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: 30% [?]

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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Curtis Partridge at Small Business Tech blog in a post titled ‘Zoho Portfolio Continue to Grow‘ says,

One company that has been quietly building a stunning collection of applications is Zoho. They now offer an impressive array of software including office applications, invoicing, project management, and customer relationship management, database, and more. They have formed world-wide alliance partnerships around the globe to assist small business with using their products. They seem much more serious than others about developing a cloud computing business beyond the geek crowd.

In the coming weeks, we are going to dig more deeply into each of the Zoho applications and compare functionality with other online-based products.

We are eagerly waiting to hear what you would have to say about Zoho, Curtis!

Looking for a free or affordable project management app? David Glumac from Budapest, Hungary suggests some ‘alternatives to MS Project‘. David writes about Zoho Projects,

The team at Zoho is one of the coolest “Web 2.0” companies out there. Their online office suite includes tools for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, CRM, project management, invoicing and other applications. Being web-native, all Zoho applications are operating system independent. It supports creating tasks, ownership, setting deadlines and tracking milestones; working with calendars, Gantt charts, reports, share supporting files—all the cool features expected in a project management package.

Anali at the MCLC Library Tech Talk blog in her ‘Talking Tech Friday - Zoho‘ post does a brief overview of some of the Zoho apps.

 Just to prove that Google doesn’t rule the world, I thought I would do a brief overview of the Zoho suite of online tools.

[Zoho Sheet] looks very much like Excel, and also allows you to import or export .xls files from or to your computer. You can embed sheets into a blog or website, collaborate with others, and use a broader variety of tools than with Google Spreadsheets, including macros. One feature I just noticed here, and is the same for Writer, is you can export in a wide variety of formats, including .xls, xml, html, pdf, open office, etc. Very handy!

The [Zoho] wiki uses a nicer WYSIWYG interface than many wiki or blog editing applications I’ve seen. No silly wiki text markup (the bane of my existence), and it looks nicer to me than the PB Wiki design. However, the wiki allows you to choose your own editor, set your own brand and logo, and manage editing and viewing permissions.

Enda Madden at his SaaS Technologies blog says ‘Run your business with Zoho‘.

The last few months I’ve been road testing the Zoho applications by using it for my own company’ day to day administration. Originally Zoho was best known for their meeting application software which was a great substitute for WebEx. Over the last year they’ve constantly added new useful apps and at this stage have almost anything that any SME business would need.

One of my personal favourites is Zoho Invoicing which is a quick and very smart way to generate estimates and invoices http://invoice.zoho.com/login/jsp/login.jsp).

Better still it integrates into Zoho CRM.

Thanks to all the above bloggers!

Popularity: 42% [?]

Posted to:  Zoho CRM, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Projects, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Wiki  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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Continuing the Zoho Apps integration series, we are pleased to announce the integration between Zoho Invoice and Zoho CRM. Users can now use the customer information in Zoho CRM while raising invoices or estimates using Zoho Invoice.

A few points before you read on:

• This is just a first step towards our goal of complete integration.
• You will be able to use the customer information from Zoho CRM in Zoho Invoice but not vice versa. That is the invoice information from Zoho Invoice will not be available in Zoho CRM.

To import customer information, what you should do?

Importing customer information from Zoho CRM to Invoice is very simple, just three simple steps -

1. Go to the “Settings” page and click on the “Import” link on the left under “Import/Export” section.
2. Specify your Zoho CRM login name and API key. If you don’t have an API key, you can request for one from your Zoho CRM account. For further details refer - Getting API Key.
3. After filling in the necessary details, click on the “Save & Import” button.

How to get the latest customer information from Zoho CRM to Zoho Invoice?

After the import, keeping the customer records updated in Zoho Invoice is very simple. Click on the “Sync” link on the left. That’s it! All the records will be automatically updated!!

When I say, we will be updating the records, we will be syncing up only those records that have been modified, but still this update is costly, use it judiciously. You also have options to -

• Sync up the records individually.
• Sync up a selected set of records.

