Zoho Sheet has this “Link External Data” functionality, which can be used to mashup with data on the web. It can sync your Zoho spreadsheet with data in public CSV files, HTML tables and RSS feeds. Zoho Sheet will basically fetch data periodically from the configured URL and update the spreadsheet automatically. You can then analyze on the external data by applying formulas or drawing charts. You can also publish / embed the resultant chart or a specific range or the whole spreadsheet. It gives you ample possibilities to mashup data from the web. A word of caution: While fetching data periodically from external websites, especially HTML pages, make sure you agree to the terms and conditions of the website.

Here is a short presentation which walks you through the various steps involved in configuring External Data in Zoho Sheet. It takes an example of automatic import of data from a public Zoho Creator view. The same can be done on a private Zoho Creator view by enabling private permalinks in Zoho Creator.

(view the presentation in full screen for better clarity)

Are you using this feature already? If so, let us know how you are using it.

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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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We just rolled out a new design for Zoho on iPhone. You can play with it @ mobile.zoho.com (or iZoho.com). The new design introduces a tabbed interface for navigation between Zoho Apps. Currently, Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator are supported in this new interface. We plan to add more apps and more functionality to this new version.

Once you login, the Zoho tab shows the recent 5 documents from each Zoho app. You’ll be able to view your personal and shared documents under the respective application tabs.

We are looking forward to your feedback on this new redesign.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Posted to:  Announcements, Zoho Creator, Zoho Mobile, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Writer  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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Recently, we announced pricing for Zoho Creator, which we patterned after Zoho CRM, blithely assuming that since Zoho CRM pricing was exceptionally well-received - indeed, I confidently predict that within 5 years, no one will be able to charge $50-100 per user per month for CRM! - we will do fine with Zoho Creator as well. Indeed, we started receiving customer orders literally within hours of the pricing announcement.

While we provided a Free Edition in Zoho Creator, what we didn’t realize, of course, was the diversity of our user base in Zoho Creator, the most passionate & vocal among them called the pricing Zoho’s first strategic blunder. We had non-profits, independent developers, casual users and so on for whom the Free Edition wasn’t sufficient, and the pricing we announced was just not right. In hindsight, we should have known this: even within AdventNet, Zoho Creator is used in ways that we didn’t anticipate when we developed it. The foremost example is apps being used to organize internal events like cricket matches or movie outings, for collecting information on various participant preferences and so on. These kinds of applications are simply not worth paying for.

We apologize for missing key parts of the Zoho Creator constituency with our first stab at pricing. Now we have revised it significantly, and put a second draft, explicitly recognizing the diversity of needs. I have posted it in the same forum thread and summarize below.

I want to emphasize our commitment to a) keeping a generous free edition so the cost of entry is zero b) affordable pricing, designed to vastly lower the cost of IT to business customers c) Running our own business efficiently enough to turn a profit with (a) & (b). At AdventNet, we have a 12 year history of doing just that, and we have grown organically to this level.

Zoho Creator Free Edition & Independent Users Edition: it is based on personal user accounts, and it will have a limit of 5 free applications and a total of 200 MB of data and a bandwidth limit we are working out, with no shared user limit. We expect to revise the data/bandwidth limits upwards based on usage experience and as prices for these fall. The applications can be private or public. Developers can use this edition to test out their ideas free.

In practice, this will work much like how Zoho Writer or Zoho Sheet personal editions work today, with no sharing limit for number of users. They difference is that there is no administrative relationship among users, while an organization account provides for such administrative relationships, and therefore policy enforcement.

Beyond the free limit, pricing will be based on per application basis, because number of users is not tracked.

Zoho Creator Business Edition: it is based on organizational accounts, as provided in Zoho Business, a limit of 5 free applications & 200 MB of data, with monthly bandwidth constraints to be specified. It will have a free user quota as well, based on Zoho Business Free Edition limits (likely to be 10 persons in an organization). The key difference is that unlike Free Edition, it will come with administrative policy options, and potentially some extra features to be decided in future.

Beyond the free user limit, pricing will be based on number of users basis, with bands of users. We will start at $5/user/month, and drop it to $3/user/month when we reach 100 users, with volume discounts. We will also announce a bundled package pricing along with Zoho Business when Zoho Business reaches general availability.

Once again, I would like to thank everyone who provided feedback. We don’t always get it right at first, but with your help, we will!

UPDATE : Here’s the new pricing model for Zoho Creator - http://sheet.zoho.com/publishrange.do?id=1427f0d4768347bb628851c41b67ad0c

UPDATE :
New Pricing Page for Zoho Creator & a Pricing FAQ.

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Paul McMahon is organising a conference for international school teachers. And he posted his query in a Classroom 2.0 forum, wanting to know about a tool that allowed for staff to self-register for workshops.

