Unlocking Next-Level Zoho CRM Productivity: Cross-Module Views, Deep Integration, and Rich-Text Upgrades
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
- Leverage cross-module custom views for actionable insights.
- Integrate third-party systems through Zoho Desk’s extensibility.
- Optimize communication clarity with rich-text formatting.
Introduction: Elevating the Zoho CRM and Desk Experience in 2025
Staying ahead in customer relationship management (CRM) requires platforms that are agile, highly customizable, and deeply integrated with the tools your teams already use. In today’s rapidly evolving digital environment, Zoho continues to lead the way, rolling out enhancements that help CRM managers, business owners, and operations teams maximize their data, streamline their workflows, and elevate client engagement.
In this cycle’s roundup, we explore three dynamic Zoho product advancements shaping the future of CRM automation:
- Custom Views with Cross-Module Criteria: Now you can use criteria from related modules and subforms to create ultra-targeted custom views—unlocking deeper insights and streamlined data management.
- Enhanced Integration & Extensibility in Zoho Desk: The newest Ask the Experts event focuses on real-world strategies for integrating third-party tools (like RingCentral), building custom marketplace extensions, and leveraging APIs to supercharge your customer support.
- Rich-Text Field Capabilities in Zoho CRM: The long-awaited rollout of rich text formatting in multi-line fields is here, empowering users to communicate information more clearly, professionally, and visually.
Each announcement brings major gains in flexibility, automation, and user experience. Let’s explore how they work, why they matter, and what actionable steps you can take to harness these innovations for real business results.
Cross-Module Criteria in Zoho CRM: Revolutionizing Custom Views
Why Custom Views Power CRM Productivity
One hallmark of an effective CRM is the ability to cut through data noise, delivering the right information, to the right people, at the right time. Custom views—personalized data lists saved for individual or team use—are a critical tool for CRM teams that want to organize, analyze, and act on relevant data without manual drudgery.
What’s New: Cross-Module & Subform Criteria
Traditionally, custom views in Zoho CRM were limited to data drawn from within a single module (e.g., Contacts, Deals). This made it difficult to filter, slice, or surface data that spanned multiple interconnected modules or had nested related records.
With the new update, you can now:
- Define custom views based on related modules. For example, build a view in Contacts that includes criteria from Deals—such as deal stage or last activity date.
- Employ subform criteria. Filter sales orders based on details in an attached “Ordered Items” subform (e.g., orders with specific products, quantities, or item attributes).
- Combine multiple related modules and subforms for highly tailored data views.
Why This Matters
By using cross-module filtering in custom views, CRM managers can answer questions such as:
- Who are our contacts without any closed deals this quarter?
- Which sales orders include more than 10 units of Product A but less than 5 of Product B?
- List contacts whose last deal activity was more than 30 days ago.
This level of nuance enables teams to:
- Personalize outreach and follow-up based on multidimensional data.
- Track the health of relationships and pipelines from a single, customizable dashboard.
- Empower teams to collaborate with shared, reusable views tailored to sales, support, or marketing priorities.
How it Works: Key Details & Limitations
You can select up to three related modules or subforms and define up to five fields for each.
Views can be shared or kept private, depending on your collaboration needs.
These filters add to the already powerful advanced filtering features, previously limited to user-specific contexts.
For more technical reference, review Zoho’s own manage list views documentation.
Real-World Application
Consider a SaaS sales manager wanting to target all accounts with open deals stuck in the negotiation phase for more than two weeks. With cross-module custom views, this becomes a matter of a few clicks—promoting timely intervention and accelerating deal closures.
Research Insight: A recent Forrester study on Zoho CRM adoption found that companies using advanced filtering and custom views reduced time-to-insight by up to 32%, directly improving sales performance and customer engagement.
Deep Dive: Zoho Desk Integrations & Extensibility for Superior Customer Support
The Power of Integrated Customer Support
In today’s multi-channel world, your customer support operation is only as strong as its integrations—seamlessly connecting CRM data with telephony, chat, email, and project management tools.
Zoho Desk’s Integration Architecture: What’s New
The latest Zoho Desk “Ask the Experts” event zeroes in on scaling customer support through deeper extensibility:
- Marketplace extensions: Easily add capabilities from Zoho’s vast Marketplace, or build your own custom modules.
- APIs, webhooks, and marketplace holders: Drive automation and communication between Zoho Desk and tools like RingCentral, Slack, project management suites, and more.
- Developer Space: A resource-rich environment for custom integrations, process automation, and workflow optimization.
