What?
A quick article on making an "upload file" field mandatory.

Why?
Because for some reason, it wouldn't appear as selectable when I tried using a layout rule. Probably everyone else has figured this out and I'm just late to the party.

How?
Through the wonders of Zoho CRM Client Script.

So we're going to check on page onload, onchange for the Create Page (Standard), Edit Page (Standard), and Details Page (Standard).

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What?
This is a quick bit of code for my reference so that I don't have to keep finding a function that gives me the syntax of how to either create or update a record using invokeUrl.

Why?
Because my designers keep including custom fields in their transactional modules line items (quotes, sales orders, invoices, purchase orders). The only way to update these are by using the API and deluge function invokeURL rather than the usual shortcode of zoho.crm.updateRecord() or zoho.crm.createRecord().

How?
This is somewhere in the official documentation but here's the bits that I need:

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Source: http://www.internetbestsecrets.com/2019/09/google-calendar-event-images.html

art: painting, art workshop, sketching workshop, drawing workshop
badminton: badminton
baseball: baseball
basketball: basketball
bbq: bbq, barbecue, barbeque
beer: beer, beers, Oktoberfest, October Fest, Octoberfest
billiard: billiard
bookclub: book club, reading
bowling: bowling
breakfast: breakfast, breakfasts, brunch, brunches
camping: camping
chinesenewyear: chinese new year, chinese new years, chinese new year's
cinema: cinema, movies
clean: cleaning, clean the house, clean the apartment, clean house, tidy up, vacuum clean, vacuum cleaning
code: learn to code, coding time, hackathon, Rails Girls, Railsgirls, Hour of Code, Codecademy, Computer Science, Programming in Python, Web Programming, Programming in Java, Web Development
coffee: coffee, coffees
concert: concert, gig, concerts, gigs
cycling: bicycle, cycling, bike, bicycles, bikes, Biking
dancing: dance, dancing, dances
dentist: dentist, dentistry, dental
dinner: dinner, dinners, restaurant, restaurants, Family meal
drinks: cocktail, drinks, cocktails
golf: golf
graduation: graduation
gym: gym, workout, workouts
haircut: haircut, hair
halloween: halloween, helloween, hallowe'en, Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Eve
hiking: hiking, hike, hikes
kayaking: kayaking
learninstrument: piano, singing, music Class, choir practice, flute, orchestra, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, cornett, trumpet, contrabass, cello, trombone, tuba, music ensemble, string quartett, guitar lesson, classical music, choir
learnlanguage: French Course, German Course, English Course, …, French Class, German Class, English Class, …, Practice French, Practice German, Practice English, …
lunch: lunch, lunches, luncheon
manicure: manicure, pedicure, manicures, pedicures
massage: massage, back rub, backrub, massages
newyear: new year, new year's, new years
oilchange: oil change, car service
pingpong: ping pong, table tennis, ping-pong, pingpong
planmyday: plan week, plan quarter, plan day, plan vacation, week planning, vacation planning
pride: dyke march, christopher street day, gay parade, gay pride, gayglers, gaygler, lesbian march, lesbian parade, lesbian pride, euro pride, europride, world pride, worldpride
reachout: reach out to, write letter, send invitations
read: reading, newspaper
repair: fridge repair, handyman, electrician, DIY
running: jog, jogging, running, jogs, runs
sailing: sail, sailing, boat cruise, sailboat
santa: Santa Claus, Father Christmas
skiing: skiing, ski, skis, Snowboarding, snowshoeing, snow shoe, snow boarding
soccer: soccer
swimming: swim, swimming, swims
tennis: tennis
thanksgiving: thanksgiving
violin: violin, violins
walk: going for a walk, walking
wedding: wedding, wedding eve, wedding-eve party, weddings
xmas: christmas, xmas, x-mas
xmasmeal: christmas dinner, christmas lunch, christmas brunch, christmas luncheon, xmas lunch, xmas luncheon, x-mas dinner, x-mas lunch, x-mas brunch, x-mas luncheon, christmas eve dinner, christmas eve lunch, christmas eve brunch, christmas eve luncheon, xmas eve dinner, xmas eve lunch, xmas eve brunch, xmas eve luncheon, x-mas eve dinner, x-mas eve lunch, x-mas eve brunch, x-mas eve luncheon
xmasparty: christmas party, xmas party, x-mas party, christmas eve party, xmas eve party, x-mas eve party
yoga: yoga

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What?
An article to document setting up a SalesIQ bot that includes an integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Please understand if this is behind a userwall as we tend to charge between 2k to 5k to implement this solution in client's systems.

Why?
Because AI... This is a follow-on from my previous article: Zoho Cliq: Integrate OpenAI and ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo.

How?
It's maybe worthwhile noting here the different handlers of the bot here:

• Trigger Handler: execute when the condition set in the visitor criteria section is fulfullied by the visitor on the website.
• Message Handler: invoked when the the bot receives a message from the website visitor
• Context Handler: invoked when all the answers for a context action are collected.
• Failure Handler: for when there is an error
Register to read more ...

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What?
An article on adding an accept and decline button on the estimate (aka Quote) notification template within ZohoBooks.

Why?
The use-case is simply that my client wants to make it easier for their customers to accept or decline a quote. Sure there's a portal and you can probably do it from there but this is a one-click accept or decline then done.

