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Browsers and Languages supported in Zoho
There’s a plethora of services available in Zoho, from online word processor to CRM. And each Zoho service has a separate team working on it. Naturally, each team’s priorities vary and we will see how this relates to the subject of this blog.
Recently, a user asked us the browsers supported by Zoho. The simple answer is Firefox (2.0 onwards) and Internet Explorer (6.0 onwards). But to know what browsers each Zoho service supported, we made a simple form application in Zoho Creator like below and sent it to all the teams, asking them to fill the required info.
And we heard back from all the teams within an hour! The page below lists the browsers supported by each of the Zoho services.
Another of our users asked about the languages Zoho’s UI is available in. For this, we created a Zoho Sheet and shared it with the teams. And the info got filled up as in the below Zoho Sheet.
A special mention is to be made of how Zoho Sheet handles UI translations. They have opened it up for the community to help them customize the UI for different languages. No wonder then that Zoho Sheet supports the most number of languages! (Think other Zoho teams will follow suit in adopting the same strategy)
Previous posts on the ‘How we use Zoho apps in Zoho’ topic :
- Using Zoho CRM to send our Newsletter
- Using Zoho Wiki for our Help Documentation
- Using Zoho Wiki for our Business Portals
We have used Zoho Creator extensively for solving many of our internal needs. We will profile such apps in the coming days. And to the readers of this blog, do let us know in the comments (or write to us) how you are using Zoho Creator, Zoho Sheet and other Zoho services for your personal / business needs.
Zoho Notebook for your Stock Research
Some users like managing their portfolio using a simple spreadsheet like this one (it uses our recently launched VB Macros, BTW).
While a spreadsheet is good one for such use, research is a different story. Apps like Zoho Notebook comes in handy in such cases. Good news about Zoho Notebook is, you can even include such spreadsheets inside your notebook.
Mike Hogan from Barron’s talks about using Zoho Notebook (and Google Notebook) for your Stock Research.
BOTH NOTEBOOK SYSTEMS make it easy to sort out the HTML-bound text, pictures and videos you want to keep from those you want to lose. Yes, popular desktop applications accept hyperlinks, graphics and other HTML gingerbread, but not with anything approaching predictability. Web elements can change a receiving file’s formatting; and, if your mouse stumbles over an embedded link, you can find yourself transported to an image or video application or some other Web page.
Google Notebook is better at selectively stripping out Web links and other formatting, or turning a big note into plain text with the click of an icon. Zoho Notebook is more oriented toward page-building than text conversion. It has standing menu options that let you create multimedia notebooks by mixing images, RSS feeds, spreadsheets, presentations and other non-text elements, or even record audio and video directly to a notebook. In addition to text- editing tools, it has a drawing toolbar for page layout and object manipulation — and a truly impressive ability to deal with disparate Web-page elements.
Google Notebook’s strength is in on-the-fly research, where the fewer mouse clicks, the better. But Zoho’s multimedia elements make for greater comprehension, and facilitate sharing. In this age of social media, being able to bounce your research and ideas off other market speculators is an important part of investing.
Both services let you create public folders online — including password-protected ones accessible only to approved collaborators. But Zoho Notebook has more version-control and collaborative features for group projects, as well as chat access via Skype’s (www.skype.com) instant-messaging and phone service. Both can be included as toolbars in Mozilla’s Firefox browser (http://en-us.www.mozilla.com). With a right mouse click, you have the option to capture a Web page’s URL to Google Notebook or the entire Web page to Zoho Notebook.
Full article here.
Research is obviously the core usage of Zoho Notebook. We have been making some good progress towards it for the next version to further simplify the research process with a better plug-in etc. More on that later.
Popular Public Zoho Sheets Causing Slowdown: Update
Zoho Sheet was painfully slow for around 6 hours from Sunday 8:30 pm PST to Monday 2:30 am PST. We apologize for the slow response time. This happened basically due to a huge number of requests (hundreds of thousands) to couple of public spreadsheets which were linked to from a popular website. We restored the site to normalcy by redirecting public spreadsheet views to a different part of the infrastructure there by reducing load on our servers serving regular users.
