters & Search across all tabular views:

Filters and Search (Quick Filter) was introduced into Zoho DB & Reports in one of our previous update. It was initially supported only in Tables. Now you could do Quick filtering across all table based views in Zoho DB & Reports. This includes Tabular Views, SQL Query table and tables shown for displaying View Underlying Data in Charts, Pivots and Summary Views.

Color your Zoho DB & Reports interface with Themes:

Zoho DB & Reports now supports themes. You could apply the theme you like by choosing the “Themes” menu at the right top corner of the screen. Currently we have only two packaged themes available (more to come very soon….). The theme you choose will be set to your preference and applied across logins. I guess you would have already noticed that the snapshots embedded above in this blog post were all taken with our New Blue Theme.

Keep track of the  Zoho DB & Reports Feature Trail to know about all the features that are rolled-out into our service regularly. Try out the new features and let us know what you think….

Popularity: 16% [?]

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Our Zoho Sheet team just rolled out a milestone update to our spreadsheet application with a cluster of new features. There are more than 15 new features added to this update, but two key features really stand out for businesses - Macros & Pivot Tables.

This video gives you a quick introduction to these key features.

Macros:

Zoho Sheet now supports Visual Basic Macros - the ones you use in MS Excel. This is an important milestone for Zoho Sheet as it becomes the only Spreadsheet application that supports VB Macros apart from Microsoft Excel. We now understand Visual Basic and can execute Visual Basic code at the backend (no, we don’t run any MS stuff back there). This capability opens up new set of possibilities.

In the current version, Zoho Sheet lets you import your existing speadsheets with Excel macros or create new ones. We support a broad set of functions and we do plan to extend the list further. We also plan to add Record & Play for Macros going forward.

We are also launching a Wiki (http://vbmacros.wiki.zoho.com/) which is kind of a free marketplace for Macros. You can browse for sample Macros or share your Macros with others.

Pivot Tables & Charts:

As you may know, Zoho DB supports Pivot tables. This functionality is now extended to Zoho Sheet allowing you to create Pivot tables & Pivot charts on your structured data or from a range of spreadsheet data.

This unique integration between Zoho Sheet & Zoho DB brings in some new capabilities to Zoho Sheet. You can now import upto 100,000 rows of structured data to Zoho Sheet from a CSV file. Pivot tables and pivot charts can be created by simple drag and drop interface.




Pivot Tables & Macros are just two of the key functionalities added in this update. Complete list is available here.

As you may have noticed, we are adding more depth to our existing applications apart from adding new apps. We believe in feature-rich business applications and you’ll see us improving and integrating our apps further.

As always, we can’t wait to hear your feedback on this new update.

Popularity: 48% [?]

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It’s been quiet sometime since you heard from the Zoho DB & Reports team. We all have been working hard under the hoods to get Zoho DB & Reports better. Thanks to all of you for the overwhelming response to Zoho DB & Reports and for the great feedbacks you all have posted. All your feedbacks are really keeping us very busy.
We have been incrementally adding new features and at the same time fixing important and glaring issues in the service. Just thought of summarizing the important features that had been rolled into Zoho DB & Reports in the past couple of weeks for you to keep tabs on.

Filters and Search in Tables:

This has been a major limitation in the service so far. Now you can filter or search data in the table using the “Filter “  option in the tool bar. We have provided variety of options to filter the data based on the type of the column. We have also ensured that it is very easy to use and self-explanatory.

Support for data in Multiple Character set:

This feature has been one of the most sought after by users across the globe. You have it now in Zoho DB & Reports!!. Now users can import data in different character set and do any type of data manipulation and reporting.

New Chart types:

In our first release we only had 5 types of chart supported (basic Pie, Line, Scatter, Bar and Table). Now we support 14 chart types including Web Chart, Stacked Bar, 3D Pie, 3D Bar etc., Still lots more coming ….

