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Understand page layouts with a scenario

Here is a simple scenario in which we will demonstrate the use of page layouts in Zoho CRM. With this as an example, you will be able to implement page layouts for your organization depending on your company’s requirements.

Assume that there is a large-scale mobile phone sales and services company called Zylker Mobiles. They sell brand new phones and also accommodate mobile phone service requests. The sales and service of mobile phones follow a different set of processes.

• The assessment of requirements for sales is different from that of mobile service. While a request for the purchase of a mobile phone may call for stock verification first, a request for mobile phone service calls for issue assessment.
• The people in charge of mobile sales are different from those in charge of mobile service.
• The follow-up processes for mobile sales are different from that of mobile service.

That said, there might be processes that are common to both mobile sales and service as well, such as quality testing and product demo. Therefore creating different modules for mobile sales and service would be a hassle, as the modules would have redundant info and processes associated. Take a look at how Zoho CRM addresses these diverse requirements with page layouts.

Below is the list of actions we are going to follow in order to demonstrate the use of page layouts in Zoho CRM for Zylker Mobiles.

Part I – Building Page layouts

• Create two layouts - Mobile Sales and Mobile Service in the Deals module.
• Build the two layouts with the required fields and sections. The deal stages for Mobile Sales are going to be different from that of Mobile Service.

Part II - Choosing layouts on record creation

• Demonstrate the choice of layout during the creation of a record, be it via import, web-forms, APIs or the individual creation of a record.

Part III – Understanding the layout field

• Understand how the layout field can be used to create layout based custom views, auto-follow rules, approval process and lead assignment rules.

Part IV – Setting up workflow rules

• Set workflow rules required for mobile sales and mobile service layouts depending on the processes followed at Zylker Mobiles.
• Demonstrate the execution of workflow processes as configured for the layouts.

PART V – Creating reports and dashboards

• Create reports and dashboards for a module based on the page layout.

Create a new layout

To create a new layout

1. Go to Setup > Customization > Modules and Fields.
2. From the list of available modules, click the module for which you wish to create a new layout.
3. In the Module Layout page, click Create New Layout.
4. Name the layout – Mobile Sales and add fields and sections to the layout as required.
   
5. Once all the fields have been added, click Save Layout.
6. On saving the layout, you will be prompted to define the permissions for the layout. In the Layout Permission popup, enter the user profiles that will have access to the layout.
   
7. Now clone this layout by clicking Create New Layout.
   
8. In the Create New Layout popup, choose which layout to clone this new layout from.
   
9. Name the Layout as Mobile Service and add new fields to the layout as required.
   
10. Once you have created the required fields, click Save Layout.
11. On saving the layout, you will be prompted to enter the user profiles that will have access to the layout. Enter the profiles and click Save.
    

Now, both the layouts of the Deals module – Mobile Sales and Mobile Service have been created.

Layout Assignment

When you create multiple layouts, you can control how users view and access the layout. Using Layout Assignment, you can assign layouts to profiles.

Besides assigning layouts to user profiles, you can also specify which layout must be the default layout for the profile. The layout that a record belongs to can always be changed later, if required.

Choose layouts on record creation

After you have created the layouts, you will be able to choose the layout at different record entry points. Some of them are mentioned below. In our example, whenever you create a deal, you will be prompted to choose which layout the deal has to be created in.

• Creating records individually
  
• Importing records
  
• Records via web forms (leads/contacts/cases)
  
• Records via APIs: When records are pushed to CRM via APIs, they are pushed to the layout defined by the Layout ID in the API. If a layout is not defined for a record, it is assigned to the Standard Layout for the module.

Understand the layout field

When you create a new layout for a module, a system-generated field called Layout gets created along with other fields automatically. The Layout field carries the layout name through which the record is generated in the layout.

Since the Layout field is another CRM field, you can use this field in various CRM functions such as creating custom views, automation of record assignment, approval process and auto-follow rules.

Creating custom views

You can create custom views based on the layout. For example, a custom view called Mobile Service deals will enable a user to easily see all records that belong to the Mobile Service layout.

Auto-follow rules

You can choose to auto-follow your peers’ records that belong to particular layout. This way, you will be notified of any changes made to the record via Feeds in Zoho CRM.

Lead assignment rules

You can automate assignment of leads/contacts/cases to CRM users based on the layout that they belong to. For example, you can create a rule that says all leads that belong to the Mobile Sales layout should be assigned to a particular sales rep.

