Zoho Launches Business Apps on Google Apps Marketplace

Today, Google announced the availability of Google Apps Marketplace where vendors like Zoho can sell applications complementing Google Apps. More information on this announcement is available here and here. Zoho is one of Google's launch partners for Google Apps Marketplace as we integrate two of our business applications - Zoho CRM & Zoho Projectswith Google Apps.

Let us directly dive into the meat of the announcement. Starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add Zoho CRM & Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While we have had some integrations earlier, this time, we take this couple of steps further integrating our Apps at the application and data levels with Google Apps extended APIs.

Installing and Accessing Zoho Apps

If you are the domain admin for Google Apps, you'll now have an option to add Zoho Apps to your domain through Google Apps Marketplace. Once the domain admin adds a Zoho application to their domain, all users within the domain will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation.

Selecting the application in Google universal navigation opens the Zoho application in a new browser tab. When you access the application for the first time, we ask you to choose a Zoho username (one time only). Once done, you'll be logged into Zoho automatically and redirected to the appropriate Zoho Application where you can start using the app.

Integration with Google Apps - Application and Data

In the first version, Zoho CRM & Projects are integrated with Google Apps. There are several integration points with Google products. Here are some highlights...

When you add a Zoho application to a domain, all the apps will be accessible from Google universal navigation and users will automatically be signed into Zoho applications.

• In Zoho CRM for Google Apps, we let Google Apps domain admin choose the users he wants to provide access to Zoho CRM. Instead of creating users from scratch in Zoho CRM, you can now import users from Google Apps
  
• Zoho CRM allows users to import contacts from Google Apps Contacts
  
• If you have our Zoho Mail Add-on enabled in Zoho CRM, you can POP your email from Google Apps to Zoho CRM. These emails show up in the CRM system automatically for each contact. Emails sent from Zoho CRM will also show up in Gmail in Google Apps. This is a unique integration of its kind between Zoho CRM & Google's GMail.
• Zoho CRM & Projects integrate with Google Apps Calendar. Google Apps users will now be able to subscribe/view their CRM & Projects events right within Google Calendar
• Zoho Projects and all modules in Zoho CRM let you attach documents directly from Google Apps
  
• We also have multiple OpenSocial gadgets for CRM & Projects which can be embedded in Gmail, Google Sites and other apps that accept OpenSocial embeds

These bullet points won't do justice to the tight integration we have with Google Apps. Here is a video & a Zoho Show presentation that explains this integration in detail between Zoho CRM and Google Apps.

At Zoho, we have a broad set of apps - over 20 Online Business, Productivity & Collaboration Apps. Yes, we compete with Google Apps, but we have more apps that can complement Google Apps than the apps we compete in. We always made it easier for Google users to try Zoho Apps starting with Google Sign-in followed by Google Apps Sign-in and recent integration with Google Docs. We understand the realities of the market and we have a good overlap in customers using Zoho Business Apps and Google Apps. 

With this integration, we welcome Google Apps users to try our complementary business applications. We will continue to improve our integration with Google Apps and you'll find additional Zoho Business Apps available in Google Apps Marketplace moving forward.

We would like to thank Google Apps Marketplace team for providing us the opportunity to be a launch partner and providing us early access to the APIs. We hope this integration will be mutually beneficial and more importantly useful for our customers. As always, we are looking forward to your feedback.

Links