We hadn’t anticipated that a spreadsheet (we are not talking about a popular video here!) would get hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of a few hours. We are working to speed up and avoid such performance bottlenecks when public spreadsheets become very popular. It is not a difficult problem to solve (caching), just one we didn’t anticipate.
Again, we apologize for the intermittent issues and slow response times in Zoho Sheet last night. Until we put in a permanent solution (about 2 weeks), please contact us at support to let us know if you expect your spreadsheet or document is going to get a lot of page views, so we can plan ahead and redirect the traffic accordingly.
Macro Recording & Playback in Zoho Sheet
Some of you may know that we recently launched Macros (and Pivot Tables) support in Zoho Sheet. With our recent update, we now have a new addition - Support for Visual Basic Macro Record & Playback in Zoho Sheet.
While writing Macros from scratch requires knowledge of Visual Basic, recording Macros for your spreadsheet just needs couple of mouse clicks. Under the Macros Menu, you’ll now see the ‘Record Macro’ option to record your Macro.
After you start recording, all the changes you make to the spreadsheet will be recorded and the appropriate Visual Basic code will be created at the back-end for you. Once you are done recording, you can view the Visual Basic Macro code and apply that Macro to other Sheets.
This video shows this functionality in action.
We have been rolling out quite a number of features and enhancements to our applications and some of them give us a great level of satisfaction.This new feature in Zoho Sheet certainly falls into this category.
The fact that Zoho Sheet is the only spreadsheet (apart from Excel) to support Visual Basic Macros says a lot about our focus on the depth of our individual applications. With feature-rich apps, we are trying to address the business needs of our user base.
Please give this new Zoho Sheet functionality a try and let us know what you think.
Related posts at : CenterNetworks, ReadWriteWeb, Profy, The Dallas Morning News, Zoli’s Blog.
Social Mapping Bret Taylor with 70,000+ FriendFeeders
Akshay at Social Media Research Blog has done something very interesting. He wants to find how every user in FriendFeed is connected to Bret Taylor, FriendFeed’s founder (reminded me of a similar example in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, ‘The Tipping Point’ - the one mentioned there is actor Kevin Bacon). Akshay has all his data on Zoho Sheet containing more than 70,000 users listed along with their ‘bret number’ - the degrees of freedom or separation between you & Bret. That’s the largest public sheet that I’ve come across so far.
If you are on FriendFeed, find your ‘bret number‘.
One, two, three - Export data from Zoho Invoice to Zoho Sheet
Yes, three easy steps are all it takes to export your data from Zoho Invoice to Zoho Sheet. You can export and view all of your invoices, quotes, contacts, customers and items in Zoho Sheet. I am sure most of you would be using this feature already, exploring it for the benefit of others-
Let’s say you want to export and view all your invoices in Zoho Sheet, all you have to do is-
1. Select the “Invoices” tab.
2. Click on the “Export Invoices” link at the top.
3. Click on the “View” link in the Spreadsheet/CSV/TSV format.
That’s it! All your invoices will be exported and will be shown in a new window in Zoho Sheet. Now you can play with it as any other sheet document.
Hope you find this feature useful. We will be happy to hear your comments.
Just like Zoho Sheet, we will also be supporting Google Sheet shortly.
Happy invoicing.
Regards
Siva
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.
Syncplicity Integrates Zoho
Syncplicity, a document synchronization tool integrated Zoho into their application recently. This Sync tool lets you synchronize your documents from your desktop (PC-only currently) to their web application.
If you have Syncplicity installed on your computer, you can right-click on a document on your desktop and choose the ‘Edit in Zoho’ option for editing your document. This opens up a window with the Zoho document editor. When the ‘Save’ button is hit in Zoho editor, it saves the file to your local folder and also your Syncplicity account, thus keeping your document in sync. This works with Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet Apps now with Zoho Show to follow.
Similar editing option is also available in their online application to edit documents online. After you save the changes, the documents are saved on their servers.
And here’s a nice screencast done by the Syncplicity team, demonstrating the integration.
We’d like to thank Syncplicity for integrating Zoho. Our other API Partners are here. If you have integrated Zoho into your application, do let us know so that we can profile you here and list you as a partner in our partners page.