I am busily organising a conference (a first in Hong Kong) for international school teachers. I am using eventbrite, a great online tool for conference registration but my next major task is allowing teachers to assign themselves to workshops once I have the programme up. (Yes we spell it that way in Hong Kong too

I am wondering if anyone out there has run a confernce or PD day and allowed for staff to self-register for workshops from a list on during a time period. It would be great if the tool also allowed the teacher to see if a workshop was already quite full. Maybe I could assign a max number and they could see say 20/25 for the workshop.

As I am already losing a bit on the other online tools (Eventbrite and Paypal), it would be good if it was free or very minimal cost. (Yes! I want it all for nothing! Typical of an opportunist Aussie Teacher

And Paul’s query got the answer from James Dykstra.

We are doing the registration for our regional Heritage Fair using Zoho Creator (creator.zoho.com). Our form (embedded here: http://www.redriverheritage.ca/registrationonline.html) gets the users to fill in all the information we choose and then puts it into a spreadsheet for us. Creator has database functions that I haven’t attempted to use, but they would likely allow you to do the fancier parts of your registration process, including setting limits for certain workshops. Everything on Zoho is available for free. Though we’ve only given it a limited trial (so far about 50 students are registered), I’m quite pleased with the results so far.

Thanks to James for suggesting Zoho Creator! And one more example of Zoho Creator in action : Bryan at CollegeMediaInnovation.org posts about using Zoho Creator to create a list of multimedia projects from various student journalists. The submission form used by Bryan & the data he’d collected. He has also compiled a list of schools doing video as well. Thanks Bryan, for using Zoho Creator!

If you are to organize an event or collect data, take a look at the examples above. And don’t forget to tell us how you are using Zoho Creator in the comments.

UPDATE :

1) Got this tweet from Suzie Vesper of New Zealand. She’s done a couple of nice screencasts on Zoho Creator to act as easy tutorials. 1) Creating a form and 2) embedding it in your blog/website/wiki, downloading the data collected to your computer. The wiki page where she’s embedded the app & the screencast tutorials.

2) Prithwis Mukerjee in the comments points to B-School students using Zoho Creator (in the embedded ‘BlogPostURLs View’, click on each of the URLs & you will see that the students have created Zoho Creator apps & embedding forms in their blog)

Popularity: 42% [?]

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As cloud-computing matures, we can see the emergence of various layers of web services, operating at different levels of abstraction, serving different market needs. Take the category of web application creation/hosting, for example.

Consider the EC2 service from AWS: it provides what may be called “virtualized hardware” as a web service. The fundamental virtualized hardware unit is an industry standard x86 server (with specified CPU/RAM/Disk capacity), capable of hosting a Linux binary image. The Linux image can include any kind of program, written in any language available on Linux. The “any kind of program” part is important, as you will see shortly. This provides the most flexibility for a professional programmer, but if your program goes into an infinite loop and occupies 100% of its virtual CPU, AWS will simply let it burn up the CPU-hours - after all, there is no way for them, even in theory, to know if your infinite loop is intentionally coded or a bug.

The second type of service is what Google App Engine announced yesterday. It provides what may be called a “hosted middleware framework”, with the middleware stack having only Python language bindings today, with other language bindings to follow in future. Even when multiple languages are eventually supported, this type of service is quite different from Amazon EC2, because the middleware framework imposes specific constraints on the kind of program that can run on the service. Specifically, Google App Engine service is limited to running what may be called “provably halting programs” (or it will simply be forcibly halted the environment!) - short-running web applications that support the “page oriented computing” model - i.e service a HTTP request with a response and stop. Stand alone programs using multiple threads, such as a web crawler, are not supported. The flexibility lost by the developer comes with a huge benefit. Because of the constraints imposed by the middleware framework, Google can make much stronger guarantees of your application availability than Amazon can - Amazon can guarantee the availability of their virtual CPU, but cannot guarantee your application availability. The service abstraction of App Engine still needs a skilled programmer to create applications, but the effort required is less than what Amazon would need, with the trade-off of a more restrictive programming model.

Finally, Zoho Creator. This provides a service which lets users develop database driven web applications, with the service being accessible to regular users, as opposed to only trained programmers. It starts with a easy-to-use form/view builder interface, and then for more complicated logic, eases the user into the Deluge scripting environment. This scripting environment is intentionally kept very simple, so as to make the system accessible to a large number of users. Much like Google App Engine, Zoho Creator sits on a specific middleware stack, along with its constrained programming model, and its associated benefits/constraints for the application. But rather than exposing the middleware stack as an API only, Zoho Creator provides a higher level of abstraction through a development environment that is accessible to the casual non-programmer - so creating complex views, plugging in validation logic etc. are much simpler.  As an aside, I want to mention that, in principle, it would be possible to layer Zoho Creator on top of Google App Engine  on top of Amazon EC2.

