Zoho Revamps Zoho Creator; Adds Mobile App Creation to its Low-Code App Building Platform

By Sudipto Ghosh On Mar 27, 2018

Mobile App Creator, Page Creator, Workflow Creator and More Empower Citizen Developers to Create Powerful Web and Mobile Apps

In a major announcement, Zoho, the maker of Zoho CRM, has announced an update to its low-code application building platform, Zoho Creator. The latest version, dubbed Creator 5, has significantly enhanced and refined the core functionality of the platform, including its Mobile App Creator, Page Creator, Form Creator, Report Creator and Workflow Creator modules. Currently, Zoho Creator 5 is available immediately for all new users.

Existing users will be migrated to the new version in phases over the next few months. Zoho One customers will be able to deploy their Creator apps through the Zoho One Admin Panel.

Zoho Creator: A Mobile App Builder for Those With No Formal Programming and Deployment Experience

The latest Zoho launch also introduced the ability to design and develop native custom mobile apps alongside web applications. To simplify deployment for larger organizations, apps built on Zoho Creator can now also be managed through the Zoho One Admin Panel, a unified interface that governs the company’s full flagship suite of applications.

At the time of this announcement, Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho Corp, said, “Over the last 12 years, the Zoho Creator platform has enabled citizen developers to design and deploy over two million custom applications. Having refined our low-code, no-code approach to app development, Zoho Creator has become the app builder for those of us with no formal programming and deployment experience.

With this update, we are raising the bar yet again by enabling mobile app creation for both smartphones and tablets, no programming skills required. On top of this, all two million existing Zoho Creator applications are now automatically mobile-enabled.”

Raju added, “Think about that for a second. Web applications built on Zoho Creator 12 years ago—before mobile operating systems like iOS or Android even existed—are automatically mobile-enabled and ready for deployment on smartphones and tablets with no effort on the user’s end.”

Highlights of Zoho Creator 5

Mobile App Creator

This new addition allows users to effortlessly create powerful mobile applications for both iOS and Android, optimized for both smartphones and tablets. Existing applications built on Zoho Creator are automatically mobile-enabled.

Users can re-brand these mobile apps, enable location-based data input, customize layouts, actions, and gestures, and use their device camera and microphone to enter data. Users can then publish these custom apps on App Store and Google Play Store, or deploy them within their organizations through Mobile Device Management (MDM) platforms.

Page Creator

This new module allows users to quickly create custom, interactive pages, and dashboards simply by dragging and dropping pre-built design elements like buttons, charts, panels, and widgets into the page builder interface. With this, users can easily collate data from various sources on a single page.

Even with Creator’s new drag-and-drop functionality, users with more extensive programming experience can still create pages using HTML and CSS. Pages can also be completely customized for mobile devices.

Form Creator

The new Form Creator offers a multitude of input options by supporting advanced fields such as the geo-coded address field (which marks the location on a map), pre-built full name field (containing both first and last names), audio field, and video field. Users can also customize their web, smartphone, and tablet apps with mobile-optimized form layouts and themes.

In addition, Form Creator now includes over 100 customizable templates specific to various business verticals.

Report Creator

With new reporting options like Kanban view, Timeline view and Maps view, users can display their data in multiple ways. These reports can pull related information from other Creator apps, providing users with context for better data processing. All reports are customizable for smaller screens, and custom actions can be triggered with common mobile gestures—such as swiping and long-pressing—making mobile apps feel truly native.

Workflow Creator

The new Workflow Creator brings a drag-and-drop interface to automation. This eliminates the need to write code when automating simple tasks like approvals, schedules, or instant email, SMS, and push notifications.

For advanced workflows like data integration and custom actions to update information, users can take advantage of Deluge, Zoho’s in-house programming language.

Apart from offering enhanced core features, Creator 5 strengthens the entire platform with the following updates —

– App Deck

The new App Deck includes over 50 pre-built, ready-to-use web and mobile apps that can be customized by businesses to suit their needs. App Deck has a wide variety of applications that cover everything from standard business processes, such as like sales, orders, and expenses, to industry-specific implementations, such as logistics, real estate, education and nonprofits.

– Unified Database

Historically, data stored within applications has been siloed. To get around this, businesses have had to spend time and money building integrations if they want to share data across applications. With Creator 5, all custom apps built on the platform are treated as a single virtual database, enabling seamless integration, data lookup, and reporting across applications. This capability is also extended to other Zoho applications such as Zoho CRM and third-party cloud applications like QuickBooks.

– Zoho One Integration

Applications built on Zoho Creator can now be deployed to users, groups, and departments through the Zoho One Admin Panel, just as users would deploy any other Zoho product. Custom Zoho Creator applications respect access permissions defined in Zoho One, making their deployment within the organization easy and smooth.

Raju said, “This is one of the biggest releases for Zoho Creator. From enabling users to create mobile apps without having to write a single line of code to completely customizing applications, Creator 5 removes the complexity of app development by providing an easy-to-use interface to create powerful custom applications. The best low-code application building platform just got even better.”

Currently, Zoho provides OS for back-office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools, Zoho is one of the world’s most prolific software companies. In 2017, Zoho introduced the revolutionary Zoho One, an integrated suite of applications for the entire business.