Zoho Sheet Update
After our Macros and Pivot Tables update in April, we did couple of updates in Zoho Sheet and here are the highlights.
New Theme - Mint Blue
The first thing you are likely to notice is that Zoho Sheet now sports a light blue theme as in the screenshot below (click on image to enlarge). This blue theme has been made as the default theme. You can select the various themes from the Themes menu at the top.
Public Spreadsheet URLs
We have made the URL of your public spreadsheets much shorter and much more readable. For example: http://sheet.zoho.com/public/sripathyramesh/crm-calculator. Your existing public URLs and embedded spreadsheets will continue to work as well.
We have also provided a page for an user’s public spreadsheets. For example http://sheet.zoho.com/public/dreamisle/ lists the public spreadsheets of dreamisle and you can find some nice spreadsheet puzzles there. There is also an RSS feed provided for an user’s public spreadsheets.
You can now export a public spreadsheet by appending .filetype at the end of the URL. For example: http://sheet.zoho.com/public/username/documentname.xls will export the spreadsheet to XLS format. Supported extensions include xls, sxc, csv, html and pdf.
We also show the number of views of a public spreadsheet. They are available at the top of a public spreadsheet. We have been tracking views since the last 3 months.
Charting Enhancements:
We have done some enhancements to our charting engine.
- You can draw charts on a different sheet in the same workbook.
- Charts on discontiguous data ranges are supported as well.
- The Y-Axis scale of charts will automatically be adjusted depending on the values.
- We have also changed the default chart colors as seen in the above screenshot.
More enhancements in Charting on the way.
Other Enhancements:
- Zoho Sheet is now available in Norwegian language thanks to our users who translated them. Zoho Sheet is now available in 20 languages.
- Auto Sum functionality has been enhanced. It will now automatically select the range at the top or left, when you press the Auto Sum (Sigma) button or use the shortcut Alt+=.
- Some performance improvements have been done in Formula Recalculation and Range selections.
- Some fixes have gone in too.
Read our What’s New page for more detailed information.
Keep using Zoho Sheet and let us know your feedback.
Sharing Options in Zoho
Here’s a question (with variations of it) we get from the first-timers of Zoho.
I have a document/spreadsheet/presentation that is to be emailed every time to a ‘prospect/client’ or to my ‘boss/peers/co-students/teacher for review’. In the former instance, “I don’t want the doc to stay in my prospect/client’s inbox (as documents soon become obsolete)”. And in the latter instance, “I and my boss/peers/co-students/teacher end up having multiple versions of the file, adding to my/their email clutter”. How can Zoho help me here?
Well, this is one of the fundamental problems solved by Zoho. Let’s say you have a .doc or .odt file. You have a few options in Zoho that would make things easier for you.
- Import your document into Zoho Writer
- Share it by giving the email addresses of your prospect/client, boss,peers, co-students or teacher. They will receive an email with a HTML link (URL) which they can click on to view the document. They can edit the document too, directly inside Zoho Writer if you have given them proper permission
- Make the document public (if it doesn’t contain anything confidential) and give the URL to anyone who would like to view it.
- Upload your document to Zoho Viewer. You get a URL which you email to everyone concerned & they can view it. Use the Zoho Viewer option judiciously - there’s an option where you can choose the URL to expire after a certain time period
Here’s a short screencast (our first attempt. bear with the video/audio quality please!) explaining the above options. For better clarity, view the video in Full Screen mode.
There are other advantages too.
- No compatibility issues that come with using different types and versions of desktop software
- You can keep updating your document and the latest version’s available for your prospect, client or whoever you want it to be viewed
- Live collaboration is possible - you and your collaborators can work on a document or spreadsheet in real-time
- And, you can chat too (using the embedded Zoho Chat)
Use Zoho. Say NO to email attachments.
Recent blog posts mentioning Zoho
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!
Huddle Integrates Zoho
Huddle combines group collaboration, project management and document sharing using social networking principles. Huddle now integrated Zoho Applications for viewing and editing documents inside their application.
Huddle used our Remote API to integrate Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet. This allows Huddle users to create, view and edit documents, spreadsheets within their familiar interface respecting Huddle’s security, permissions and workflow rules.