One of the biggest hurdles here, which may sound trivial, was the response when an end customer clicks on either the accept or decline button. Using ZohoFlow or other Zoho app for a webhook response, would result in the end customer suddenly downloading a JSON file. Looked a bit suspicious. The code below opens a new tab in their web-browser displaying a plain output message.

How?
So there are 2 caveats to this solution: 1 is that you will need ZohoCRM. I've tried using the "Incoming Webhooks" feature of ZohoBooks but realised the word "Incoming" is the operative word as the response cannot be configured in ZohoBooks like we need to in this solution; namely the webhook response needs to have a header and a body.

The 2nd caveat is a concern around security. It is difficult to guess a customer's Zoho ID; some might say almost impossible. To use other fields that could be sent via the URL as a verification to be checked at the webhook endpoint would be good as well; but I couldn't spend time finding fields that can be 'placeheld', other than what the interface offers, into the template.

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What?
An article on creating a color picker from a specific palette using an input field of a radio type.

Why?
At the time of print, this feature is not provided out-of-the-box and getting our users to learn about hexadecimal color references and Red Green Blue (RGB) values is somewhat difficult. What would be nice-to-have is if they could be presented with a bunch of colors and they click on one to select it.


When are colors used? Well in this use-case, we are using it to color events in a calendar associated with specific staff. Probably not the most essential part of a system but important to some staff...

How?
In an earlier article, I've shown how to change a radio type field in ZohoCreator into a Carousel type of interface. This time, we're going to repurpose and restyle a radio type field into a color picker.

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What?
A quick article to document a Zoho Deluge function converting a hexadecimal color reference to a Red Green Blue value (RGB).

Why?
It's likely that Zoho will avail their color picker at some point as an input but at the time of print, this hasn't happened yet. Here's a function in deluge that takes a 3 or 6 character hexadecimal color and returns the RGB values for you.

How?
Very quickly, we take each character from the given string and convert it to its RGB value. Replace letters A to F with their numeric equivalents. Made up of 2 characters to convert to an RGB subset, the 1st value is to be multiplied by 16 and then added to the value of the 2nd; this equals the RGB value.

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What?
A really quick article on a pretty cool requirement, making 2 fields mandatory but if one is completed then making the other optional.

Why?
My use-case is that the mobile or email field on a Zoho CRM contact record is used to authenticate the contact on a Wordpress portal. OTP or 2FA or MFA or OTC is in effect however; so a contact email OR phone number is required. Both aren't required but at least one should be.

How?
We can do this without code and only using ZohoCRM layout rules. Let's take a contact record for demo purposes:
If I enter a phone number:
If I enter an email:

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What?
This is an article to document how to get your team folder ID, retrieve information about it, and upload to it via the API.

Why?
The documentation is there but making sense of it, is somewhat difficult, at least for me.

How?
So when I was trying this, I would get either "URL rule not configured" or an unhelpful blank response.

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What?
I think I have a similar article on this website but the article below documents the full process to create a button that will map the values/fields from the record into a CRM Mail Merge template and send it off for signing, then return the Signed document attached to the initial record (where the button was).

Why?
If anyone has the envious task of sending a document out for signing by a customer, you will know this takes a while to do:

1. You have to find the contact record in CRM for example
2. Click on "Send for Zoho Sign"
3. Select the template document or upload one
4. Add the fields that you will complete, and the ones that other recipients will complete
5. Send it for your end-user to complete and sign it
6. This comes back to a section called "ZohoSign Documents", download the attachment
7. Go back to the contact record, and upload the file to the attachment...

Some customers say this is unworkable and takes far too long, especially the part of adding the various field placeholders onto the template document; every time.

What if I told you we can code a single button on the record which does all of that for you; with only you needing to approve the document before it gets sent to the end user, and when they finish signing it, it attaches automatically back on to the record?... It is possible. The article below documents it but as this is a fair bit of coding, you may want to ask us to build this solution for you. It can take a few days but it will save your staff a ton of time per week!

What your staff see:
How?
So we're going to create a button. Let's use the example of a credit application you want to send to your customer, and when they complete it, the PDF version gets attached to their contact record... all from one click of a button:

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What?
A very quick article on how to check what the statement execution limit is on the Zoho application you are working in.

Why?
Our use-case is that an application we built in Zoho Creator was hitting statement execution limits and rather than proposing an upgrade or add-on to the subscription plan; we wanted some proof using code.

How?
We're going to use a quick snippet of some code. So create a function in the Zoho App you are checking, or somewhere you can write some Zoho Deluge code.

Note that requesting an increase of the limit or an upgrade to the subscription will likely to have to be asked directly to Zoho rather than using the online subscription plan management section.

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What?
This is an article to remind me how I did this for a customer and images help visualize the health of the system.

Why?
The use-case here is to build a system which monitors a Zoho App for when records were last modified and if a synchronization process starts to fail, there should be images or icons warning or advising of failures.

How?
The key trick to use here the ability for Zoho Analytics to display different images based on a criteria or a value within a data table. As documented in an earlier article, put the URL of the image, then change it's format to show the image and not the URL text. In this example, we are using images uploaded in the Zoho Analytics image library but you would need images either uploaded in Analytics or a publicly accessible image without a user wall.

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