Zoho upgrades Creator app builder tool

Zoho’s Creator application builder tool is gaining the ability to schedule automated tasks and to generate reports, the company announced Wednesday.

Creator, which lets users build simple, database-driven business applications without coding, is getting two new components: Reports and Scheduler.

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The new components are providing functionality that has been highly requested by the Zoho users who have built hundreds of thousands of applications with Creator, said Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna.

With Scheduler, users can set up the automated triggering of certain actions within applications, such as sending alerts and reminders. These actions can be scheduled to occur at preset time intervals or whenever a user performs a specific task.

Meanwhile, Reports lets users create, distribute, and share documents with graphs and charts based on an application’s data; generate summaries and pivot tables; and analyze data in various ways.

Zoho has also integrated its CRM and Invoice applications with Creator so that users can access CRM data and create new contacts, as well as create draft and invoices, from the Creator interface.

“Creator is evolving into the workflow engine for all Zoho apps,” Vegesna said.

Zoho’s cloud-hosted communication and collaboration suite is designed for consumers and small and medium-size business and includes e-mail, IM, document sharing, discussion forums, wikis, and online meetings.