We’d like to thank Huddle for integrating Zoho and are looking forward to more such integrations. All our API Partners are listed here.
eyeOS Integrates Zoho
Online Desktop vendor eyeOS integrated Zoho Suite into their application. Currently Zoho Writer and Sheet are integrated into eyeOS. Zoho Show will be integrated after we open up the APIs for creating presentations.
To use the Zoho Apps on eyeOS, you need to install eyeZohoSuite from eyeos-apps.org. Once you have it installed, you’ll be able to view your existing documents and spreadsheets from Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet respectively. This also lets you create new documents and spreadsheets as well. eyeOS plans to support opening Open Office documents soon with Zoho Apps going forward.
The following video gives you a quick overview of the integration.
We’d like to thank eyeOS for integrating Zoho. If you are planning to integrate Zoho into your application, please do let us know and we’ll be glad to help you. Other partners who integrated Zoho are listed here.
VB Macros and the Evolving Sophistication of Online Apps
A long time ago, I had a boss who did his main programming in Excel, except that he never thought of it as programming. He could do absolute magic with Excel, and would challenge engineers to match his productivity with the hottest programming language of that time, C++. Inspired by him, I even thought up my first start-up idea: building Excel based business applications. Just a few weeks ago, one of my investor friends was showing off his collection of Excel macros, with as much pride as he would show off his wine collection. Knowing people like that is why I am personally so thrilled with the VB macro support we unveiled in Zoho Sheet this week.
Excel macro programming (basically VB packaged with Excel) is perhaps the most under-rated languages out there. It embodies advanced functional programming techniques, yet remains extremely accessible. People who never think they have any interest in programming nevertheless churn out amazingly complex “personal apps” on Excel.
Zoho Sheet brings VB macros to the cloud. We have also launched a Wiki for people to share their macros, and learn from other people’s work. This is only the first step for us. We intend to support VB macros across the Zoho suite, particularly in Zoho Writer, and Zoho Creator. Eventually, our goal is to enable VB applications to move to the cloud easily.
Our support for VB macros is an illustration of the growing sophistication of online applications. The rapid evolution will continue, and within one, perhaps two, years online apps will look even richer than desktop apps in terms of functionality, while retaining their inherent collaborative advantage.
Macros, Pivot Tables & More in Zoho Sheet
Our Zoho Sheet team just rolled out a milestone update to our spreadsheet application with a cluster of new features. There are more than 15 new features added to this update, but two key features really stand out for businesses - Macros & Pivot Tables.
This video gives you a quick introduction to these key features.
Macros:
Zoho Sheet now supports Visual Basic Macros - the ones you use in MS Excel. This is an important milestone for Zoho Sheet as it becomes the only Spreadsheet application that supports VB Macros apart from Microsoft Excel. We now understand Visual Basic and can execute Visual Basic code at the backend (no, we don’t run any MS stuff back there). This capability opens up new set of possibilities.
In the current version, Zoho Sheet lets you import your existing speadsheets with Excel macros or create new ones. We support a broad set of functions and we do plan to extend the list further. We also plan to add Record & Play for Macros going forward.
We are also launching a Wiki (http://vbmacros.wiki.zoho.com/) which is kind of a free marketplace for Macros. You can browse for sample Macros or share your Macros with others.
Pivot Tables & Charts:
As you may know, Zoho DB supports Pivot tables. This functionality is now extended to Zoho Sheet allowing you to create Pivot tables & Pivot charts on your structured data or from a range of spreadsheet data.
This unique integration between Zoho Sheet & Zoho DB brings in some new capabilities to Zoho Sheet. You can now import upto 100,000 rows of structured data to Zoho Sheet from a CSV file. Pivot tables and pivot charts can be created by simple drag and drop interface. 
Pivot Tables & Macros are just two of the key functionalities added in this update. Complete list is available here.
As you may have noticed, we are adding more depth to our existing applications apart from adding new apps. We believe in feature-rich business applications and you’ll see us improving and integrating our apps further.
As always, we can’t wait to hear your feedback on this new update.
Screencasts for Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet from Rick Castellini
Rick Castellini has come up with a couple of cool screencasts for Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet.
