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Some time ago, a Zoho Projects customer from Australia -who happens to use Google Apps as his e-mail solution- wanted us to provide an integration between Zoho Projects and Google Apps so that he could use both seamlessly. His main concern was that his employees use Google Apps everyday for email and intranet information, so he wanted to have the Zoho Projects information easily accessible there.

After checking with other customers, that seemed like a good scenario for us to implement, but at the same time we were busy giving our users a better way to organize their projects and making project management more social with Zoho Projects 2.0. But even the core Zoho Projects team was busy, our IAM (Identity Access Management) team who is responsible for Single Sign On within Zoho & other federated logins took this up - and provided our support for signing-in with a Google Apps account. This really made creating Zoho Projects for Google Apps a lot easier. That is one reason why having small teams distributed works better than having one central team.

Ok, so what is the integration with Google Apps you are talking about
Zoho Projects for Google Apps allows customers to enjoy the functionality of Zoho Projects while at the same time having an integrated experience with their Google Apps account. Currently, Zoho Projects for Google Apps includes:

Single Sign-on with Google Apps
Customers can now login to Zoho Projects with the same username and password they use for Google Apps - no need to keep track of a separate account.

Upload documents from Google Docs
Upload Google Docs documents to your project in Zoho Projects. This way your documents stored in Google Docs can be shared with all the members in your project. Of course, you can still continue to attach documents from Zoho Docs and directly from your personal desktop.

View your project milestones in Google Calendar
Keeping track of your projects milestones is now even easier. You can have your milestones, tasks and meetings from your Zoho Projects appear automatically on your Google Calendar.

Get Zoho Projects inside Gmail, iGoogle and Google Sites
Finally, you can also get your Project Stream (the latest activity happening around your project) inside iGoogle or a Google Sites page by embedding the Zoho Projects gadget. This makes the whole experience smooth - Zoho Projects updates come to you.

How easy is it to use Zoho Projects into Google Apps ?

Short version: it's dead easy.
Long version: Here is a short video which explains the different possibilities for Google Apps customers to manage their project in Zoho Projects - all it takes is to login with our Google Apps credentials and off you go.

This is just the beginning of this integration - users like you will surely come up with new integration scenarios that we should throw in here. We keep our ears wide open to listen to our customers and improve our products accordingly. So please pour your ideas on making this even better.

Wait... are you still competing with Google Apps?

Sure! The Zoho suite of services now comprises more than 20 different Software-as-a-Service products. Some of them are bound to overlap with other someone's products. So yeah, 4 of them do overlap with products included in Google Apps. And we continue to compete in that arena (for the record, we do think ours are better, and other people seem to agree - check the recent award from Infoworld). Some people might call it coopetition. Anyway - in the end, customers and their needs come first - and we have a track record of allowing other competitors to integrate with our products, so we do the same. And of course, our goal is to reach as many customers as possible and offer then great products at affordable prices.

Other similar products from Zoho will come to Google Apps customers in the future. Stay tuned!

In the last post for Zoho Gadgets, we promised having gadgets for the Zoho business apps. First in line is Zoho Invoice. Zoho Invoice is now available as a gadget and this can be embedded wherever you want - Zoho Business' Dashboard, iGoogle, Facebook, Orkut, any Open Social XML compatible site or any web app/page where you can embed an iframe.

You can view a list of your latest invoices and estimates. You can add new invoices too.

You can view an invoice in detail. Also possible is editing, printing and seeing the invoice as pdf.

The Zoho Invoice gadget embedded in an iGoogle page

The Zoho Invoice gadget as part of the Zoho Business Desktop (Dashboard)

Hope you like this new Zoho Invoice gadget. Try it out. More importantly, do let us know what more functionality you would like to see in this gadget.

We are delighted to announce a couple of new additions to Zoho Gadgets - Notes and Links. The Links gadget makes it easy for you to bookmark your favorite and oft visited URLs. And the Notes gadget allows you to jot down quick notes. These gadgets are in sync with the Links and Notes modules in Zoho Business/Personal.

The gadgets can be added in iGoogle, Facebook, Orkut or any web page that either supports OpenSocial XML or lets you embed an iframe.

The aggregated page of Zoho Business/Personal's 'Desktop' tab now makes use of Zoho Gadgets too. This allows you to arrange the different Zoho gadgets through easy drag and drop. And makes it easy for the power Zoho user in you to use the various Zoho apps all at a single page.

Try the new Zoho Gadgets and let us know your comments. Coming up next are the business-centric gadgets like Zoho CRM, Projects and Invoice. Stay tuned.

Well, it's not a new product from Zoho. At Zoho we have a tradition of fun Saturdays. A lot of our products sprung roots from some fun project initiated on these days. A few Saturdays back, some of our developers in the Zoho Gadgets and Sheet teams wanted to develop a Windows-like calculator for Linux . And then they stumbled on the idea of throwing more power at the simple calculator. Yes - you got it right! We now have our own Zoho Sheet as a quick web based calculator. The power added to a simple calculator is mind blowing. Go on! Do your calculations at a breeze on the web - and if your throw away calculation is important enough, save it back as a sheet in Zoho Sheet.