Soon, we will be providing you options to synchronize the custom views defined in Zoho CRM.

How does this integration work?

When you click on the import button, we use the “Login Name” and the “API Key” that you have provided to connect to Zoho CRM. Then we pull up the records using Zoho CRM’s APIs.

Customer information in Zoho CRM will be considered the master. So, in case of conflicts the records in Zoho Invoice will be updated with the one from Zoho CRM.

Some specific details:

There is no concept like contact’s address in Zoho Invoice, so we will not be pulling out this information from Zoho CRM. Remember, contact’s address is different from customer’s address. We do make use of the customer’s address.

What next?
Our next immediate priority on this front includes (but not necessarily limited to) -

1. Help import product and pricing information.
2. Help map custom fields defined for various entities - customers, products etc.
3. Once our (Zoho Invoice) APIs are ready, we will be targeting a much tighter integration whereby it will be possible to see invoices generated in Zoho Invoice from the Zoho CRM client.

Hope you find this integration useful; please feel free to share your comments.

Check into this feature by logging into Zoho Invoice now.

Popularity: 31% [?]

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We are happy to announce a new distribution partner in China - Baihui, a subsidiary of PC Stars - the largest Chinese online distributor with more than 2300 Resellers and over 1000 System Integrators.

With this partnership, Baihui hosts Zoho Applications in China for distribution in China (ofcourse, in Chinese language). These applications will be distributed under Baihui brand. To start with, Baihui will offer the following Zoho applications…

• Zoho Writer - Baihui Xiexie
• Zoho Sheet - Baihui Gege
• Zoho Show - Baihui Xiuxiu
• Zoho CRM - Baihui CRM

This list will expand going forward. All these applications are currently available @ www.baihui.com.

As with Zoho, Baihui plans to offer these applications free of charge for individuals. Zoho CRM does carry a price tag (99RMB/User/Month) beyond three free users.

While I don’t understand any of the stuff in the above screenshot, we are certainly excited to see our apps up there. Almost 50% of our existing users are outside US which is a good sign. We think partnerships like these will extend our reach further.

There are more exciting stuff coming from Zoho. We’ll keep you posted.

Popularity: 79% [?]

Posted to:  Announcements, Partners, Zoho CRM, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Writer  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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We get asked frequently about integration of some Zoho service or another with a third party service, often with that of a competitor. As one recent example, see this thread on Zoho CRM integration with GMail/GTalk. The question often is “Is Zoho all or nothing? If we like and use one Zoho service, would we be forced to use all of them as a bundle?”

The categorical answer is “No, Zoho is not an all or nothing proposition. We fully respect user choice and will fully support mixing and matching Zoho services with competing services.” We have intentionally architected the Zoho suite so that each service stands on its own, and can be mixed and matched with third party services. This “depth-first” architectural strategy, whereby each service is useful by itself (independent of integration with other Zoho services), enables a style of loose-coupled - RESTful, in the technical lingo - integration that makes it just as easy to integrate a Zoho service with a third party as it is with another Zoho service. We believe in customer choice, interoperability and data portability, and we do not want to lock-in any user. And we fully recognize the reality, particularly as a smaller vendor, but even true for very large vendors, that customers do not want to put all their eggs in one basket.

Specifically, to answer the specific question asked in our forums, Zoho CRM will interwork with the Google suite - including the all-important GMail, but with other Googe Apps components as well. But this extends beyond Zoho CRM - all of Zoho services will interwork with third party vendors wherever it makes sense, regardless of whether Zoho competes with that vendor in one aspect or another. As an example, if 37Signals would let us, we would be happy to integrate our Zoho Invoice or Zoho Wiki with their Basecamp project management offering, in spite of the fact that Basecamp competes directly with Zoho Projects.

