Zoho Office Suite - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Zoho Office Suite is a Web-based online office suite containing word processing

Word processing

Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...

, spreadsheets, presentations, database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

s, note-taking, wiki

Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

s, customer relationship management

Customer relationship management

Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...

(CRM), project management

Project management software

Project management software is a term covering many types of software, including estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, quality management and documentation or administration systems, which are used to...

, invoicing and other applications developed by ZOHO Corporation

ZOHO Corporation

ZOHO Corporation founded in 1996, is located in Pleasanton, California, United States of America. The company started as a network framework provider for telecom equipment vendors. In 2003, ZOHO Corp diversified into IT Management software with ManageEngine...

(formally AdventNet Inc.), a US-based company. It was launched in 2005 with a web-based word processor. Additional products, such as spreadsheets and presentations, were incorporated later into Zoho. Zoho applications are an example of software as a service

Software as a Service

Software as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...

(SaaS) or cloud computing

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....

applications, whereby software utilities are hosted on remote servers rather than on personal computers. The user accesses the utilities via a web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

.

Zoho applications are free to use at the entry-level and require a fee for more extensive or professional use.

Features

Zoho uses an open Application Programming Interface for its Writer, Sheet, Show, Creator, Meeting, and Planner products. It also has plugins into Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

, Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...

, an OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...

plugin, and a plugin for Firefox.

Zoho Writer

The suite's word processor

Word processor

A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

supports simultaneous collaboration between multiple users. It supports common formats, including Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word

(DOC

DOC (computing)

In computing, DOC or doc is a filename extension for word processing documents; most commonly for Microsoft Word. Historically, the extension was used for documentation in plain-text format, particularly of programs or computer hardware, on a wide range of operating systems...

), Office Open XML (DOCX), OpenDocument

OpenDocument

The Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....

text (ODT), OpenOffice.org XML

OpenOffice.org XML

OpenOffice.org XML is an open XML-based file format developed as an open community effort by Sun Microsystems and other OpenOffice.org project contributors in 2000-2002. The open-source software application suite OpenOffice.org 1.x and StarOffice 6 used the format as their native and default file...

text (SXW), HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, RTF

RTF

RTF may stand for:* Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, France's national public broadcasting organization between 1949 and 1964* Reader talks first, in RFID, the situation where the interrogator or reader initiates the session with the RFID tag...

, JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

, GIF

GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....

and PNG files. It can support embedded media from hosting sites, such as Flickr

Flickr

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...

, Zooomr

Zooomr

- History :Zooomr was created in 2005 by Kristopher Tate and Michael Van Veen of BlueBridge Technologies Group. On June 19, 2006, Thomas Hawk, a well-known photographer and blogger from San Francisco, was recruited by Zooomr as its so called "Chief Evangelist." On July 17, 2006, Zooomr released...

, Youtube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, and Vimeo

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick in November 2004...

.
It supports some direct blog publishing.
Zoho Writer was one of the earliest online word processors to support both online and offline editing by using Google Gears. The program originally relied on polling every 8 seconds, but the latest version uses real time notification from Zoho Chat.
Zoho Writer comes with LaTeX

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

based Equation Editor under 'Insert' menu, based on palette based limited graphic user interface. If not fluent in LaTeX, user can use some 3rd party Math Equation Editor software such as MathMagic

MathMagic

MathMagic is a mathematical WYSIWYG equation editor, available for Windows and Mac OS X since its first debut in 1998. MathMagic is known for its DTP quality equations and widely used by Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress users...

or MathType

MathType

MathType is a software application created by Design Science that allows the creation of mathematical notation for inclusion in desktop and web applications.- Features :...

. MathMagic especially offers "Copy As Zoho equation" menu to allow user Paste the equation optimized in Zoho equation format. Zoho equation(LaTeX) can also be copy and pasted into MathMagic window to re-edit.

Zoho Sheet

Sheet is the spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

application in the suite. Zoho Sheet can auto-process external data feeds (RSS/ATOM) and has the ability to publish charts into blogs or other websites. Like Writer, it facilitates real-time collaboration. It has a plugin to integrate with Microsoft Excel and is available both as a desktop widget and as part of online services such as box.net and Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

Zoho Reports

An online business intelligence

Business intelligence

Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

and reporting application in the suite. It can "create charts, pivots, summary and other wide-range of reports through [a] powerful drag & drop interface".

Zoho Show

An online presentation program

Presentation program

A presentation program is a computer software package used to display information, normally in the form of a slide show...

that allows users to create or (as is often the case) import Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps), OpenDocument Presentations (.odp) or OpenOffice.org XML (.sxi) presentations. It also allows users to share & collaborate on presentations and make remote presentations to clients.

Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects supports creating tasks, assigning ownership, setting deadlines and tracking milestones; working with calendars, Gantt charts, reports, share supporting files—standard features in a project management package.The free version of the software accommodates only a single project; the paid versions have greater capacities and functionality.

Zoho BugTracker

An online bug tracking application in the suite. It is designed to help quality assurance and programmers keep track of reported software bugs in their work.

Zoho CRM

ZOHO CRM offers customer relationship management

Customer relationship management

functionality, procurement, inventory, and some accounting functions from the realm of ERP

Enterprise resource planning

Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...

