An Introduction to Automating Workflows in Zoho CRM

Workflow management helps you to automate your sales, marketing and support. You can automatically assign tasks to users, based on the criteria defined in the rules and update certain fields. Workflow automation consists of the following components:

  • Workflow Rules – A set of rules that are executed when specified conditions are met.
  • Email Notifications – Automated email notifications sent on triggering a workflow rule
  • Tasks – Tasks that are assigned to the users when workflow rules are triggered
  • Field Updates – Automatically updating specified field values when workflow rules are triggered
  • Webhooks – Communicates with third-party applications by sending instant web notification (one-way) every time an event occurs in Zoho CRM
  • Functions in Workflows – Develop a set of Deluge Scripts to receive response from other applications and update CRM modules when the workflow criteria is fulfilled

Workflow Rules are effective only associated with Email Notifications, Tasks and Field Updates. When a rule is triggered, the alerts, tasks and field updates associated to the rule will also be triggered. For example, to send email notifications to the recipients, you must always associate an alert to the rule. You can also associate workflow tasks to a rule to assign work to the users. 

An example of the workflow rule in Zoho CRM, is the Big Deal Alert rule. This rule is executed when the Sales Amount and probability of winning the business opportunity crosses a significant value. When this rule is triggered, notification is sent to the management and other colleagues in your Sales team. You can edit this rule and its criteria to define your own big deal alert. 

Benefits

  • Improves efficiency by eliminating the manual work of assigning tasks
  • Reduces operating costs
  • Improves business processes through standardized working methods