Other than the 'Export as xls', keyboard shortcuts and support for more than 300 functions, the biggest advantage with this spreadsheet gadget is that it doesn't require a Zoho login. Anyone can use it on the fly. Make it part of your iGoogle start page and see how handy it is. Get the spreadsheet gadget from here.

We are huge Cricket fans here at Zoho. With IPL (Indian Premier League) fever upon us, we couldn't resist creating some gadgets for IPL, with Zoho Apps of course.

We created few gadgets using Zoho Sheet for IPL which automatically gathers IPL information. These gadgets can be embedded on your website or blog.

Here is a gadget that displays IPL 2009 Standings

A more comprehensive Spreadsheet with additional information is available here.

This Sheet can infact be added to iGoogle as well.

If you like these gadgets, you can embed these on your website or blog. You can find the gadgets and the corresponding HTML code to embed here (hosted on Zoho Wiki).

http://iplt20.wiki.zoho.com/IPL-Gadgets.html

If you are interested in how these gadgets were created, here is some information.

These are basically live gadgets created using Zoho Sheet and are updated without any manual intervention in Zoho Sheet. Here is how we have used the various cool features in Zoho Sheet:

The above Points Table is automatically updated from cricbuzz.com by using our Link External Data (HTML page) feature in Zoho Sheet,
The Points Table cell range has been published using the Publish Range feature, and
The Charts have been published using the Publish Charts functionality in Zoho Sheet.

Zoho Sheet automatically fetches the external data at 1400 hrs PST daily and the published charts and tables are automatically updated as the data changes. These are just few gadgets we created and we are sure you can get even more creative with some of these features in Zoho Sheet.

If you follow the league as passionately as we do, you might find these gadgets useful.

Zoho Gadgets launches today with the aim to connect Zoho applications with external applications. Zoho Gadgets, available at http://gadgets.zoho.com, can be integrated/embedded with online applications like iGoogle, Facebook, Orkut, Gmail & more. To start with, we are offering six Zoho gadgets.

Zoho Docs (Including Writer, Sheet & Show)
Zoho Mail
Zoho Calendar
Zoho Tasks
Zoho Contacts and
Zoho Planner

All the gadgets are OpenSocial compatible - this means you can now use these gadgets in any OpenSocial compatible social network. We plan to provide gadgets for other Zoho Applications moving forward.

These gadgets can be embedded individually in any websites or can be added to iGoogle or any personal dashboard.

Gadgets for iGoogle
You can now add all Zoho Gadgets to your start page. To add Zoho Gadgets to iGoogle, just click on the iGoogle link in Gadgets page and add these gadgets for them to appear in your iGoogle page.

These gadgets support oAuth when plugged into iGoogle or Gmail. This means, Zoho Gadgets can be accessed without entering Zoho Credentials inside iGoogle/Gmail. Also, as you know, we do let you login to Zoho with your Google credentials. This means, we automatically show your Zoho contents if you use this option to login to Zoho.

Gadgets for Facebook & Orkut
Gadgets can be added to Facebook by clicking on the Facebook icon in the Gadgets page and bookmarking the gadget. Your gadgets will be visible from the Applications bar at the bottom in Facebook.

As you may know, we have Zoho App for Facebook as well.

Similar to Facebook, these gadgets can also be added to Orkut. Clicking on the Orkut link in Gadgets page will redirect you to Orkut page where you have an option to add the application to your profile.

Gadgets in Gmail

We have many users using Gmail for email and Zoho for Documents. If you are one of those users, you can now view your Zoho Documents within Gmail. To do this, you'll have to enable the Labs feature in Gmail. To do this, go to Settings > Labs Tab > Enable 'Add any gadget by URL' and save the changes.

Now, go to Settings > Gadgets tab and paste the XML URL of the gadget and click 'Add'. This XML URL is available under OpenSocial option in the Gadgets page.

For now, you'll be able to add Zoho Docs, Calendar and Tasks gadgets to Gmail. If you are using Gmail, we figured you won't need Zoho Mail & Zoho Contacts inside Gmail :)

Gadgets for OpenSocial Apps
Zoho Gadgets can be added to any application that is OpenSocial compatible. The OpenSocial option in our Gadgets page provides the link to the XML file needed to integrate the gadget.

Generic Embed
All these gadgets can be embedded anywhere with our standard embed option. Just copy and paste the code in your blog or website for the gadget to be embedded. Of course, this also means you can embed these gadgets in other Zoho Applications like Zoho Notebook, Wiki, Writer, Show etc which support standard HTML embeds.

A Zoho Docs Gadget embedded in Zoho Notebook

This is just the beginning for Zoho Gadgets. We have more gadgets to come for our other applications. We also have plans to make these gadgets available in other social networks like Ning moving forward. These gadgets will also make their way to the Desktop component in Zoho Business.

Please do try out these gadgets in social networks and let us know your feedback.

Announcing Zoho Projects for Google Apps

Ok, so what is the integration with Google Apps you are talking about

How easy is it to use Zoho Projects into Google Apps ?

Wait... are you still competing with Google Apps?

New Gadget for Zoho Invoice

New in Zoho Gadgets : Links, Notes and more

Zoho Calculator?!

IPL Gadgets for Cricket Fans - Powered by Zoho Sheet

Zoho Gadgets connects you to iGoogle, Facebook, Orkut, Gmail etc