Zoho released their latest user interface just over a month ago and are about to say farewell to the old UI permanently on 6th Feb 2012.

Above: The new user interface of Zoho CRM is clean and crisp, with more white space and less scrolling.

Overall the response received by us as Zoho partners and by Zoho themselves was encouraging. Most of you like the change, some of you love it. Some people don't, or are taking some time to adjust.

This is all part of software development and Zoho are very aware of this and provided feedback channels on the CRM itself. (You may have seen the opinions and ideas box when you log out).

The whole idea behind the UI update was to increase productivity at work by decreasing the need for scrolling or multiple clicks, but this sometimes came at the cost of some of the functions in the old version and some users wanted this back.

As a result Zoho worked hard to make some updates to the new UI and have released these in the last couple of weeks at no cost to users…

Reflect your Priorities. Customize Business Card View

The Business Card views allow sales reps to focus on sales, not data entry. This view gives instant access to customer information. You are now able to change the fields in the Business Card view, so if you prefer to see the an email address of the lead or contact rather than a phone number, you can select this from the list of available fields..

Other users asked for an option to change the priorities of the fields. There is now that function, so you not only can you select the fields to see but also change their order.

What's the benefit of all of this?  Less scrolling, more instantly visible information.

And in case you don't want to view the instant information, you can even hide that too.

Quick Actions

Quick Actions are the basic 'actions' like tasks, emails, calls, events that you can add to an Account, Contact, Potential etc. You may have seen them on the right of the screen:



Some of you love this function. Others don't want to see them.  So, Zoho catered for both preferences - if you do not want to see the Quick Actions, just hide them.



Sticky Recent Items

The old UI had 'recent' items on the left, and they were there on a permanent basis.  However, this took up valuable screen space.  So in the new interface Zoho made the 'recent items' as a drop-down list at the top menu bar that could be used whenever needed.  

However feedback on this change was that many users still wanted the option to keep the recent items as a permanent fixture on the screen, so Zoho changed this option to what you see now, a brown tab on the left of the screen, that can be clicked and expanded whenever needed.  And if you wish the Recent Items list to stay on your screen while you navigate around the CRM you and click the pin on the Recent Items list and the list will be pinned permanently to your screen while you navigate around.  You can unpin it when done.



Match your CRM to your Corporate Image / Colours

The new UI of Zoho CRM is much cleaner and 'colour free', which was a deliberate move to reduce 'clutter'.

Colouring of screen layout can be a very personal preference so it was not possible to please everyone on this, but it also matches the latest releases of many other Zoho apps such as Zoho Support, Zoho Projects, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Book and this strategy helps to strengthen the fact Zoho are indeed consolidating their suite of online business solutions.

In addition to to the ability to add your company logo, you can now select custom themes and choose the colours for your tabs, and background, giving you a unique look and feel that can match your corporate image.



Check out a summary of the core front end changes on this video from Zoho:

Why not let us know what you think?  Take Zoho CRM UI survey, here.

We'd love to get your feedback and will pass it on to Zoho.

We hope you enjoy these features and we are sure more will come and will keep you informed when they do.

For more information or a demo or free set up of Zoho CRM, please don't hesitate to contact us.