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Add a ‘Contact Us’ form using Zoho Creator
Anoop @ Daily Gyan has a nice post with a video tutorial explaining how you can add a contact form to your blogspot blog using Zoho Creator.
If you want to be a better blogger, you need to listen to your readers. You need to give them an opportunity to get in touch with you.
That’s why it is important to have a ‘Contact Me’ page in your blog. A ‘Contact Me’ or ‘Send Your Feedback’ page not only makes your blog look professional, but will also make you understand your readers better, help you in getting a lot of tips from them and ultimately will make you a better blogger in the long run.
But, have you seen our Send Tips page? It has been done using Zoho Creator. In today’s post we teach you how to create a similar form for your blog.
Read more @ the Daily Gyan blog. Thanks, Anoop!
You can try the above for your blog / website as well. And we have other examples of Zoho Creator in action. Ming Jack Po says in a blog post about using Zoho Creator for registration at New York City Interscholastics Mathematics League.
if you need to construct a nice looking form to accept information, Google Spreadsheet really sucks. I’ve found Zoho Creator to be absolutely amazing in that respect though. They even allow for scripted actions like automatically sending an email using data you just co llected as acknowledgment. For example, at the New York Interscholastic Mathematics League, we use it to collect registration information.
If you are managing your projects using Zoho Projects & are interested in giving us a case study, you can do so by filling up this Zoho Creator form and you will be featured in our website.
User appreciation for ToonDoo, Jambav, Zoho
We have featured the friendly Technologist cum Educator, Barry Dahl of Lake Superior College before. Barry continues to be a strong Zoho (and ToonDoo, Jambav) advocate for more than a couple of years now. From a recent post of his,
At the risk of sounding too much like a fanboy – I just have to say it one more time - love Toondoo and Zoho. This is nothing new for me since I’ve been sort of an evangelist for the past couple of years now. However, they continue to surprise me with how much they pay attention to their users and how responsive they are to suggestions or comments. With regard to Toondoo, back in Dec. 2007, I included them in my end of year list of the Top 12 Web 2.0 Tools. In that post I lamented the fact that I had wanted to use Toondoo with the elementary schools kids where I run the after-school Tech Club, but that I wouldn’t do it because there was too much inappropriate content on the site – mostly lame attempts at adult humor in cartoon format. Within a day or two of that post I received an email from Toondoo telling me that they had added a safe search button at the top of each page and a personal setting that can be turned on to not show any content that has been flagged as inappropriate. I was impressed with their responsiveness, but not terribly impressed with the solutions.
Then, earlier this month I included Toondoo in my post of the free web tools that I would be willing to pay for. My caveat here was that I would be willing to pay for the tool in order to use it with the youngsters if they could give me a protected environment
Lo and behold, I received an e-mail from Rajendran D. of Jambav within just a few days of making that post. TPTB at Jambav thought that was a good idea and were especially intrigued that I had even offered to pay for it. They are proposing that I be a beta tester for their new branded sites opportunity. They will provide a unique URL such as LakeSuperior.toondoo.com and allow me to host the members of my choosing. They are thinking that this service will probably sell for about $50 US per year, but they are offering it for free to me as a beta tester to use it with the students and to report back to them with suggestions and comments. This isn’t yet a totally done deal, but I’m confident that I will be able to try this out with the Tech Club when school starts up again in the fall.
Jambav is owned by Adventnet, which is a profitable software development company. Zoho is also owned by Adventnet, which gives them a potent 1-2 punch in my book. The most recent moment of Zen for me regarding Zoho tools was when I was presenting at the Tennessee Board of Regents Summer Institute last month (TBR08). I did two sessions on Zoho tools that were well attended and well received. There were many times that jaws dropped during those sessions as people saw some of the functionality that they didn’t know existed, or hadn’t taken the time to investigate. I always say that I think the Zoho suite is far advanced over Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and a few Google users confirmed what I was thinking about the power that is Zoho. I also did a session there about Toondoo, and there were so many great ideas about how to use comic strips for both student projects and for other purposes related to online courses and programs. For example, (1) make a Toonbook of frequently asked questions, (2) have students prepare a comic strip to introduce themselves at the beginning of the class, (3) instructor-created comic strip or toonbook as a topic teaser (introducing a new topic before more in-depth study), and several others.
