In business, you always need to be up-to-date with the activities and updates that relate to your customers. Pulse, in Zoho CRM, helped you achieve this by letting you follow records from the leads, contacts, accounts and potentials modules. By following them, you could keep a track of changes made to the records.

But we found that this wasn't enough. Rather than simply follow a bunch of records, what if you discuss the record updates with your peers? That opens a lot of possibilities. That's why we introduced Feeds, an enhancement over Pulse. With Feeds, collaboration is made possible within Zoho CRM. It offers a platform to discuss, share and decide. You can not only follow records that are important to you but also collaborate with the other members in your organization to discuss opinions and ideas.

This transition guide will help you understand the changes that have been introduced and how you can benefit from this feature.

Focus on collaboration

Feeds is primarily a tool that promotes collaboration among colleagues and groups. With Feeds you can quickly start a discussion with other users in order to get together and make decisions collectively.

While Pulse was merely a tool to audit records, Feeds will allow you to audit records as well as create discussions at any time. Pulse helped you to keep a track of record changes but with Feeds, you can not only keep a track of record updates, but have discussions on the records as well.

Mentions and direct messages

Taking collaboration further, Feeds lets you talk to individuals, specific groups and also send direct messages to users. You can mention users, groups or role by typing @ followed by the name.

You can also send direct messages to individuals and groups. Simply mention them and select the Send as Direct Message option to do so. Your recipients will also receive notifications on mentions and direct messages.

You are an auto-follower of your own records

In Feeds, you are now a default follower of the records that you own. (However, to follow other users’ records, you will still have to click the Follow button.)

This is a significant improvement over Pulse, in which you had to follow your own records manually by clicking the Follow button.

Track a record from any module

You can follow any record from any module with Feeds but with Pulse, you could only track records from the Leads, Accounts, Contacts and Potentials modules.

Track any update made on a record

Feeds now lets you track any update made on a record that you follow whether or not you have chosen to add specific fields. When an update happens on a record you are notified of it in your CRM account.

Whereas in Pulse, you could see the changes made to only specific chosen fields. For example, you choose to follow 5 fields from the Leads module. Only if changes are made to these 5 chosen fields, you will be notified of the changes. Changes made to any other field are not clearly conveyed to you.

Set auto-follow rules

In Feeds, you can now create something called auto-follow rules. Auto-follow rules let you keep a tab on records that matter to you. There are two ways in which auto-follow rules can be created.

1. You can create your own auto-follow rules.

   

2. If you have administrator privileges, you can create auto-follow rules for fellow users. When an auto-follow rule is created for a user, records that meet the rule criteria will be auto-followed by the selected users. Note that the users selected need not be the owner of the records.

   

Feeds lets you create up to 5 auto-follow rules. However, if you own all the records in your account, you do not have to create auto-follow rules at all, since you are a default follower of your own records.

Receive instant notifications

For changes made to the records you follow, you will receive notifications in Zoho CRM and in the case of mentions, you will receive an email notification too. In Pulse, however, you had no notifications whatsoever. To see the changes made to the records you follow, you had to check the Pulse tab.

Attach files on updates and comments

In addition to the status updates, Feeds lets you attach files to support your discussions or share documents with a group. Files can be attached in both updates as well as in comments. In Pulse, there was no collaboration possible in the first place.

Understanding Comments and Notes

Changes made to records are displayed in the Feeds stream. Comments added to these record update in Feeds are created as Notes in the record's details page. Similarly, notes created in the Record's Details page are added as comments to the respective record update in Feeds. This sync helps in seamless collaboration.

However, when there are two modules involved in a Notes discussion, the collaboration becomes a little less seamless. For example, a set of notes in the Task details page will also include notes from an associated Lead. In case you want to reply to a Lead note, you must go to the Lead's Details page and reply to the note. If you keep switching between these two Records details pages to add notes, there is a chance for your comments to get mixed up in the Feeds discussions about the task and lead. To avoid doing this, you can provide your response to the Lead note directly from the Task details page by using the "Add Note" option that we have provided right there.

You can view this response as a comment added under the Lead-related discussion in Feeds.

This helps you keep discussions involving two modules separate from each other.

View Details of Records That You Follow

In the new Feeds, the link "Followed by me" on the left pane displays details of all the records that you follow. These include records that you have followed manually as well as those assigned to you as per the auto-follow rules set by you or your administrator. These do not include records that you own - as you are an auto-follower of your own records by default. You can also Unfollow records from here.

In Pulse, you had the same link "Followed by me" on the right pane under Quick Links. This showed you the records that you followed, which included some of your own records as well.

View Untouched Records

Feeds also shows you all the records that were not updated for a selected number of days. You can easily identify such records and work on them if necessary.

In Pulse, you could see the records that were not updated for a selected number of days using the Pulse Rate.

Harness the Power of the Right Panel

When you click on a record under Untouched Records and Followed by Me, it expands to a right panel that presents details for the selected record. The details presented vary depending on the nature of the record and the module. You can also create a new activity, add new notes for the record directly from the right panel in Feeds

Voila! Feeds is a great platform for you to immediately get in touch with your fellow users from within Zoho CRM. We believe that you will love these improvements made to help you collaborate better with your peers. Do check out these new features right away!