Welcome back to The Zoho Report! In this episode, we're covering the new Expanded Related List view in Zoho CRM, Agents on the CRM homepage, Zoho Forms integration with CRM Sandbox, new actions and profile-based execution for Zoho CRM Layout Rules, and OIDC login for the Zoho Desk Help Center. Let's dive in.
1. Zoho CRM: Expanded related list view
Related lists show you the records connected to what you're working on, contacts under an account, activities tied to a deal, products linked to a quote, but until now you could only see 10 records at a time. If you needed to filter results or act on more than that, you had to open each record individually or leave the details page for the related module's list view.
What's changed
Click the expand icon on any supported related list and you get a full-width workspace where you can:
- View up to 100 records per page
- Apply smart filters to narrow down results, using any field on the module
- Choose which columns appear via the column chooser
- Take mass actions on selected records, without leaving the details page
Almost all list view actions are supported in the expanded view, including Send Email, Tags, Mass Update, Run Macro, Create Task, Change Owner, Cadences, Print Using Canvas, Mail Merge, Delete, and Export Selected Records. Custom buttons configured for the related list also show up here.
Availability
Supported for lookup-based related lists, with the exception of multi-select lookup related lists, across the details page, canvas details page, portals, and sandbox. This is a phased rollout, currently live in the South Africa, Japan, Canada, and Australian data centres. If you're on the Australian data centre, you should be able to try this right now.
2. Zoho CRM: Zia Agents in Homepage
Your Zia Agents already do useful work, surfacing important leads, deals, and updates. But until now, checking what an agent had found meant opening it separately, away from the Homepage where you track your daily pipeline. This update fixes that gap.
How it works
When you customise your Homepage, you'll now find a new Agents section listed alongside Dashboards, Custom Views, and Reports. Every agent configured in your account appears here, and you can drag one or more onto the page. Once added, the component shows the agent's name and a **Get Agent Insights** button. Click it, the agent runs, and its insights appear right next to everything else you check daily.
A couple of things worth noting:
- Clicking Get Agent Insights, or refreshing, uses agent credits. Simply opening or saving your Homepage does not.
- Agents that require field mapping at trigger time won't appear in the Agents section.
Availability
Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Zoho CRM.
3. Zoho Forms: Integration with CRM Sandbox
This one didn't get an official callout on Zoho's community announcements page, and it actually goes back to June, but it's genuinely useful, so we wanted to flag it. You can now integrate Zoho Forms directly with your CRM Sandbox environment, letting you validate an entire forms integration before it touches production.
What you can test in Sandbox
Your Sandbox org appears as an available org on the Zoho Forms side, so the connection itself is straightforward. Once connected, you can:
- Submit test data through your forms and verify it flows correctly into CRM records
- Map form fields to CRM fields and catch mismatches before they cause data issues in production
- Trigger and test automations, such as record assignment, notifications, or field updates, off a form submission
- Add form links to email templates and test how they behave, including sending the emails from Sandbox
Important
This integration is for testing purposes only. If you add a form link to an email template in Sandbox and later try to deploy that template to production, CRM will stop the deployment and flag it, since the link points to a sandbox form rather than a production one. You'll need to remove the sandbox link, deploy the template, and then add the correct production form link.
4. Zoho CRM: New layout enhancements
Zoho has significantly expanded Layout Rules in CRM, the feature that dynamically tailors a form by showing or hiding fields, sections, and subforms, and setting fields as mandatory, based on set conditions. This update adds nine new actions, the ability to scope any action to specific user profiles, and a live preview.
Field actions
- Show Picklist Values, to narrow picklist options based on context
- Set Read Only Fields, to lock a field once a condition is met
- Set Field Value, to auto-populate a field when conditions are met
- Recommend Field Value, to suggest a value through a contextual message
- Show Message, to display a timely message when a condition triggers
Other actions
- Show Related Lists, to surface relevant related lists based on record context
- Show Buttons, to display buttons relevant to the record's current state
- Show Links, to surface reference links when a condition is met
- Verify Fields, to prompt verification of critical fields before proceeding
Profile-based execution
Any of these actions can now be scoped to specific user profiles, so the same rule behaves differently depending on who's viewing the record. Zoho's example is a loan application module: a field can be locked for most users once an application is approved, while Credit Analysts or Administrators keep edit access, and sections like Credit Evaluation only appear for the profiles that need them.
Interactive Preview
Once a rule is saved, you can select a profile and a condition directly from the configuration page and see exactly how the layout renders for that profile, without it affecting any live records or users. Handy for catching configuration errors early, particularly once you're running several profile-based rules on the same layout.
What's next
Zoho has flagged multi-select picklist support in rule and validation criteria, and Layout Rules support for the Professional edition, as next on the roadmap.
Availability
Currently live in the Japan and South Africa data centres, with a wider rollout planned soon. Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
5. Zoho Desk: OIDC Login for Help Center
When multiple users access your Help Center, managing authentication securely gets harder. Zoho Desk now supports OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication to simplify it.
How it works
OIDC lets Help Center users sign in with existing credentials from trusted providers like Google or Microsoft through Single Sign-On, so there's no extra password to remember and no need to sign in repeatedly.
To set it up:
1. Head to Setup > Channels > Help Center > User Authentication > OIDC.
2. Click Enable.
3. Configure it using the provider name, client ID, and client secret from your Google or Microsoft API documentation.
Availability
Standard, Professional, and Enterprise editions, across all data centres.
Stay Updated
That's it for Episode 17 of The Zoho Report! We hope these updates help you work smarter with your Zoho applications.
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