Deepa, who uses Zoho for her day-to-day activities, writes about her usage of Zoho Creator, “Zoho Creator :- Only intuition, no programming”
I came across Zoho Creator, and have been trying it out for the past 6 months before making my first post about it here. I proudly admit the fact that I have integrated Zoho into my actual working environment, which has taken the load of report maintenance off my shoulders. These days, I spend only 2 hrs a week to consolidate my report. I use the free version, but sure have the plan to switch to business version soon enough.
The advantage of Zoho [Creator] lies in the fact that
- There is no huge download or installation.. Because this is a WEB APPLICATION
- The Registration is free
- You need not have any programming knowledge
- The interface is exceptionally intuitive
- Drag – and – drop allows you to design custom forms
- Logical flow of events will guide you to do the scripting.
- Embed the form in your blog and collect data
- Various choices on how you wish to process the data collected ( HTML, Excel, JASON, AJAX, Pdf , ) for novices and advanced users alike.
- The feeds can be integrated into feed readers, HTML displayed within iframe,.. possibilities are immense.
- Applications can be shared with any number of users ( say you have created the application and want you friend to moderate the content… go ahead and share it)
You can develop a simple form like Guest Book , which has minimum scripting ( auto date ), or , developing a complex form that allows you to generate and send email-verification code right from zoho form, which involves more complex scripting.
Bloggers have long loved interaction with their readers. After all, isn’t that why we enable comments? Here is something to take this level of interaction a step further. How about developing a custom application to cater to your needs?. Well, if you feel lack of programming knowledge, and the mind boggling software installation ( not to mention the price) is pinning you down, not anymore. Try Zoho Creator, I am sure you will eventually end up using it.
Thanks Barry & Deepa!
Do tell us how you are using Zoho, ToonDoo or Jambav. Email us or leave your comments below.
Mashup with External Data in Zoho Sheet
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.
Zoho Creator Pricing “Strategic Blunder” & Lessons Learned
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
Zoho Creator : Handy Tool for Organizing Events, Collecting Data
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)
Amazon AWS, Google App Engine, Zoho Creator: A Continuum
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.
Zoho Creator : ‘Function’ support in Deluge scripting
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:
|
bool isLeapYear(int year) |
Help on creating a new function 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
SSL Support in Zoho Creator
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.
Get the max out of Zoho!
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.
Mashing it up with Zoho Sheet and Zoho Creator
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 LocationDapper :
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.
Mashing it up with Zoho Sheet and Zoho Creator
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 LocationDapper :
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.
Zoho Creator Goes Mobile!
Few days back we had announced the availability of APIs for Zoho Creator and here is another announcement from our Creator team as part of our continuous updates.
We are glad to announce the availability of Zoho Creator Mobile version. You can access it @ http://creator.zoho.com/mobile or http://creator.zoho.com/m from your mobile. In fact, if you visit http://creator.zoho.com from your mobile phone, you’ll be directed to this page.
With this update, you’ll now be able to access all your applications created in Zoho Creator from your mobile devices. You can also access the applications shared with you. This means you can now view and enter data into your applications right from your mobile.
Zoho Creator Mobile supports mobile devices with any of the following browsers :
- IE
- Opera
- Safari
- other WAP Browsers
Zoho Creator’s interface has been optimized to work well in iPhone also.
Zoho Creator now has over 60K applications created by our users and is gaining momentum at a rapid pace with over 0.5 million users using the applications created using Zoho Creator. A short promo video from our team on the release.
And this is what Erich Hugo, Business Innovation Manager at Nokia had to say, “This is great stuff guys. I have just created a form and it worked like a charm. I am sitting in a cab and have just checked it out. Well done. ”
Check out Zoho Creator on your mobile phone (as well as on your laptop/desktop) now & do let us know your feedback.