. The free version is limited to 3 users.

User interface similarities with the free open source vtiger CRM

Vtiger CRM

vtiger CRM is an open source CRM application that was forked from SugarCRM with the intention of being a fully open source CRM application with comparable functionality to SugarCRM and Salesforce.com...

have sparked suggestions that ZOHO CRM might be a branded commercial version of vtiger. However, this seems to be attributable to common corporate sponsorship, not to a common software code base which ZOHO representatives have denied. In addition, ZOHO CRM is a hosted SAAS solution in the same fashion as the core components of the ZOHO Office Suite, while vtiger requires server installation.

Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice is the invoicing solution from Zoho's range of business applications. It enables users to create, send and manage invoices, track expenses, receive online payments and generate reports. For globalized trading Zoho Invoice supports multi-currency. In addition to English Zoho Invoice is available in 11 other languages including Spanish, Dutch and Chinese. Other interesting product highlights include the option to send invoices via Postal mail, recurring billing, customizable invoice templates, integration with Google's marketplace and API's for integrations.

Zoho Creator

An online database

Database

/ custom application development tool which allows users to create fairly sophisticated process logic by dragging & dropping script elements on screen, without knowing code. Data can be imported from .xls, .csv, and .tsv files and create a variety of forms either from scratch or by using one of several common templates.

It supports importing the Ms Access (.mdb) files using their newly created tool. It also supports variety of export types as XLS, CSV, TSV, HTML, PDF, JSON, RSS.

Zoho Wiki

Zoho Wiki is a tool that allows the user to create his/her own wiki with its own pages and sub-pages, pictures and multi-media snippets.

Zoho Discussions

Create external and internal communities where problems are solved, topics are discussed and ideas are exchanged. Customer support forums where solutions come from support reps and customers alike; Ideas forums where customers can make their voices heard; Employee forums for having important conversations in a better environment.

Zoho Planner

An online planner with a calendar, to-do lists, pages, and e-mail reminders for collaboration with other users. This component competes with Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

, and more directly, Google Calendar

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a free time-management web application offered by Google. It became available on April 13, 2006, and exited the beta stage in July 2009...

, though it is criticized as it is not currently providing SMS reminders that Google Calendar and 30 Boxes

30 Boxes

-Features:The website supports drag-and-drop capabilities, one-click editing, plain-language event adding, as well as unique features aimed towards social networkers. Calendars can contain feeds from Twitter, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, WordPress, Vox, and Upcoming.org, which generates a social...

are currently providing.

Zoho Notebook

Similar to Microsoft OneNote or Google Notebook

Google Notebook

Google Notebook is a free online application offered by Google that allows users to save and organize clips of information while conducting research online. The browser-based tool permits a user to write notes, clip text and images, and save links from pages during a browser session. The...

, it also includes greater support for multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

content. Users may include text, images, video, and audio in a "notebook," and then share the notebook or individual pages. The component allows integration of documents, full-fledged applications, and content via RSS

RSS

-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...

. The content from the notebook may be uploaded or gathered from the web by using a plugin for Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

Zoho Chat

A chat application that can be embedded into pages or blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

s. It also supports traditional private instant messaging

Instant messaging

Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...

integrating access to all the major chat clients.

Zoho Mail

Formerly known as Zoho Office Suite, Zoho Mail is web-based collaboration groupware. The service was renamed Zoho Mail because of the misperception that it was an integration of the other Zoho services. Still in public beta, it provides services such as email, calendar, document management, task management, and contact management. Zoho Mail also integrates the Writer, Sheet, and Show components.

Zoho Meeting

A web conference application, the current version requires the creator of the conference to be using Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, but participants can use any operating system. Zoho Meeting allows participants to see the screen of the presenter by using either ActiveX

ActiveX

ActiveX is a framework for defining reusable software components in a programming language-independent way. Software applications can then be composed from one or more of these components in order to provide their functionality....

, Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

, or Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

. The "Show" and "Chat" components are integrated into the meeting, and participants can control the desktop of the presenter. The Meeting Viewer can be embedded in a separate webpage or a slide from "Show". Zoho Meeting is currently free in public beta and offers live support.

Zoho Docs

An online document management

Document management system

A document management system is a computer system used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. It is usually also capable of keeping track of the different versions created by different users . The term has some overlap with the concepts of content management...

service for storing, sharing and managing files and documents from one central location. You can upload images, music files, videos in various formats such as zip, pdf, jpeg, etc. and share them with individuals or groups.

Zoho Challenge

Zoho Challenge is software that automates and streamlines online test creation, distribution and evaluation/scoring process. It is intended for use by schools, teachers, coaching centers and similar organizations.

Zoho Polls

Zoho Polls is a free surveying or rating tool that can be embedded in a web page or blog.

Site24x7

"Site24x7" is a website monitoring service that is free on a limited basis.

Google Apps integration

In October 2009, Zoho integrated some of their applications with the Google Apps

Google Apps

Google Apps is a service from Google providing independently customizable versions of several Google products under a custom domain name. It features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including: Gmail, Google Groups, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and...

online suite. This enabled users to sign in to both suites under one login. Zoho and Google still remain separate, competing companies.