It is that philosophy that guided us in our integration of the Zoho productivity applications with Salesforce AppExchange - an integration we nearly completed when they decided it wasn’t in their interest, something I actually disagree with; I believe it would actually make the Salesforce ecosystem stronger to let Zoho services in, but then again, perhaps it is in our best interest that they won’t let in Zoho! It is a different matter, of course, that it is their customers who lose.

Zoho a la carte is a fundamental guiding philosophy for us, not just a tactical competitive move. It brings numerous architectural benefits to us, enabling us to move faster in our own development.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Posted to:  General, Uncategorized, Zoho CRM  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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Zoho CRM which is part of our Business Applications set (Zoho Invoice, Zoho Projects, Zoho Meeting, Zoho People, Zoho DB, Zoho Creator etc) is now going one step further with the launch of Zoho CRM - Enterprise Edition.

This new release comes with a broad set of new capabilities making it easier for medium to large organizations to implement Zoho CRM. Some of the enhancements to the update include…

• Introduction of Role-based Security Administration
• Enhancements in product Customiation & Data Administration
• Multi-language Support (11 Languages)
  
• SSL Support for Professional & Enterprise Versions
• Integration with Zoho Sheet
  
• and lot more as mentioned here.
  

The key enhancement is the introduction of the Role-based Security Administration which makes it easier for managing the access permissions of users in an organization with multiple levels of hierarchy. In this Role-based Security module we introduced Roles, Profiles and Groups concept providing greater flexibility in access-control and customization.

The image below summarizes the new Role-based Security Administration section. Existing users: Please look at this document to understand how these changes compare to our previous version.

This video gives a quick introduction to this functionality. An online demo of the application is availble here.

Pricing:

As with other Zoho applications, Zoho CRM is very affordable. Here is the pricing information.

1. Personal Edition - Free for 3 Users
2. Professional Edition - $12/User/Month
3. Enterprise Edition - $25/User/Month

Professional and Enterprise Editions are also free for the first 3 users. Detailed information on Pricing (along with feature separation between these three editions) is available here.

Zoho CRM Integration with Zoho Productivity Suite:

Zoho Sheet is now integrated into Zoho CRM which lets users edit Zoho CRM data on a spreadsheet using the ‘Zoho Sheet View’ option available in most of the modules. This provides an easy way of editing your form-based relational content in a spreadsheet view and saving the changes back to the CRM Database.

This is just a starting point and we plan to do an extended integration with our productivity suite once Zoho CRM is part of our Single Sign-on System (currently in the works).

Competition:

It is a well known fact that Zoho CRM competes with Salesforce. But the unknown fact is that the functionality of Zoho CRM is more broader for Personal and Professional Editions. Here is a quick comparison between these two applications. You’ll notice that ‘Affordable Apps’ doesn’t necessarily mean less-featured apps. All this functionality is available at fraction of the cost. To give you a quick example, for a 5 person organization, the savings with Zoho CRM are 3x and 8x (per year) with our Personal and Professional Editions respectively against the competition.

More information on this update and the application is available on our new Zoho Wiki-based help. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on this release.

Popularity: 52% [?]

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That was my response to the announcement that Salesforce.com is integrating their CRM system with Google Apps. I respect what Marc Benioff has done to evangelize the SaaS model in the enterprise, but I cannot bring myself to accept his business model, which is summarized by the spreadsheet below (data courtesy of Google Finance):

Salesforce spends nearly 8 times on sales/marketing as it spends on R&D. Sounds to me a text book definition of “business model bloat”. If you are a customer of Salesforce, it makes you feel really happy that the company spends 8x on selling to you as in writing the code, right?