APIs for Zoho Creator
We are pleased to announce the availability of Zoho Creator API . With this users can now build their web application in PHP, JSP, ASP, Perl or any other programming language while the data is stored in Zoho Creator.
The API opens up lot of avenues for external websites and developers to colloborate with ZohoCreator Database. Zoho Creator has both REST and RPC style API’s. It also has JavaScript Client APIs.
Zoho Creator REST APIs enables users to Add, Delete, Update and View Records. It also has support for Sharing Applications, Forms and Views. In addition there are APIs to list Applications, Forms, Fields, and Views.
Using JavaScript Client APIs users can embed Zoho Creator Forms in external websites with more options to control the style and placement of the fields.
You can read more about Zoho Creator APIs at API Docs
To show case the API usage, a sample Expense Tracker application is built in PHP using Zoho Creator and Zoho Creator APIs. You can access the application at Expense Tracker. It uses the Zoho Single Sign On for Login. The Overview elaborates on how the Expense Tracker application is built.
This Expense Tracker application is also available in FaceBook. This application is built using PHP with the data stored in Zoho Creator.
If you need help in building a mashup using our API, do write to us at support(at)zohocreator(dot)com
Zoho Creator : Earth-Shaking Usability Advances
That’s what Jack Bellis at UsabilityInstitute.com is saying :
I clicked on Zoho and never looked back at the other links. Ho ho ho… in 10 minutes my school-age daughter had a database in her home page without my fingers touching the keyboard. Zoho has all sorts of served, office-style tools, and I can’t figure out what their cost basis is other than free, but who cares.
I’ve labeled this a “usability” advance, but that’s a provocative point. The usability of Zoho’s App Creator isn’t the items in its interface, but the premise of the tool itself. (Mind you, it is full of spectacular usability… its scripting tool is in fact a huge usability model, a very strongly menu-supported command syntax, as are many other items in the interface.) I suppose my point is that the usability of the web has increased. I continue to maintain that online database apps are on a par with the technology advance of the Xerox machine and publishing in general, with the ability to facilitate mass movements of popular action… social upheaval… change… revolutions.
Viva la Revolución! Try Zoho Creator now.
ComputerWorld: Zoho Creator among five free web apps we can’t live without
Sharon Machlis from ComputerWorld has a good article on “Five free Web apps we can’t live without‘. It includes Zoho Creator as one of the five apps. We are very glad to see the app picking up many users and fans along its journey. As Sharon notes…
Unlike word processors or wikis, I haven’t seen a flood of free Web sites for building database-driven applications. The few other database entries I’d tried were generally either limited, expensive or cumbersome. But not Zoho Creator.
Zoho Creator sports a surprisingly easy interface for creating your own apps — even those that include some table joins (that is, looking up information in one table for use in another, which helps put the “relational” in relational databases). With a few drag-and-drops, I quickly created data entry forms with text fields, drop-down lists, text boxes and so on.
My test applications ranged from simple (tracking charitable contributions) to complex (story tracking by writer, editor and status), and all ended up doing pretty much what I wanted.
Full writeup on Zoho Creator is here.
Zoho Creator is one of the early Zoho products (actually, its research stage pre-dates Zoho). It has come a long way these couple of years and it certainly has miles to go.
Recent blog posts on Zoho Creator
Some of our users are experiencing how cool Zoho Creator and the team behind it is! Arthus, a 14-year old student has this say about Deluge & Zoho Creator :
Forget about Ruby on Rails. Screw PHP. Toss aside Google Mashup Editor. Fall in love with Deluge and its beautiful sister, Zoho Creator. Zoho Creator is a wonderful online database application which is as powerful as it is simple.
The concept is simple - allow Joe Average to make a database of anything he choses. Even better, make it drop dead simple for him to do so. Throw in a couple of templates and you get Zoho Creator.
