Zoho Introduces CRM Application for BlackBerry Smartphones

Zoho is poised, most likely this week, to take its BlackBerry CRM app out of personal beta and make it typically available. It'll be followed in the coming weeks by an iPhone app, which is under development now, Raju Vegesna, evangelist for Zoho, told CRM Customer.

The interfaces of the iPhone and BlackBerry applications are dissimilar, naturally, due to variations in the particular hardware the iPhone's touchscreen vs the BlackBerry's wheel. At bottom, though, both are a mirrored image of Zoho's make of CRM functionality.

They are also just the 1st iteration of Zoho's app push, Vegesna related. In the next half a year, the company plans to update them with such sophisticated features as camera integration and location-based functionality.

With the previous, users will be well placed to, say, take a photograph of a card and instantly put it aside in both the web version of Zoho and domestically on the gizmo Vegesna explained. The second will permit clients to such stuff as search for close by contacts according to their present location.

"What we wanted to focus on with this release is the core functionality that we thought mobile users wanted the most," recounted Vegesna. "It is not all of the functionality in the Web version, of course."

For Starters
The current version of the BlackBerry app is pretty much a bread-and-butter offering, giving users the standard functionality in Zoho, optimized for the mobile environment. Users are existing with six modules: leads, contacts, accounts, potentials, task management and events. The same functionality is applicable to each module that is, users can view, create, edit and search across every one of them.

Transactions happen just as one would expect: to look for a lead, hit the option and pull up the appropriate results. The app then lets you scroll thru the options and view the main points of the one you choose.

The search function is very forceful, Vegesna said. Users can search for any records in their web account that are in supported modules.

There are features that go past the fundamentals but potentially can be predicted in any app developed for the BlackBerry, for example the facility to sync a new contact to both the BlackBerry app and the net app.
Users can also continue to work with the app whether or not the device is offline or out of network range by accessing the CRM records stored regionally another must-have for most BlackBerry users. The app lets users add, alter and remove records while offline. The changes are instantly synched with the bigger account when the connectivity is back.

What's Missing?
There are some constraints with this variation: Only the latest thirty records for each module are retrieved and stored in the device when the user signs in. New records are added every time the device is synched. Also, each module is ready to hold only five hundred records to optimize the application to the BlackBerry system.
There are small hiccups characteristic of a first-generation offering. For instance, only "All View" is supported in the View function. Support of other perspectives will be supplied in days to come Zoho related.

Finally, BlackBerry touchscreen telephones aren't supported.

Zoho CRM BlackBerry application supports BlackBerry OS 4.2.1 and above though not the latest version, BlackBerry OS 6.