This bug tracker is used to record bugs in various Zoho applications, especially Zoho Workplace and Zoho Mail.
Zoho Workplace is actually a good idea, and at first glance seems to be trustworthy, complete and a good alternative to competitor products.
But unfortunately, things look a little different in practice...
I have been using Zoho Workplace (privately and professionally) since the end of 2022 and actually wanted to implement all my digital agendas with this system. Unfortunately, this turned out to be an impossibility, as the number of bugs in various Zoho applications is so large that it is almost impossible to work efficiently with them. On the desktop as well as on the smartphone, you constantly encounter incompatibilities between the apps, contradictory settings and countless errors in the software, which sometimes not only lead to incorrect information or make operation more difficult, but can also lead to data loss and in the end can be considered a situation that could be described as not "suitable for everyday use".
Of course, bugs can occur in software, but it is then important that bugs reported by paying customers are dealt with and fixed quickly and efficiently by the manufacturer.
At Zoho, however, it is unfortunately not only the software that does not work properly in many areas, but also the reporting of errors in the software that can be described as bugs.
Many peculiarities of the software that are based on a possible operating error are insufficiently documented and you have to figure many things out for yourself. In some places you can overlook bugs in everyday life if you can determine that it is actually a bug, but in some cases bugs in Zoho Apps can lead to data (or even entire user accounts) being deleted or no longer being able to be edited. However, after using Zoho Workplace for over a year, I know the system relatively well and can live with some things, but not others.
However, the countless bugs in Zoho Cliq, for example, have caused me to completely hide Cliq, forget about it, and never consider using it again, as it is by far the worst application I have ever come across. I don't even want to think about it anymore and can only advise against using this software for important things or even considering using it.
If you want to use Zoho Workplace/Mail on your smartphone and need complete synchronization of your data, you will run into an unbelievable dilemma: The synchronization of contacts, calendar, notes, and tasks is not practicable with either Android or iOS, and even the apps available for the respective platforms (Zoho Mail, Zoho Calendar, Zoho Cliq, Zoho ToDo, etc.) sometimes work so poorly that it becomes a pure game of chance. In the worst case, you lose data or cause data chaos. Neither the synchronization between the Zoho apps and the cloud works flawlessly, and the obviously incorrectly implemented EAS (Exchange Active Sync) usually causes more problems than it tries to solve.
However, if you only want to use your mails with Android/iPhone, you might be partially satisfied with the Zoho Mail app. But don't expect too much as soon as several apps are used or if you use Workplace.
Personally, I am now afraid to do any editing of important data in any Zoho app on my smartphone (and I have meticulously tested Android and iPhone). So unfortunately, despite the smartphone, you are still very much tied to the desktop computer and should do important agendas (e.g. changing a contact's data) there. Simply absurd.
In the meantime, I have also given up logging the bugs relating to calendars, notes and tasks with Android because there are so many of them. I have now switched from Android to iPhone, as the Zoho apps are sometimes more advanced there and don't have quite as many bugs.
In addition, some applications integrated into Zoho Workplace are only partially included, and you may also end up in other "subscription traps", such as Zoho Meeting or Zoho Notebook, which also integrate poorly with Zoho Workplace. ...but that's another story. I want to mention it anyway, because it also makes it difficult for the user to maintain control over his data and to get an overview of the interaction of the many Zoho apps.
However, it should be noted: Some other apps, on the other hand, are very convincing, including Zoho Workdrive, Zoho Connect, Zoho Books and OneAuth, for example, both on the desktop and on the smartphone (even if not everything always runs perfectly there either). So I don't want to talk down Zoho in general here, but I do want to point out that there are serious problems in this Zoho software universe, the extent of which Zoho is obviously not fully aware of.
Even though I have almost always received a response to the bug reports I have tried to submit to Zoho by e-mail, only about 3% of them have been dealt with satisfactorily. The rest just cost me time, nerves and energy and almost all bugs have persisted for over a year and have not been fixed.
In my experience, the first hurdle is that the Indian Zoho support sometimes translates the messages incorrectly, then responds inadequately, and usually suggests a phone call (in English with an Indian accent) or a screen-sharing session where you are treated like a computer novice.