Read more of Arthus’ post. In a post titled Uncommon Support, ‘Land of ZC’ points to an article by Paul Bleicher, Chairman, Phase Forward Incorporated, in the Act Magazine. From the article, ‘Software Decisions and Opportunity Costs‘ :
Zoho’s newest offering was exactly what I (thought I) needed for my project. Called Zoho Creator, it is an application that allows nonprogrammers to create database applications for simple business use involving the entry and viewing of data. Without worrying about database design, the Zoho user simply drags the particular type of data entry fields onto a form (dropdown boxes, text boxes, checkboxes, etc.) and voila: Automatic database entry screens and reports are created.
With similar drag and drop validation elements, it is very easy to do range checks and logic checks on and between fields. In literally minutes it is possible to have a working data entry form with underlying database. These forms can be very easily inserted into Web pages, creating the look and feel of a professional Web form. In fact, some companies and organizations are using Zoho forms for simple surveys, course signups, and other simple tasks.
At some point during the evening I entered a snippet of script that prevented my application from working and issued an error message. Not knowing which validation script item it was that caused this, I spent an hour or two taking pieces of script out of the application, each time restarting and entering data. Over time, the application became really slow and funny things began happening. I couldn’t enter data. I couldn’t delete data. I couldn’t even delete the application itself. Finally, in exasperation, I tried to delete my entire account and start over. After going through this same cycle three times, the entire Zoho Creator “execution engine” choked on two lines of my script.
The next morning the entire development team from Zoho Creator called me from India. It seems that a bug in their code caused my little program to bring their application server to a grinding halt, preventing me and anyone from logging in. They were incredibly helpful and very responsive, fixing the problem on the spot.
The related thread that Paul had in our Zoho Creator forum. And a funny blog post by an undergraduate psychology student at York University, Canada, which refers to it.
Another blog, The Friendly Ghost has this to say of Zoho Creator :
I looked around, and I think I found it: Zoho, the online database tool. It’s easy as cake to use: piece of pie. I’ve already transferred the data from the spreadsheet to the database and you can see it here. You can edit it here.
Just click the column titles to sort A-Z or Z-A. Click the buttons across the top to add or edit (not delete, just yet, to protect it from wanton vandalism). Click search to, well, search - same goes for filter. Fed up of reading about theory? Filter by proof. Want some inspiration? Filter by theory. And, holiest of holies, sort by social media resource or by PR activity. It’s that simple.
Thanks, everyone! Afraid of databases? Come, try the Zoho Creator experience!
‘Land of Zoho Creator’ Gets Two New Contributors
I am really excited to see Alan Bradford and LockWorld contributing to ‘Land of Zoho Creator‘. So, you can expect good variety in the coming days. ‘Land of Zoho Creator’ was started a month ago by a passionate user, fan and a well wisher of Zoho Creator - Pete Thomas. Since then he has been exploring Zoho Creator deep into its very root and is coming out with many intelligent apps.
Alan Bradford writes interesting stuff (technology, education, and business) at his blog: Big Ugly Couch. He was the key person who dug-up and suggested Zoho Creator to K. Hovnanian® Homes™ for its business use. We have the case study on K. Hovnanian® Homes™ here.
Lockworld, a web surfer, provides some useful technical tips for the web entrepreneur at his site The Web for you. He blew our mind away by setting up the PayPal-integrated product catalog using Zoho Creator.
With Pete Thomas + Alan Bradford + Lockworld, I am sure ‘Land of Zoho Creator’ is going to be an informative and fun place to visit for all the Zoho Creators.
Get going guys, our best wishes are with you!
Zoho Creator Maintenance
We need to do a maintenance for Zoho Creator. Hence service will not be available between August 25th 1:00 a.m P.D.T to 4:00 a.m P.D.T.
We regret for the inconvenience this may cause.
[Update] Due to unavoidable reasons, maintenance is extended to another one hour. Service will be available by 5:00 a.m P.D.T.
Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect, Answers…
Sriram, Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect has given an interesting interview (well I shouldn’t say… go check it out for yourself) and a nice peek into Zoho Creator’s Infrastructure, Security and more…
Here are some interesting tidbits from the interview:
ZohoCreator is completely based on relational model and Deluge was a natural fit. Gradually when we integrated Deluge, ZohoCreator transformed from a simple Form Builder to a complete Online Database Application creator.
