FieldSoft’s Managing Director, Bradley Field, attended Zohoholics Birmingham on the 8th and 9th September. This two-day event brought together Zoho customers, partners, and product teams to share knowledge, explore new developments, and discuss the future of Zoho. Here is FieldSoft’s round-up of Zohoholics UK.
What is Zohoholics Birmingham?
Zohoholics Birmingham is a two-day conference that showcases Zoho’s suite of business applications and how they can help organisations work more efficiently. The event includes keynote presentations, product demonstrations, and workshops. Attendees gain first-hand insight into new features and upcoming developments. It is also a place to connect directly with Zoho experts and learn from other businesses that use Zoho tools.
Why FieldSoft Attended
FieldSoft attended Zohoholics Birmingham to stay up to date with the latest Zoho developments. Meeting Zoho’s product teams, exploring new features, and learning from case studies helps us to strengthen our Zoho CRM consultancyservices. Attending also gave us the chance to network with Zoho partners and customers. Sharing ideas and best practices helps us deliver more value to our clients.
Keynote Sessions and Strategy
The event opened with keynote sessions led by Zoho’s leadership team, including Vijay Sundaram. The talks highlighted Zoho’s focus on delivering enterprise-level solutions that remain affordable for businesses of all sizes. The message was clear: Zoho wants to combine innovation with strong return on investment for customers.
New Developments in Zoho
A key theme of Zohoholics was artificial intelligence within Zoho applications. Suvish Viswanathan, Head of European Marketing, explained that Zoho is rolling out AI with caution. The aim is to use AI to improve user experience in practical ways, rather than rushing to release features.
Zia: Intelligence Across the Platform
Zia is Zoho’s intelligence layer that runs across the platform. It understands context and provides support within business processes. For example, if a salesperson is on holiday in Zoho People, Zia can ensure that new leads in Zoho CRM are not assigned to them.
In email, Zia suggests smart replies, proposes meeting times, and provides context-aware recommendations. These small but useful features reduce the time users spend on routine tasks.
Ask Zia: Prompt-Based Automation
Ask Zia lets users create solutions by typing prompts. Building a custom module in Zoho CRM, which usually requires careful setup, can now be done by asking Zia. The AI creates the module, links it to other areas, and sets permissions. Administrators can then refine the design.
Ask Zia can also build workflows. For example, a user can ask Zia to create a rule that sends an email when an opportunity worth more than £10,000 is won.
Outside CRM, Ask Zia works with Zoho Creator. It can create apps, link them to other Zoho systems, and set permissions. The user can then make final adjustments. Zoho Creator is a low-code platform that makes it easy to build custom apps without extensive coding knowledge.
Ask Zia also saves time in Zoho Analytics, Zoho’s reporting platform. Users can create dashboards and reports by typing a prompt instead of building everything from scratch.
Zia Agents: AI-Driven Workflow Automation
Zoho also announced Zia Agents, one of the most exciting new features. A Zia Agent is an AI-driven workflow that monitors business data and acts when conditions are met. Unlike Ask Zia, which responds to prompts, Zia Agents take action automatically.
For example, a Zia Agent can improve lead scoring by analysing the content of an email from a prospect. In support, a Zia Agent can collect information from across the Zoho suite and give a summary to an agent when a customer starts a live chat.
There are two ways to deploy Zia Agents. Businesses can use pre-built agents or create custom ones in Zia Agent Studio. Zoho also plans to launch a marketplace where users can share their custom agents. Zia Agents are due to arrive in EU data centres by the end of 2025.
AI Bridge: Connecting Language Models
Zoho has developed an AI Bridge that connects public and self-hosted large language models (LLMs) into a single framework. This means businesses are not limited to one provider, but can choose the model that best suits their needs, whether that is OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, or other emerging players such as Mistral, Qwen, or DeepSeek. The AI Bridge ensures flexibility and control by allowing organisations to switch between models, mix capabilities, and even run their own self-hosted LLMs when privacy or compliance requires it. For users, this creates a seamless experience: they can access the power of multiple AI engines through Zoho’s applications without needing to manage the complexity in the background.
Other Announcements
AI was the a big focus, but Zoho also announced several other important updates.
Ulaa: Zoho’s Privacy-First Browser
Zoho introduced new features in Ulaa, its browser built for business. Unlike browsers that rely on advertising, Ulaa is designed with privacy in mind. IT teams can centrally manage access by whitelisting or blacklisting websites. Ulaa can also block screenshots or copy-and-paste on sensitive pages. For CRM users, this offers stronger data protection than export restrictions alone.
Central Domain Management
Zoho will soon launch central domain management. At present, each Zoho app requires separate domain authentication, which makes MX records complex. Central domain management will simplify this process and save administrators time.
Centralised Customer Portal
Zoho also announced a new customer portal for Zoho One. This will provide a single branded login where customers can access everything relevant to them.
Customers will be able to view quotes in Zoho CRM, check project status in Zoho Projects, and see invoices in Zoho Books. Businesses can extend the portal with additional modules, giving customers one clear view of their information. This creates transparency and reduces the need for back-and-forth communication.
FieldSoft’s Takeaway
Zohoholics Birmingham offered two packed days of announcements, learning, and networking. AI developments such as Ask Zia and Zia Agents show how Zoho is building tools that are useful, not just exciting. Features like the new customer portal and central domain management will make daily operations simpler for businesses.
For FieldSoft, these announcements confirm why Zoho is central to the consultancy services we provide. By attending Zohoholics and engaging with the community, we can ensure our clients benefit from the very latest in Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator, Zoho Analytics, and the wider Zoho One ecosystem.
GET IN TOUCH WITH US HERE
Further Reading