Thanks, Rick! Expecting videos for the other Zoho services that you are using as well 
And to the readers of our blog, we highly recommend HelpMeRick.com. Rick and his co-blogger Adam, post excellent tips on computers there.
Screencasts for Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet from Rick Castellini
Rick Castellini has come up with a couple of cool screencasts for Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet.
Thanks, Rick! Expecting videos for the other Zoho services that you are using as well And to the readers of our blog, we highly recommend HelpMeRick.com. Rick and his co-blogger Adam, post excellent tips on computers there.
Screencasts for Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet from Rick Castellini
Rick Castellini has come up with a couple of cool screencasts for Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet.
Thanks, Rick! Expecting videos for the other Zoho services that you are using as well And to the readers of our blog, we highly recommend HelpMeRick.com. Rick and his co-blogger Adam, post excellent tips on computers there.
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 Sheet Update - New sidebar, Themes, Autofill, Duplicate sheet and more
Zoho Sheet just had an update with some nice features. Here are the highlights:
Enhanced Sidebar and Batch Operations:
If you are a regular user, the immediate thing you will notice is that the sidebar, which lists your spreadsheets, has undergone some changes. It now displays an icon next to the name representing whether it is shared or public or private. There are different filtered views like “Shared by Me”, “My Public Documents”, “Last Created (10)” and “Last Modified (10)”. You can also sort the spreadsheets by Name / Created Time / Modified Time. It will remember the last selected view the next time you login.
There are various batch operations too which are quite useful - Batch export, Batch share, Batch delete, etc. Just select multiple sheets and perform actions on them using the Actions menu at the bottom.
New Theme:
Tired of the green look of Zoho Sheet? We have now added an alternative Grey Theme which can be set using the “Themes” menu at the top.
Auto-fill / Auto-suggest:
We now support Autofill in spreadsheet. Zoho Sheet will try to suggest matching words available in the same column as you type the first few characters. This is pretty useful when a column will have the same set of values repeated. It also reduces human errors during data entry. You can also right click and use the “Pick from list” menu to pick and insert values available in the current column.
Duplicate Sheet:
Duplicating a sheet in a workbook has been supported. To do so, you can right click on the sheet tab at the bottom and select “Copy This Sheet”. You can use this when you want to duplicate a sheet in a workbook keeping all the formatting and data intact. You will also notice that we have added a “Move This Sheet” option too. Previously, you can move a sheet only by dragging it.
Goto:
You can now use Ctrl+G to go to a particular cell in the current sheet. Entering the cell reference such as A32 will take you to the corresponding cell.
Enhanced Color Picker:
The color picker for the cell foreground and background color has been enhanced. Now it will remember the last applied color, so that you can reapply the same color in one click. To apply a different color, you would need to click on the drop down next to the color icon.
And many more
Two more shortcuts, Shift+Enter to go to the previous cell in the same column and Ctrl+K to insert a hyperlink, have been added. A new date format “D MMM YYYY”, which is quite useful for Genealogists, has been added upon request from our user.
We have also improved the performance of the application - mainly in loading of spreadsheets and applying formatting (like font styles) on a cell range.
Apart from this, we have fixed few issues too. Refer our What’s New page for more info.
Let us know your feedback as always.
Update : Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office
We are pleased to announce several new enhancements to our Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office. Users can download the new version of the plugin here. The salient features of this update are :
Option to keep a local copy
This is a nice little feature wherein users can keep a local copy of the existing document/workbook that is available in Zoho Writer & Sheet. To achieve this, users just need to enable the check box “Keep a local copy” when they are logging in to access their documents from within Microsoft Word/Excel.
There is also an option to create a new Zoho account from the Zoho Plugin credentials page. Click on the “New Zoho User? Sign Up” link to set up an account with us. This is for the users who have downloaded the plugin but are yet to sign up for Zoho Services.
Added a new tab - Local Documents
Now that the users can have a copy of the online document/workbook in their local drive, there is a new tab “Local Documents” added to the “Add-Ins” option in Word/Excel. Users can access the local copy by clicking on this particular tab. Locally downloaded documents/spreadsheets are password protected now. Users are asked to provide Zoho account password when opening a local copy of the document/spreadsheet. The enhanced security is to prevent unauthorised access.