I hope this post has demonstrated how the cloud-services market is increasingly becoming sophisticated with various kinds of tiered services serving different needs. Each type of service brings with it a different abstraction, a different programming model, and of course, its benefits and constraints.

Popularity: 44% [?]

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With the recent update in Zoho Creator, we have enriched the deluge language with ‘Functions’ support.

Let’s see, ‘What is Function’ in scripting terminology. In simple terms, ‘A function is a set of statements grouped together under a name and can be invoked/reused from elsewhere in the scripting‘.

Usage of functions can be broadly classified under the following.
1).Write once and reuse utilities
2).Serves as bridge between applications (created by the same user)
3).Custom action integration in views

Write once and reuse utilities :

‘Functions’ promotes code re-usability of deluge script within an application and even across applications (same user’s applications). It makes the code modular and easy to understand.

When you feel like repeating certain scripting functionality across different parts of application, you can define them as separate function and reuse it. With the help of built-in functions provided in deluge, you can create numerous util functions on your own, using the ‘Functions’ support.

eg:

Help on creating a new function here

More samples here

Serves as bridge between applications (created by the same user) :

Not only can you define generic utilities as functions, you can even manipulate the application data from within the functions. Till now, it was not possible to manipulate the data in one application from the script in another application, which is now made possible with the help of functions. In this respect we can consider application as an object with its data and we can define functions to operate on this data which compares to member functions in an ‘object oriented’ world. The applications can communicate with each other using functions.

Custom action integration in views :

‘Functions’ has the potential to be integrated into various GUI actions, taking the scripting integration in Zoho Creator to next level. It makes the applications created, much more powerful and alive.

As a first step, it is integrated into views under the terminology ‘Custom Actions’. It enables the user to invoke specific function on a selected record in a view.

Custom actions in a view in live mode

More help on custom action in views

- Hariharan

Popularity: 27% [?]

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We are happy to announce the SSL Support for Zoho Creator. This is one of the long pending feature requests in Creator. We are glad that we could give SSL support which will pave the way towards the Business Edition of Zoho Creator. As of now SSL Support will be free for Editing and Accessing your applications. In future, SSL support for accessing the application may come with a premium charge.

To access Zoho Creator with SSL support, point your browser to https://creator.zoho.com/ or use the “Secure” link found near the login box in http://creator.zoho.com .

The main feature of SSL support is that you can restrict the access of your applications only through https. When you enable this option for your application, http access to your application will not work and only https access will work. You can find this option in the Application Settings while Editing your application.

In the broader picture, we plan to extend SSL capabilities to all Zoho apps. Meanwhile, please try this new update and let us know your feedback.

Popularity: 32% [?]

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Pai writes about using Zoho Creator and Zoho DB & Reports.

You can now build powerful and sharable databases online for free thanks to websites like Zoho. You don’t even need any special database development experience to create online databases that you can access any time from any browser.

Zoho DB & Reports offers the best “Free” online database service, hands down. It is extremely easy to create your own database and the performance is impressive. The databases run rather quickly which was a pleasant surprise. There doesn’t appear to be any limits in place for the number of databases you can create for free nor how large they can grow so I do not know how many records a Zoho database can contain. You can share any database with anyone you want by simply adding their email address and sending them a link.

Zoho Creator is another database creation service they offer but don’t get them confused. While they describe it as a Database Application builder, it does a lot more than that. Zoho Creator is a lot more complex than Zoho DB so it will not be as easy to use straight out of the gate. It offers an excellent interface builder for creating customized forms for your database application. They now even offer the ability to build database applications for the mobile platform and have their own API for those interested in building more complex databases.

Samuel Dean at Web Worker Daily & Rick Broida at BNET Business Hacks recommend Zoho DB & Reports too.

One of the good personal finance blogs that we follow is Ramit Sethi’s. Ramit in a latest post of his embeds Zoho Sheets to show how one can track the money being spent. Joseph (Joe) Kennedy has a nice chart of when to run your home appliances and save on your electricity bills. PGE customers in Portland, please take note. For others, you can prepare a similar chart. Publish it in your blog and it’ll benefit you & your readers. From Joe’s post,

Running at the wrong time of day can cost double or triple what it costs to run in off-peak hours. At current rates, that can add up to a few dollars a month. Granted, it’s not always convenient to do a few loads of laundry after 10pm. But, if you run one load a night, to keep up with the laundry generated, that wouldn’t be so bad.

