Ensuring Data Quality in Zoho CRM

Redundant Data and the importance of Data Quality

Maintaining good formatting and quality of data can be extremely helpful for your organisation and for the CRM. If you have set up a lot of task automation in Zoho CRM, new records will be created into your Leads, Contacts or other modules at a much faster pace than you keep up with. 

You may have found that there are some details missing or the entry of details is not in the correct format. This may lead to situations where records are duplicated. If you plan to launch an SMS Campaign, it may send to the same number twice. Some numbers may also be written in the wrong format which the CRM does not support. 

Thus, maintaining quality and consistency is important because it may lead to errors and duplicates may be hard to find. This is where field validation comes in handy.

What is field validation and why is it necessary?

Field validation is when you are entering details in a form and it gives you an error if you have not met the specified criteria (think entering your Date of Birth and returning an error if it’s below 18). 

Zoho CRM has field validation possibilities in every module and you can customize it as you wish. Even if they are manually being entered, you can validate the field to check if the right information is being entered before it is saved.

Let us take a look at an example of how we use Validation Rules in Zoho CRM at SyncEzy.

Setting up field validation

Prior to setting up validation rules, there was no way to validate phone numbers to check if they were legitimate in our records. Many Contacts would come in as junk or spam phone numbers. Cleanups were done using a custom button to fix the data but it could not be done every time.

A majority of customers and enquiries come from Australia. Australian mobile numbers usually start with a “04” and are 10 characters long. Here is how the validation looks like when we try to enter something different. We cannot save this value until we meet the specified criteria.

Here are the instructions on how you can set this up. You can also use this as a guide for any other validation rule that you want to set up. 

Step 1: Go to Settings > Modules and Fields

Step 2: Go to Module which you want to set up the validation rules for

Step 3: Go to the Validation Rules section

Step 4: Select New Validation Rule

Step 5: Choose the Layout and Field you want to validate. Then choose Validate using criteria.

Step 6: Build the validation rules as required. Choose whether to execute your function when the criteria are met or otherwise.

Step 7: Press save and your validation rule is now ready!

You can also only set up one validation rule per field. Multiple rules for the same field is not allowed. If you wish to add more criteria, simply edit the existing rule for the field. 

Building more complex Validation Rules

Field validation can also be achieved with custom functions. This allows a lot more flexibility as it is easier to add more criteria and to achieve validations you can’t do using the drag and drop criteria editor. 

For example, you may need validation for toll-free numbers starting with 1800 or for various country codes on the Phone field. Using the function method to build rules can check for multiple criteria for unique requirements much more easily. 

If you require help with Zoho CRM, validation rules or any other integrations, please contact SyncEzy and we will assist you with whatever task you have in mind.