Migrating ZohoCreator to the Grid Environment was a huge effort. Some part of the data model for the ZohoCreator had to be modified. Especially with regards to sharing. With a standalone service, there is only one database and all the users data resides in one database. Whereas in a database cluster the user information is distributed across the clusters.
The performance aspect of ZohoCreator is bit unique among all other Zoho services. ZohoCreator hits the database more than any other application. There are more write operations compared to other services and hence the database is heavily loaded. These database queries are very dynamic in nature.
We are preparing to host and replicate the data in multiple data centers across the world, so that our customers are not affected by any catastrophic database failures or prolonged network outage. This way even if one of the data center is affected, the others would work fine.
We have developed both REST API’s and XML-RPC/CSV-RPC. So stay tuned for the API release
Here is full length interview of Sriram by Pete Thomas at Land of ZC.
Charles Zoho Creator’s Chief Engineer will be interviewed next by Pete. Watch out this space for an announcement soon.
Previous Interview at Land of ZC: Suganya about Deluge Script
Questions for Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect?
After wrapping up Suganya’s interview, Pete Thomas sent me an email saying that he wants to make this a series of interviews with some more guys at Zoho Creator. As we team had a good time pulling Suganya’s legs after reading her interview, we decided it’s Sriram’s turn now to face the music! Get ready, Sriram 
Jokes apart, Sriram is Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect. A very cool and composed guy, he handles Zoho Creator’s Infrastructure, Security, Caching Architecture, Performance and more. Pete has already posted some topics which Sriram will be answering.
So all you Zoho Creator users there, if you have any questions in these topics, please feel free to post your questions at Land of ZC and get to know from Sriram what it means to manage and maintain such a user-friendly beast.
Questions for Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect?
After wrapping up Suganya’s interview, Pete Thomas sent me an email saying that he wants to make this a series of interviews with some more guys at Zoho Creator. As we team had a good time pulling Suganya’s legs after reading her interview, we decided it’s Sriram’s turn now to face the music! Get ready, Sriram
Jokes apart, Sriram is Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect. A very cool and composed guy, he handles Zoho Creator’s Infrastructure, Security, Caching Architecture, Performance and more. Pete has already posted some topics which Sriram will be answering.
So all you Zoho Creator users there, if you have any questions in these topics, please feel free to post your questions at Land of ZC and get to know from Sriram what it means to manage and maintain such a user-friendly beast.
Questions for Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect #1?
After wrapping up Suganya’s interview, Pete Thomas sent me an email saying that he wanted to continue the series of interviews with more folks at Zoho Creator. As our team had a good time pulling Suganya’s legs after reading her interview, it’s Sriram’s turn now to face the music. Get ready, Sriram
Jokes apart, Sriram is Zoho Creator’s Lead Architect. A very cool and composed guy, he handles Zoho Creator’s Infrastructure, Security, Caching Architecture, Performance and more. Pete has already posted some topics which Sriram will be answering.
So, all you Zoho Creator users out there, if you have any questions in the above topics, please feel to post your questions at Land of ZC and get to know from Sriram what it means to manage and maintain such a user-friendly beast.
Getting Productive with Facebook
When we released the Zoho Online Office - Facebook mashup, it got a very good welcome from the innovative bloggers as the first online office suite to be available within Facebook. We knew students would love to share and do their assignments with their friends when logged into Facebook. And it showed when TechCrunch’s interns listed Zoho as one of their Top 10 Facebook apps & Read/WriteWeb made it a part of their ‘Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work‘ list.
Not just the 20-something students, the 40-something Robert Scoble liked it as well. He didn’t list it since he didn’t have anything public to share. As said in your Kyte.tv channel, hope we get to see Podtech’s stats in a public Zoho Sheet soon, Robert
Then came this blog post from Andre Malan, a student from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (he is also the winner of the ‘International Leader of Tomorrow Award’) where he says,
In my last post “Facebook… you’re dead to me” I lamented at the way in which Facebook apps have killed the usefulness of Facebook as a social networking application. I was wrong (at least to a certain extent) and two events since then have convinced me of that fact.