Users also have the option to delete the local copy. Click on local documents tab from Add-Ins, select the document & choose delete button to perform the above operation.
Offline editing of documents/workbooks
User can now edit their documents/workbooks offline using the local copy and can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document/workbook in Zoho Writer/Sheet by connecting to the internet, signing in to their Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then choosing the option “Save in Zoho Writer/Sheet”.
Multi-user Support
Our earlier version of Office Plugin did not allow the guest user of Windows to access the documents/workbooks. Now guest users (as opposed to only allowing users with Administrator privileges previously) who have an account with Zoho can access & edit their documents/workbooks in MS Word/Excel.
Do have a go at the enhanced Zoho Office Plugin and let us know your feedback.
Zoho Office Plugin Updates
We are pleased to announce several new enhancements to our Zoho Office Plugin. Users can download the new version of the plugin here. The salient features of the plugin updates are:
Option to keep a local copy
This is a nice little feature wherein users can keep a local copy of the existing document/workbook that is available in Zoho Writer & Sheet. To achieve this, users just need to enable the check box “Keep a local copy” when they are logging in to access their documents from within Microsoft Word/Excel.
There is also an option to create a new Zoho account from the Zoho Plugin credentials page. Click on the “New Zoho User? Sign Up” link to set up an account with us. This is for the users who have downloaded the plugin but are yet to sign up for Zoho Services.
Added a new tab - Local Documents
Now that the users can have a copy of the online document/workbook in their local drive, there is a new tab “Local Documents” added to the “Add-Ins” option in Word/Excel. Users can access the local copy by clicking on this particular tab. Locally downloaded documents/spreadsheets are password protected now. Users are asked to provide Zoho account password when opening a local copy of the document/spreadsheet. The enhanced security is to prevent unauthorised access.
Users also have the option to delete the local copy. Click on local documents tab from Add-Ins, select the document & choose delete button to perform the above operation.
Offline editing of documents/workbooks
User can now edit their documents/workbooks offline using the local copy and can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document/workbook in Zoho Writer/Sheet by connecting to the internet, signing in to their Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then choosing the option “Save in Zoho Writer/Sheet”.
Multi-user Support
Earlier version of Office Plugin did not allow the guest user of Windows to access the documents/workbooks. Now guest users (as against only users with Administrator privileges previously) who have an account with Zoho can get their documents/workbooks in MS Word/Excel.
Do have a go at the enhanced Zoho Office Plugin and let us know your feedback.
Web Apps & Collaboration: The Big Picture
Collaboration and Web Apps: The Big Picture
Previously, I talked about Collaboration being one of the key features of web applications. In this post, I want expand more on that point.
I am sure all of us agree that the key advantage of web based applications is Collaboration. There are other advantages like mobility etc. But thats for another post. Lets look at how collaboration is evolving in online applications. Before that let us look at communication applications first and later we shall talk about their role in collaboration.
Communication Apps:
Today we use different types of communication tools on a daily basis. These tools include Discussion Forums, Email, IM, Audio Conferencing, Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing etc. Some of these tools are used along with others for better/effective communication. Each of these communication tools are intrusive than the other. Forums are less intrusive than Email which is less intrusive than IM which is less intrusive than Audio Conf etc.
Collaboration Tools:
With the advent of web applications we have seen a different type of collaboration with ‘Collaborative Editing’ on content where multiple users can work on the same application/content at the same time seeing each other’s changes immediately. In this case, all users are (literally) on the same page working on the content making collaboration effective with out the hassle of emailing attachments and managing versions.
These ‘Collaborative Editing’ and ‘Virtual Whiteboard’ type of functionalities in web applications is just the stepping stone for more broader and deeper integration. These features mark a significant change in the way we work. Instead of emailing attachments, we email a link (Remember, Document is a URL). The communication tools like Email, IM etc are used for the right purpose - to communicate the changes and not for pushing the content.
Collaboration + Communication Tools
What we will see next is a combination of collaboration and communication tools. Each of the communication tools I mentioned will be integrated into web applications that focus on collaboration. A user might prefer one type of communication than the other. So it is important for web apps to provide different types of communication tools for effective collaboration.