Let me mention some history here that I believe is relevant (note: I am not under any NDA). Several months ago, Salesforce.com invited us to participate in their AppExchange ecosystem. They knew of our Zoho CRM competition (which is why it was mutually agreed than an NDA was inappropriate), but the AppExchanage folks thought it was still good for their ecosystem. We agreed that it would be good for both of us, so we worked on making Zoho work with AppExchange, with their help & support. We invested in R&D to make the integration work, and we were about a week from launch, when Marc Benioff decided to pull the plug. He invited me for discussions. He offered repeatedly to acquire Zoho outright, which we rejected. I told him there is absolutely no fit between our companies, particularly with his business model (as noted above) and our business model. I told him there is just no cultural fit between our companies and such an acquisition would be miserable for both parties. Finally, he offered to let us integrate Zoho into AppExchange, provided we pull the plug on Zoho CRM. We told him that kind of pre-condition is totally unacceptable, and it also completely negates his claims of openness of their platform. Needless to say, we never did agree on the issue, and we dropped the integration effort.

The reason I am recounting that history is to show just how little Benioff understands the value of open ecosystems. He is still playing a 1990s software game, with expensive software (sorry, software-as-a-service!) and a business model that is sure to make Larry Ellison flinch, which is saying something.

I want to contrast that with our Google Gears integration. Google is our principal competitor, yet neither their team nor ours had any issue at all integrating - it was obvious to us this is the right thing to do for customers. The Google Gears folks bent over backwards to make sure the playing field was level, and we got access to information and support to do the integration right. That is openness.

History shows that integration efforts like the Google/Salesforce one, where the business models are so radically different, don’t prove durable. Ultimately markets will be smart enough to figure out what is obvious to many already: the Salesforce business model is an evolutionary dead-end. The proof is the silent popularity of Zoho CRM, one of the most successful Zoho services to date.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho CRM  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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We are happy to announce that Zoho CRM gets an exclusive blog - http://blogs.zohocrm.com

- Dharma

Popularity: 25% [?]

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How often do you use Zoho CRM’s Calendar and Clock utilities? Let us know in this poll.

http://polls.zoho.com/rajeshsundaram/crm-utilities-usage-clock-and-calendar

thanks,
dharma

Popularity: 22% [?]

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Kristin Lowe of OrganisingSolutions.com writes in her ‘Calm Control - Personal Productivity for Life’ blog,

There’s a new word on my family’s lips these days: “Zoho.”…as in, “Mom, are ya working on Zoho again?” or, “Sounds like Zoho was just what you needed honey…are you ready to watch our movie yet?” I’m happy to say that the addiction is not mine alone; all my biz-owning friends who I’ve shared with are emailing me straight away saying, “Ohmigosh – I have been looking for something like this forever!!” It’s happening to all of us: we’re getting Zoho-fied, one by one.

So what’s Zoho? It’s Address Booking (contact management) for your business. Well, that’s how it begins anyway…and then you discover everything else the ZohoCRM can do…and then you stumble upon all the other Zoho apps…and then you’re good and hooked. In less than a month of converting our team’s Outlook Contacts, Excel sales management system and a few Google docs bits and bobs to the ZohoCRM, I can measure the improvement in company systems in cold hard cash. In other words, we’ve just closed a bunch of new business that we had sort of forgotten was even in our pipeline!

And she writes about why she chose Zoho ahead of others.

Why we went with Zoho instead of others

• It’s web-based, i.e. accessible by our consultants and support staff scattered around Hong Kong as well as our VA in Canada.
• It’s free for 3 users. Additional users are only US$12/month.
• It’s not software. Your membership gives you all the benefits of ongoing development.
• It’s super flexible. How many custom fields does a girl need? Well, it’s a bit like shoes, isn’t it…
• It’s really hard to muck things up. You can undo just about anything…even your data imports!
• The tutorials and how-to Wikis are comprehensive and actually do what they’re meant to do (tell you how-to…)
• The support is incredible. Ask a question and get a friendly, spot-on answer from my new best friends Adam or Gopal within hours - usually within minutes. If they’re not sure what on earth you’re trying to ask (ahem), they’ll jump onto a desktop sharing session to have a look…using Zoho Meeting, of course!

Thanks for spreading the Zoho love, Kristin

Popularity: 22% [?]

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