Groups support for easy Collaboration:

Now you could create a Group for each database and associate a set of users within it. View creation, sharing etc., could now be done easily at the group level rather than at each user level. This would facilitate much easy collaboration in a team environment.

Highlights of the Group feature:

• Database owner will have the permission to create a Group and add/remove users to it
• Tables and Views can be shared to the Group (apart from individual users) by the Database Owner
• Users in the group could create their own views
• Users in the group could share their views to the group. (They cannot share it to members outside the group)
• Only Database owner will have the permission to share any view or table outside the group

More In-built Formula Functions:

We have also added good number of inbuilt functions that you could use in your Custom Formulas when you add new Formula column in your Table or Tabular View.

Uploading more data into Zoho DB & Reports:

As the scale of usage of Zoho DB & Reports by users are expanding, we have been receiving requests to enable uploading more data and also to increase the maximum size limit. In case you have such a requirement, please contact us to support at zohodb dot com so that we could assist you.

Give the features a try and let us know your feedbacks as always. Apart from this, we have also fixed quiet a number of issues since the first release.

Work is in progress on a number of interesting features which are coming up very soon. Stay tuned…….

Popularity: 17% [?]

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Lifehacker has a post up comparing the Zoho Suite with Google Apps. From the post :

Both the big G and the little Z offer completely browser-based office applications like a word processor and spreadsheet, as well as communication tools like chat and email, as well as collaboration tools like project managers and wiki’s. But the business-oriented Zoho and the consumer-oriented Google applications differ a little bit in offerings, and probably a whole lot when it comes to active users.

Every time we visit Zoho, we’re impressed by the wide range of available applications, and their depth of features.

PC World Beta Watch profiled Zoho DB & Reports :

Zoho DB & Reports: Online Data Analysis

Zoho already has one database app: Creator, which provides lots of options for making a database. Its new app, called DB & Reports, has fewer creation options but gives you lots of ways to graph and analyze the data you have (you can build a database from scratch or import data from a spreadsheet). Creating pivot tables, pie charts, and custom queries is relatively simple, though this free beta still has some annoying bugs.

As with other Zoho services, Zoho DB & Reports will iron out the bugs in the upcoming updates and keep adding new features. Thanks to Gina & Edward N. Albro!

Popularity: 18% [?]

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Today, we are launching a new addition to the Zoho Suite - Zoho DB & Reports - An Online Database & Reporting Application.

Zoho DB comes with a simple spreadsheet like user interface. You can create online databases and analyze your data using different views and charting tools. You can start by creating a database from an existing XLS/CSV/TSV files or by creating blank database. Once you have the data in the database, you can create different views and do visual analysis on the data in your database.

Zoho DB lets you create multiple types of views - Tabular View, Chart View, Pivot View, Summary View etc from the ‘New’ button.

One of the core functionalities of Zoho DB is Data Visualization. The ‘Chart View’ option enables you to visualize your data in simple charts. This complex functionality is simplified with a very simple Drag-n-Drop interface. You have to play with it to really know the power of this feature.

This Drag-n-drop interface is also extended to creating ‘Pivot Tables’ in Zoho DB.

One of the unique features of Zoho DB is the ability to run SQL Queries of ANY dialect on the data. It understands SQL Queries/dialects from any of the supported databases which include Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL. So you can run the SQL queries you already know on Zoho DB data to create custom tables or reports.

Ofcourse, once you have all the tables, views, charts etc created, you can share them with appropriate permissions or make them public (checkout existing public databases). You can also embed these views and charts on your website or blogs. Here is a sample chart from one of our public databases that has info on the population.

You can start playing with the application with your existing Zoho ID @ http://db.zoho.com. But wait….before you hop on, we recommend viewing the video below (for better clarity, use this one) for a quick intro on the capabilities of the application.

Now that the application is out, this will open up new possibilities for integration across other Zoho Apps. Stay tunes on that front. Meanwhile, do play with this new app and let us know your feedback.

Popularity: 20% [?]

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