This way, leads that come in via webforms and other third-party integrations such as Google Ads will be automatically assigned to the user mentioned in the assignment rule. When an assignment rule is not mentioned, the record will be automatically assigned to the Standard layout for the module.

Approval process automation

You can also automate the submission of records from a particular layout for approval by managers.

Setting up workflow rules

Zylker Mobiles requires several processes to be automated for the Deals modules. Following are some of them.

• Whenever the stage of a deal in the Mobile Sale layout is Closed Won, assign a task called “Initiate QA and Dispatch” to Charles Stone.
• Whenever the stage of a deal in the Mobile Service layout is Closed Won, assign a task called “Initiate Service” to Fathima Yilmaz.
• Whenever the Stage of a deal is updated to Issue Assessment, send an alert to the associated contact - “Your request is being assessed”.
• Whenever the field “Reason for return” in the Mobile Sales layout is updated to Faulty device, automatically move the record from Mobile Sales to the Mobile Service layout.

If you look at these processes, most of them are dependent on the layout. Let us see how to create workflow rules in each of these cases.

Case 1

Whenever the stage of a deal in the Mobile Sale layout is Closed Won, assign a task called “Initiate QA and Dispatch” to Charles Stone.

Create a new workflow rule for the Deals module.   

Choose to execute on a record action. Select the Rule Trigger as Edit.

 Set the Rule Criteria as the following:

• Stage is Closed Won
  AND
• Layout is Mobile Sales
  

This way, only when both the criteria are met, the workflow rule will be executed. This ensures that the task is created only when a deal from the Mobile Sales layout is updated to Closed Won.  

Assign a task – Initiate QA and dispatch – to the respective sales rep – in this case, Charles Stone.

Now, whenever Zylker Motors wins a mobile sale deal, a task will be automatically assigned to Charles Stone for him to initiate dispatch.

RESULT OF THE RULE

The stage of a deal called Big Deal – April, from the Mobile Sales Layout has been updated to Closed Won.

The task Initiate QA and dispatch is now automatically assigned to Charles Stone.

Similarly let us look at how the workflow processes for the rest of the cases are configured.

Case 2

Whenever the stage of a deal in the Mobile Service layout is Closed Won, assign a task called “Initiate Service” to Fathima Yilmaz.

This is similar to the previous case. The only difference is that in the Rule Criteria, in stead of Layout is Mobile Sales, you will mention that Layout is Mobile Service and then create a task for Fathima Yilmaz.

This way, whenever Zylker Motors wins a mobile service deal, a task will be automatically assigned to Fathima Yilmaz for her to initiate service.

RESULT OF THE RULE

The stage of a deal called Service- large scale, from the Mobile Service Layout has been updated to Closed Won. The task Initiate Service is now automatically assigned to Fathima Yilmaz.

Case 3

Whenever the Stage of a deal is updated to Issue Assessment, send an alert to the associated contact  - “Your request is being assessed”.

In this case, it is not required for you to mention the Layout type in the rule criteria, as this stage occurs only in the Mobile Service layout in our example.

RESULT OF THE RULE

The stage of a deal called April service enquiry, associated to contact, David Smith, from the Mobile Service Layout has been updated to Issue Assessment. The email “Your request is being assessed” is now automatically sent to David. 

Case 4

A very powerful feature of layouts is that you can automate the shift of a record from one layout to another by writing a simple workflow rule for field update. Let us look at this case with an example.

Customers may sometimes return mobile phones they purchased for many reasons. In most cases, the reason for return is that their device was faulty. So in Zylker Mobiles, they decide to automatically move the return of faulty devices from the Mobile sales layout to their Mobile service section.

Let’s say there is a field called “Reason for Return” in the Mobile Sales layout. If this field is updated to “Faulty device”, the layout should be updated to Mobile Service.

RESULT OF THE RULE

Now when the Reason for Return field is updated to Faulty device, the record is automatically moved to the Mobile Service layout.

Create reports based on multiple layouts

You can also create reports and dashboards for a module based on the different layouts created for the module. For example, the Zylker Mobiles team would like to know the sum of deals in the Mobile Services layout as against that of the Mobile Sales layout.

Here is a Summary report of deals grouped based on the Layout and the corresponding activity information. 

Here is the report:

From the report, you can also create a dashboard for the same information.