Today Zoho announced Zoho Creator for Google Apps, bringing it total number Google Apps Marketplace offerings to 11 and making it the largest vendor in the marketplace. But more importantly, it is bringing Google Apps users an easy way to build simple applications on top of both the Zoho and Google platforms. There are limitations:
“Currently, there is no option to directly publish Zoho Creator apps within a Google Apps domain,” says Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna. “Google said they will look into this idea.” However, Google Apps admins will be able to share apps with users within the domain.
According to Zoho, these are the features of the integration:
- Universal Navigation: Once Zoho Creator is installed in any Google Apps domain, users can access it right from the universal navigation bar in Google Apps.
- Google Apps Users Field: Users in a Google Apps domain, can be added as one of the fields in Zoho Creator forms. This field provides a choice between the username and the email id to be displayed in the form.
- Email data: Google Apps users can now add data to Zoho Creator forms by emailing the details to a custom google e-mail id.
- Upload from Google Docs: Google Apps users can upload documents into their applications from their Google Docs account.
- Collaboration: Google Apps domain admins can share their application with the users in their domain or with their Google Apps user groups.
Here’s a video that explains a bit more about it:
Zoho Creator provides a drag-and-drop interface for building form-driven applications. Users can also import Microsoft Access database applications. Users can then share their creations through the Zoho Marketplace.