With these updates, you can:
- Boost agent productivity by integrating calls, tickets, and lead information from Zoho CRM or other databases.
- Enable real-time reporting and omnichannel customer engagement by connecting disparate data sources under one dashboard.
Case in Point: RingCentral Integration
This month’s event featured subject matter experts from RingCentral, a leading cloud-based telephony solution. The integration of RingCentral with Zoho Desk empowers teams to:
- Click-to-dial or answer calls from within Zoho Desk.
- Automatically log calls, track customer touchpoints, and access CRM data during live interactions.
- Leverage API-driven automations for post-call follow-ups, routing, and reporting.
Expert Sessions and Peer Learning
Participants had live access to expert engineers and product managers, sharing real-world integration strategies and troubleshooting best practices. As customer needs diversify, these collaborative sessions play a crucial role in surfacing new opportunities and solving for complexity.
Research Insight: According to Gartner’s latest CRM Market Guide, organizations that implement “connected support ecosystems” realize a 25% increase in first-contact resolution and a 30% lift in agent efficiency—affirming the critical ROI of platform extensibility and integrated communications.
Next Steps: Integration for All Teams
- Non-developer users can deploy pre-built extensions from the Marketplace.
- IT and development teams can explore the Developer Space for bespoke workflows, process automations, and enhanced reporting.
In this context, tools focused on lead data verification or integrated campaign management, such as the Phone and Email Verifier or CampaignList, can seamlessly align with Zoho Desk and CRM, driving cleaner data and optimally timed customer outreach.
Empowering Communication: Rich-Text Field Enhancements in Zoho CRM
Why Formatting Matters in CRM Communication
In the world of CRM, clarity is everything. Sales notes, case logs, internal handoffs, and client communications often hinge on how well—and how clearly—critical information is presented. Yet, until recently, most CRM multi-line fields allowed only plain text, making it challenging to highlight priorities or structure records intuitively.
The Transformation: Comprehensive Rich Text Capabilities
With the release of rich-text fields for multi-line entries in Zoho CRM, you now have:
- Full RTF support: Apply bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, links, lists, colored text/backgrounds, and even emojis.
- Flexible size options: Choose from plain text (small/large) or rich text—making it easier to match formatting needs to the context.
- New editing experience: Expanded, pop-up text boxes allow for focused writing, especially for detailed records or long-form notes.
- Rich text for Notes: As of May 2025, rich text formatting is also available within CRM Notes, making internal collaboration more dynamic and readable.
Who Benefits?
- Sales & Account Managers: Highlight key buying signals, call scripts, or negotiation points in records.
- Support Teams: Clarify troubleshooting steps, escalation notes, and customer follow-ups.
- Marketing: Format campaign briefs, client feedback, or engagement summaries with visual hierarchy.
Limitations & Rollout
Available for Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
Not yet supported on the Zoho CRM mobile app, in mail merge, or legacy custom multi-line fields (expansions under development).
For a full feature walkthrough, see Zoho’s rich text fields documentation.
Research Insight: Email marketing studies from Litmus show that well-formatted content drives 18% higher response rates—evidence that using visuals, structured lists, and highlight cues within CRM records can produce real downstream engagement gains.
Actionable Takeaways: Harness Zoho CRM & Desk’s New Features
- Leverage cross-module custom views to gain actionable insights on customer journeys, pipeline bottlenecks, or product/service adoption without time-consuming manual report building.
- Integrate third-party systems—like telephony, messaging, or lead management platforms—using Zoho Desk’s extensibility and Marketplace to provide holistic, omnichannel support that accelerates resolution and enhances customer experience.
- Optimize communication clarity by adopting rich-text formatting for sales notes, support logs, and client records, improving both internal collaboration and external messaging.
- Empower non-technical users via Marketplace extensions while giving developers freedom to build custom automations in Zoho’s Developer Space.
- Regularly review product documentation and participate in Zoho expert events to stay at the forefront of workflow automation and CRM best practices.
Ready to Transform Your Zoho CRM Experience?
These latest enhancements to Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk represent a leap forward in agility, efficiency, and user empowerment. By embracing customizable cross-module views, deep integrations, and a richer communication canvas, your teams can make better decisions, faster—and deliver customer experiences that stand out.
Curious about how these new features fit your unique workflows? Request a personalized demo, or contact our experts to explore how Zoho-powered automations can drive your business growth in 2025 and beyond. Let’s take your CRM strategy to the next level.
