Zoho CRM offers more than 10 standard modules for Sales, Marketing, Customer Support and Inventory management. These modules have predefined business logic, including page layout, reports, and workflow automation, which cannot be completely modified to accommodate your other business processes. Every business has a set of requirements that may not fit into these standard modules. You may require modules that are unique to your organization; that would cater to the needs of your organization, store data that is relevant to your business process and most importantly, be linked with the other standard modules in your account.

For example, a real-estate company using Zoho CRM would like to track not only leads, contacts and prospects but would also want to tightly link with properties, buildings, etc. Without these modules, customer life-cycle management is incomplete.

To address these unique business requirements, you can create your own modules. With the Custom Modules functionality in Zoho CRM, you can develop new modules using built-in tools that need no programming skills. These custom modules can seamlessly integrate with core CRM modules and need not be stand-alone modules. What more, you can:

• Add fields and modify the page layout as per your needs.
• Use roles and profiles to define access controls for the custom modules and its fields.
• Import data to the custom modules with ease.
• Take a backup of your data, anytime.
• Send mass emails to the records in the custom module.
• Create mass email schedulers.
• Use macros to execute a set of actions.
• Create workflow rules to automate your business process.
• Build module relationship by linking custom module records with standard module records.
• Use autoresponders to send automated replies and follow-up emails.

Availability

Difference Between Custom Modules and Custom Apps Features

Both Custom Modules and Custom Apps are two different functionalities in Zoho CRM that helps you extend your CRM to suit the requirements that are unique to your business.

• Custom Modules - Create custom tabs, just like other standard modules, and build module relationship by linking custom module records with standard module records. Like other standard modules, you can customize, import and export data, configure workflow rules and generate reports for the custom module.
• Custom Apps - Create custom applications, forms and views (powered by Zoho Creator) and use them to build custom tabs inside Zoho CRM.

Add Custom Modules

Only users with administrator profile have the permission to create modules in your organization's Zoho CRM account.

To add custom modules

1. Log in to Zoho CRM with Administrator's privileges.
2. Click Setup > Customization > Modules.
3. Click +Create New Module.
4. Enter the singular and plural form of the module name in the respective text boxes.
   
5. Select the profile(s). Users in the selected profiles will have access to the custom module.
6. Click Create.
   On creating the module, Record Name, Record Owner, Email and Secondary Email fields will be automatically added. You can further create fields for the custom module and customize the page layout.

An Example For Real Estate Business

Here is an example of a cusotm module added in a Real Estate account. In the subsequent sections, you'll learn how to use other administrator functions.

What's Next?

Here is a list of features that will help you make the custom module perfectly functional for your business process. See Also Setting Up Custom Module

Edit Custom Modules

To edit custom modules

1. Click Setup > Customization >Modules.
2. Move the mouse pointer to a module and click on the Settings icon.
   Options to Edit 'Module', Page Layout, Field Level permissions and Delete will be listed.
3. Click the Edit 'Module' link to edit the module name, and the profile permissions for it.
4. Click the Page Layout link to edit page layout of the module.
5. Click the Field Level permissions link to control the access of fields in the module. See Also Fields-level Permissions

Link Custom Modules With Other Modules

By linking a custom module with a standard or another custom module, you can build module relationship and connect data easily. This is very useful in creating a variety of reports based on the data in your custom module. This cross module linking can be done using Lookup Fields. Similarly, you can also link standard modules with custom modules but creating a lookup field in the standard module.

To create lookup field in custom module and link it to another module

1. Log in to Zoho CRM with Administrator privileges.
2. Click Setup > Customization > Field.
3. Select the custom module from the drop-down list and click New Custom Field.
4. In New Custom Field page, select Lookup from the Field Type list.
5. In the Field Details section, do the following:
6. Enter a name for the lookup field in the Label text box. (Eg. Interested Buyers)
   
7. Select the Section Name from the drop-down list where the field should be displayed. (Eg. ApartmentInformation)
8. Select a module from the Lookup Type drop-down. The custom field wil poulate data from the module selected here. (Eg. Buyers. The lookup field will list all the records from the Buyers module.)
9. Enter the Related List Label. (Eg. Interested Apartments)
   A related list will be created for the records in the Buyers module.
10. Click Save.

Delete Custom Modules

When there is a need to delete a custom modules make sure that it is not linked to another module. Once you delete the custom module, you can't restore data from it. Before deleting make sure you have checked the following:

• You have taken a back up of your data using the Export feature.
• The module is not liked with any other custom or standard modules.
• Workflow rules that are configured for the custom module are deleted.

Alternatively, you can hide the custom module for all the users in the organization's CRM account or only to specific profiles.

To delete custom modules

1. Click Setup > Customization > Modules.
2. Move the mouse pointer to a module that you want to delete and click on the Settings icon.
3. In the menu, Delete link.
   Make sure to read the instructions in the pop-up box and then click Yes, Delete now to delete the module.