The first event was discovering that Zoho now has a Facebook App. Imagine, students can find their classmates on Facebook using the courses feature (and if Facebook takes that away I might just disown it again!) and then work collaboratively with them using Zoho.
The above post reiterates our faith in students loving to have productivity apps in their Facebook account. If you are a student reading this, be aware that you can do much more than sharing what you like & poking friends around in Facebook Go ahead, add the Zoho Online Office App to your Facebook account and see the difference it makes.
We came across an interesting blog post by Shanna Germain as well. In a post titled ‘I (heart) Zoho‘, she literally gushes about all things Zoho.
Granted, I’m probably the last person on the planet to discover Zoho, but I am now officially in love. And this is coming from someone who has been a die-hard Microsoft Office advocate for years.
I’ve been using Zoho Writer as my web-based writing app for a while now (I like it better than Google, because it’s easier to switch between projects, and because you can see all your projects without opening a new window; however it could use a few things to make it my ideal processor. Still, they seem to be making regular upgrades, so I have faith).
And their Zoho Creator rocks! (I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for a web-based way to keep track of my writing submissions). It’s easy to edit, easy to use and you can even embed it into a home page. I also love Zoho projects, which is very similar to Basecamp in its design and use.
Plus, their customer service (especially for a company that offers free products) has so far been out of this world.
Thanks to the Techcrunch interns, Scoble, Shanna, Andre and the student community which has made Zoho part of their life routine!
Success Story: K. Hovnanian Homes uses Zoho Creator
K. Hovnanian® Homes™ is a nationally recognized homebuilder that has been committed to excellence since 1959. The company started as a family-owned business, and through well-defined acquisition efforts, has expanded over the years to become a family of homebuilders with localized expertise in numerous markets throughout the United States.
Getting to the point, this below picture demonstrates how K. Hovnanian® Homes™ operated their business on a daily basis ie., collecting the home listing information of various parts of the state from their sales representatives and publishing this information onto their corporate website (www.khov.com).
And after putting in much effort and time, the team was unable to provide consistent, accurate and real-time information for their customers when they requested them for. It cost them a lot in terms of money and customer satisfaction.
Alan Bradford, the marketing consultant of K. Hovnanian® Homes™ stumbled upon Zoho Creator. Combining Zoho Creator, Zoho Chat and another free website hosting service, the team was able to setup an environment where their sales associates can update their information easily. The entire process took them just 3 weeks. Yes just 3 weeks. Read the full story here.
Another interesting thing I found from Alan’s personal blog is that he has been using Zoho Creator for his personal needs since Sep 2006. Since then, he has been waiting patiently for Zoho Creator to become more reliable in terms of speed and uptime to use it for business needs (read his comment at Land of ZC). Thanks for your patience Alan, hope it paid off.
Do check out his personal blog - Big Ugly Couch, he writes some pretty interesting stuff there!
Questions for Deluge Script’s Lead Architect?
Pete Thomas of Share Tactics has started an exclusive blog just dedicated to Zoho Creator and its called Land of ZC. He has been busy building many interesting apps and is posting fine details of it at Land of ZC.
Pete hit upon the idea of interviewing backstage guys of Zoho Creator. Neither business nor promotional interviews, he just wanted to interview about some of the technical aspects of Zoho Creator. To start with, Pete will interview Suganya J, Deluge Script’s Lead Architect.
Well, here is your chance to fire all the questions you had in mind about Deluge Script. Post all your questions at this blog : Talk With Suganya J and she will answer your questions. Pete, get ready!
Introducing 15 Chart Types in Zoho Creator
Since Zoho Creator 2.0 launch we had one big update - FaceBook Integration and now we have another big announcement - Charting.
