Bring your Zoho apps into XataWorks

Your work runs on Zoho: mail, books, a CRM, a calendar. XataWorks puts an agent beside all of them, in one window. This recipe is the ten minutes of setting up that every other Zoho recipe here starts from: your region, your Zoho Mail, Zoho Books and Zoho CRM signed in beside the chat, your Zoho calendar, and a ready-made Zoho assistant.

What you need

• XataWorks, open and signed in. If it is not yet, Getting started covers it.
• Your Zoho account, and the address you sign in to it at (zoho.com, zoho.eu, zoho.in and so on).

1. Start “Connect the apps you use”

In the Getting started checklist, choose Connect the apps you use, then Zoho. It asks Where is your Zoho account? once. Pick the address you sign in at, and Zoho Mail and every Zoho app use it from then on. Every step after this one can be skipped, and comes back from the checklist when you are ready.

2. Zoho Mail

For Zoho’s main regions the mail settings fill themselves in. Zoho needs an app password here, not your Zoho password: the set-up links to the page in your Zoho account’s security settings where you make one. IMAP access also has to be on in Zoho Mail’s own settings (Settings ▸ Mail Accounts ▸ IMAP Access). For the other regions, the set-up says where Zoho shows your server names.

3. Zoho Books, beside the chat

The set-up opens Zoho Books at your region’s address in the browser panel. Sign in as you normally would; XataWorks never signs in for you. Books stays in your workspace apps, so it is one click away in any chat. Then the set-up asks once whether the Zoho assistant may use Books’ read-only actions without asking each time. Anything that would change your books still asks, every time.

4. Zoho CRM

Ask the agent to open Zoho CRM (crm.zoho.com, or your region’s address) in the browser panel and sign in. Once a CRM page is open, the agent can search your modules, read records with their notes, list deals and find duplicates. Its three changes (a note, a field, a task) are confirmed by you every time.

5. Zoho Calendar

Open the Calendars list (View ▸ Calendars ▸ All Calendars), choose Connect a calendar account… and pick Zoho with your region. Use an app password here too. Each of your Zoho calendars appears in XataWorks, and they sync both ways while the calendar is open. If an event changed in both places, it is marked ⚠ and you choose which version to keep.

6. Meet the Zoho assistant

The set-up ends by making a Zoho assistant: an agent whose instructions know which Zoho apps you connected and at which address. Start a chat with it and try one of its starters:

Which invoices are overdue? How did we do last quarter? Who owes us the most right now?

Where this recipe stops

• Your Zoho sign-ins stay yours. The agent works through the Zoho pages you are signed in to, as you, and sees only what you can see there.
• Zoho counts the calls. Zoho limits how many requests an organisation makes each day, shared with every other integration it runs. If the allowance runs out, the agent says so and nothing is changed.
• Some apps are not covered yet. Zoho Mail, Books, CRM and Calendar are. Other Zoho apps can still be opened in the browser panel, but the agent has no actions of its own there.

Read more

• Mail and Calendar: the programs Zoho Mail and Zoho Calendar open in.
• Page tools and Approvals: what the agent can do on a site, and what it asks.