In fact we already see this happening in our own applications. Email is integrated into Zoho Writer where you can email a document (selecting a format) directly from the application.
Similarly, Zoho Chat is integrated into Writer/Sheet/Show/Notebook etc enabling instant communication.
With the recent addition of Comments feature in Zoho Writer, a mini discussion forum is integrated to discuss the comments…and then in Zoho Notebook, we have integrated Skype for audio and video communication. You’ll see other communication tools eventually integrate into such web applications.
We certainly see this as the direction web applications will evolve integrating different types of communications in multiple ways. Instead of content revolving around communication tools, the communication tools will now revolve the content.
Do your Personal Finance with Zoho Sheet
Ranjan at Personal Finance 2.01 has a nice post on how to manage your personal finance using Zoho Sheet. A set of spreadsheets from his post that can assist you with your finance planning :
- Monthly Budgeting Worksheet
- Financial Freedom Calculator
- Networth Template
- Benefit of starting early
Thanks, Ranjan! Readers, do tell us how you are using Zoho Sheet. We (and that includes all of Zoho Sheet’s users!) are all ears.
Zoho Sheet : Search across your spreadsheets
We recently supported content search of your spreadsheets in Zoho. Prior to this we searched only for the tags associated with files. Use the search field in the sidebar to search for spreadsheets matching the specified words. Right now this doesn’t search the spreadsheets shared to you.
With this, the search in start.zoho.com will now search your spreadsheets too in addition to your documents and presentations in Zoho. Speaking of Zoho Start, your spreadsheets are now shown in a matching grey theme when opened from Zoho Start.
We also fixed a couple of bugs and made some performance improvements while signing in. Have a look at our What’s New page for more information. Let us know your feedback.
Zoho Sheet : Scheduled Maintenance
Zoho Sheet will not be available between Saturday, September 29th, 9:30 PM PDT to Sunday, September 30th, 12:30 AM PDT due to scheduled maintenance. During this time, you will not be able to access your spreadsheets on Zoho.
Zoho Sheet in Catalan and Turkish
We did a small update in Zoho Sheet today. Zoho Sheet is now available in Catalan and Turkish, thanks to our users Joaquim Virgili and Alpay, who translated these languages in translate.sheet.zoho.com. You can select these languages from the Language link at the top after signing in. We have also updated the rest of the languages with the latest messages from our translation site. Zoho Sheet is now available in 16 languages. And our users are translating it to 23 other languages. We have now added Slovak, Urdu, Hindi and Filipino in our translation service so that users can translate Zoho Sheet to these languages as well.
One more addition is that we now support inserting images from an URL too. You can choose to load it each time from the given URL or to load it from a copy downloaded to your collected images in Zoho Sheet.
Apart from the above, we have also fixed some issues in our Remote API editor on IE.
DigitalBucket.net Integrates Zoho
DigitalBucket, an online storage vendor recently integrated Zoho Apps into their application. If you have Documents or spreadsheets uploaded to their application, you can view, edit and save them within their application using Zoho. Presentations can also be viewed within their app.
They have a neat application with good functionality. We’d like to thank them for their integration.
Other online storage vendors who integrated Zoho into their application includes, Box.net, OmniDrive, MyDataBus, Steekr, FileDen etc.
If you’d like to integrate Zoho into your App, we’d love to work with you and offer our support. Also, we plan to extend our API for other applications soon.
Zoho Integrated into G.ho.st
Online O/S vendor G.ho.st has integrated Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show into its virtual desktop application giving users the ability to open, edit and save their documents using Zoho while providing 3Gb of free online storage. The partnership is another great example of the use of Zoho’s API’s and the openness of our Zoho Alliance Partner Program (ZAPP). We are extremely pleased with the integration and welcome G.ho.st to our family of Alliance partners. G.ho.st plans on expanding its offerings in the near future making its virtual desktop a browser-based alternative to MS Windows - and Zoho’s collaboration and sharing functionality makes it a great fit.
Thank you G.ho.st team for choosing Zoho and for joining ZAPP! Good luck with the launch and we look forward to lots of positive feedback from our users.
Below is a view of a Zoho Writer document in G.ho.st.