As an aside, I love zoho.com. Dump Microsoft Office. Zoho is online. It’s free. It lets you save your documents into a format compatible with office. And easily embeds in your blogs. Nearly a dozen other tools, as well.

Ranjan Verma twittered about a Zoho Creator app which will search/compare different mutual funds. Hope we will get to see it in his blog (another one I follow for tips on personal finance & stocks!) soon.

Consulting Pulse writes about the Web 2.0 technologies & programs they use and which of them are worth paying for. About Zoho, they have this to say:

What did I ever do without an online word processor? Just one year ago I was happy wandering along in desktop land with my version of word, then I came across this in an internet search.

Absolutely changed the way I work! Today ALL of my documents are backed up on Zoho, all of my reports are there, I write the first drafts of my posts there and I am starting to use other elements of the service as well. For example, I am dead keen to learn about their project management software and will probably be starting a project there shortly.

If (when?) I ever go into business for myself Zoho will probably be my office productivity suite of choice.

Shameless Reviews (what a name!) on Zoho:

Everyone knows that MS Office XP dents the pocket. Worse with MS Office Vista. You’ll gurgle money to the tune of $300 for a bloated app that tends to require patch after patch. What would you give to have the functionality of MS Office without the price tag? (free) Visit Zoho Office. Don’t worry, you aren’t buying MS Office software online at some discount shop. You’re actually going to word process and spreadsheet your data fully online.

Imagine: now my laptop need to strain and groan under 2GB of bloatware! Once you zoho [Note to Zoli : here's one more person using Zoho as a verb!], there’s no coming back. I know I’m hooked

Thanks to all the bloggers above for using Zoho! Be it a program to monitor your weight, tracking your monthly spend, reducing your electricity charges, investing in the right MF, backing-up your documents / database or managing your projects, remember, Zoho is there to help you out
ps : Site24×7, our website monitoring service is offering a 40% discount till this month end. Head there if you want your website(s) availability monitored round-the-clock.

Popularity: 59% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho Creator, Zoho Projects, Zoho Sheet  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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Our users have created some cool mashups using Zoho Sheet and Zoho Creator. The first two examples are from Jynn, a software engineer from Hyderabad, India. In the first application, Jynn mashes up Zoho Creator, Google Maps and Yahoo Pipes.

Zoho Creator offers end users a brand new way to perform basic CRUD operations using the web both as a database and for processing data.

Here I will briefly describe how I used Google Maps to Integrate with Zoho Creator,Using simple transformations with Yahoo pipes.

The application and its uses:
This Integration i.e Creator +Maps can be used in many ways e.g., Tracking Inventory, tracking Human resources, Basic Travel maps or even geographic maps of movie theatres where a current movie is playing.

This application overlays Zoho creator data onto a Google Map i.e in this case Movie Theatres where a particular movie is playing shown on a Google map.
Zoho creator is used to update movie info using the UI or even Bulk upload and Google maps is used to overlay the data.

I also used the cool technology of Yahoo Pipes to basically transform the Feed generated by Zoho Creator.

In the second example, Jynn uses Zoho Sheet along with Dapper, Yahoo Pipes and Google Maps. Here’s how Jynn describes the application :

The Application:
There is a live excel sheet hosted on Zoho Sheets,which gives info on Radio stations in India for radio Enthusiasts….

Updating the sheet with coordinates will be immediately reflected in the Google Maps

Technology Used:

Zoho Sheet:
Can be embedded onto your blog/webpage (Here it is in my blog),and contains City name and Location

Dapper :
This is the killer app which I used to parse the HTML output from Zoho Sheet and convert to RSS.

Yahoo Pipes:
To extract Geo Encoded data From The RSS feed…

The next one comes from Pete Thomas of Land of Zoho Creator fame. Pete mashes up Oodle, the local classifieds site with Zoho Creator. Nicknamed Zoodle, the prototype mashup creates the work flow of the customer service process for Pete’s friend Ted. From the post :

Zoodle will let Ted enter the listing data he gets from a BuggyRocket customer as it becomes available and only publish it for Oodle to pick up once it’s complete. Other features include:

• Listing detail page: Although it’s not the slickest looking thing in the world, we do manage to provide a “detail page” served directly from Zoodle. We also provide an image URL in the same fashion.
• Private application with some public pages: Ted’s use of Zoodle requires his authentication but the detail page, image URL, and Oodle XML feed are all publicly available on the web.
• Gradual approach to form completion: Through the use of several forms that are attached to the main “Essentials” form, Ted can easily fill out the parts of a real estate listing that he currently has data for and come back to finish the rest at any time before publishing.
• Republishing: Data can be edited, overwritten, and republished at any time.

Thanks Jynn & Pete!

If you have such mashups made using Zoho, please do leave your comments.

Popularity: 91% [?]

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