Charts in Zoho Creator helps you to organize and analyze your data. We have rolled out 15 types of charts in the first phase:
- Column, Stacked Column, Column 3d, Stacked Column 3d
- Bar, Stacked Bar, Bar 3d, Stacked Bar 3d
- Line, Step
- Pie, Pie 3D
- Area, Stacked Area
- Web Chart
As always with Zoho Creator, it’s best to see it in action. We have created a new screencast to highlight charting. Check it out!
We know that no two needs are the same when you want to see the data. So we have provided a wide range of charts to help you to visualize the same data in different formats.
Go ahead, dress up your application data as charts and let us know your suggestions.
Download Deluge Script Help Document
A user sent us this
” Hi, I want to learn Deluge to be better at scripting, is there anywhere i can download the file from so i can read it offline and learn it?”
I think that’s a great way of learning. Though we had thought about this while releasing Zoho Creator2.0. We were unable to take this up owing to other small, big and large tweaking works which creeped up at the last minute. But when users started asking for it, we made it ready.
So here is the link to download the Help Document . Hope this helps you to get to know about Deluge Script at your convenience.
Coming back to users, we are really excited to see some of the excellent apps created in Zoho Creator using the power of Deluge Script. But the app which Pete Thomas of Share Tactics has created is something extraordinary. He rightly calls this system as “Collecting data without human intervention”. He has an extensive blog about the app in Share Tactics.
Thanks Pete for exploring Zoho Creator to such an extent.
Zoho Facebook App Update
We rolled out an update for our recently announced application on Facebook. This update include couple of enhancements.
- Zoho Creator Applications are now part of Zoho Application for Facebook
- Enhancements for login etc
If you have any database applications created using Zoho Creator, these applications are now available on Facebook. You can view and edit these applications.
We also made some enhancements on managing your account. Previously you had to login to Zoho every time you login to your Facebook account to view your Zoho Documents. This issue is now fixed. You just need to enter your existing Zoho Account details for the first time and we’ll link your Zoho account with your Facebook account. So you’ll see all your documents without having to login to Zoho every time. If you don’t have a Zoho Account, you can just provide us your email address and desired user name and we will create an account and link it directly to your Facebook account.
Do give it a try and let us know what you think. More updates are on the way.
Zoho Creator Scheduled Update [Rescheduled to this week end]
[Update] : We have decided to postpone the update to this weekend since it will affect our regular users. Hence Zoho Creator service will not be available for a brief period from July 14th, 2007 at 01 AM PDT to July 14th at 02 AM PDT
We have scheduled an update for Zoho Creator. Hence Zoho Creator service will not be available for a brief period from July 9th 2007 20:30 hrs PDT to July 9th 2200 hrs PDT.
We regret for the inconvenience this may cause.
UNESCO Uses Zoho Creator
Since we rolled new version of Zoho Creator, we are getting good response (infact, very good responses) from our users. But this is a special email which I would like to share with you. During our regular round-up of embedded forms and views in external websites, we stumbled upon this page.
Yes, its UNESCO. UNESCO Bangkok. They are using Zoho Creator extensively for managing their training courses online. We wrote to them with thanks for choosing Zoho Creator and asking their permission to post in our blogs, and this is what they wrote back…
Thank you very much for the kind e-mail. Zoho Creator is really a big help for us in managing our UN training courses in Bangkok.
Of course you can report in your blog about it.
Mr. Gordon Johnston, Training Manager from UNESCO Bangkok says: “Zoho’s online registration feature has proven to be very useful and straightforward – a huge timesaver in our current round of IT course registrations for over 900 UN staff in Bangkok”So far we are really happy with the products of Zoho. Please keep in touch with me.
Warm regards,
Hartfried
Information Assistant
Offcourse Hartfield, we will keep you posted on the updates. Thank you Mr. Gordon Johnston for the wonderful quote.
Zoho Creator Scheduled Update
We have scheduled an update for Zoho Creator. Hence Zoho Creator service will not be available for a brief period from July 9th 2007 20:30 hrs PDT to July 9th 2200 hrs PDT.
We regret for the inconvenience this may cause.