However, I don't share my screen with anyone I don't know personally, and certainly not with any person from India who claims to be a Zoho employee and whose authenticity I can't verify, or even let that person control it. That is a security no-go!
In the end, it was a morning phone call that really made me think. It took me some time to understand that the person on the other end was speaking to me in English, as I personally have difficulty understanding English with an Indian accent. Fortunately, the person I spoke to quickly understood and started speaking to me clearly and slowly. Nevertheless, I had never given my consent anywhere for anyone from Zoho to call me on the number I had stored there and clarify such bug reports with me personally. From a European legal perspective, this is also a no-go.
In the end, I had to sacrifice 20 minutes of my time to take screenshots and "prove" that the bug I had previously reported was indeed a bug. Zoho then confirmed this in an email, but why do I, as a paying customer, even have to come across this bug and then work on documenting it for free?
So, in my opinion, Zoho currently has no effective way for the user to ensure that a bug report is properly assessed and processed, and one can only hope that the report is handled by someone in such a way that the development team also gets to know about it and works on fixing the bug.
Unfortunately, there are so many bugs, and some only come to light in everyday life, so that as a user you often don't have the time to communicate the problem in a solution-oriented manner.
Since Zoho offers many apps, it is of course not easy to keep track of software malfunctions. Nevertheless, in many cases the Zoho customer is a paying beta tester of the software, and this should not really be the case.
One of Zoho's biggest problems is that it seems that hardly any resources are spent on testing the software extensively. This is understandable, as testing costs a lot of time and money, but it is annoying for the user when they pay for the software and expect everything to work flawlessly.
Another point is the countless incomplete and incorrect translations of the software, which in my case, especially in the German translation, can sometimes lead to serious problems. There is generally a lot of catching up to do here and Zoho is currently quite a challenge in non-English languages, where you need a lot of interpretation skills.
Another problem with Zoho is that the individual apps are apparently produced in teams that do not cooperate/communicate with each other enough. Especially in the case of Zoho Workplace, this can have devastating consequences, because Workplace is a product where several Zoho apps interact with each other. If something does not work, then the user has a problem, because Zoho apparently does not have a usable cross-team mechanism for handling bugs that (can) affect several applications at the same time.
Therefore, I decided to start this public (unofficial) bug tracker and create my bug reports here in the future (regardless of whether Zoho reads them or not). So I am trying to do Zoho's homework here, even though I have not been commissioned by Zoho in any way (unfortunately Zoho have never asked me to do so).
My hope is that at some point Zoho will start to actively participate and show serious efforts to work on the bugs and improve their own apps.
Perhaps Zoho will realize in the long run, through the information meticulously collected from customers, that something needs to change here, and that closer collaboration with some customers will lead to improvement.
Subsequently, a publicly accessible translation system can help to get a better grip on the countless translation errors. One solution to this could be https://crowdin.com.
To summarize, since Zoho has apparently not taken care of this so far:
In any case, it's time (for me) to let out a loud cry, one that can be heard and through which others affected can also benefit in the long term. Let the world see what Zoho is really like in the background, let Zoho realize that there is an urgent need to improve and test their software better before selling it to customers like me.
I don't want to be misunderstood here: I think Zoho's original idea is a very good one, and not everything at Zoho is in bad shape!
However, it is necessary and important that customer feedback is heard, understood as a suggestion for improvement and processed in a reasonable amount of time. This requires at least state-of-the-art tools such as a bug tracker or another ticket system that is able to record this information and communicate it to others. If customers are not provided with such a tool, then they are at the mercy of the manufacturer and Zoho would be no better than Microsoft and the many other "big" software developers who have ignored the wishes and suggestions of users for decades. Therefore: Zoho, let's do better together!
In the near future, I will therefore try to document all bugs in my daily work with various Zoho apps and record them here step by step in a topic-specific manner. I'll start with Zoho Contacts, as I need the contacts from Zoho Workplace on my smartphone myself, of course, but will then work my way through other areas:
I won't be working on Cliq and Notebooks for the time being, as I now shy away from (loathe) these applications, but if anyone else would like to contribute: always welcome!