Disclosure: I work at Skyfall Labs, an official Zoho Partner, so I have a commercial interest. The facts below are from Zoho's own help page, linked at the end; advice is labelled as advice. Originally published on skyfallhq.net.
If your team does not trust the CRM's reports, the cause is often inconsistent data typed in by hand. Validation rules are the built-in way to catch bad entries before a record is saved. This post sets out what Zoho's help page says about them, including the exceptions that surprise people.
What a validation rule does
Per Zoho, validation rules flag or block invalid field entries to reduce manual data-entry errors. A rule is set per field: when an invalid value is entered and the record is saved, the CRM shows an error or alert. Validity is decided by comparing the input against either a set of criteria or a function. Rules are layout-specific, so the same field can have different rules on different layouts.
Creating a criteria-based rule, per Zoho
- Hover over the module in the sidebar, click the more icon and choose Validation Rules; or go to Setup, Customization, Modules and Fields, select the module and open the Validation Rules tab.
- Click Create New Validation Rule, then choose the layout, the field, the validation type and when to validate.
- Define the primary condition (Zoho's example is Discount above 15%), choose when the rule executes, and enter the error message.
- Optionally add a secondary condition to decide which records the condition applies to, then save.
Block or warn, and where the message appears
With the Save only option, the validation preference can be Stop with error, which blocks saving, or Allow by alert, which lets the user save after confirming the warning. Zoho adds that the alert option is being released in a phased manner and may not be available in every account.
For Stop with error, the error location can be on the primary field or at the top of the page; Zoho recommends the top of the page when fields depend on each other. Function-based rules, meant for complex logic or checking data from other applications, do not support the preference and error location options.
Limits Zoho states
A criteria-based rule can have up to 10 primary conditions, each with up to 5 secondary conditions, and each secondary condition up to 5 criteria. Each secondary condition has one customizable message. You need the Modules Customization profile permission to create rules.
Exceptions that explain why bad data still gets in
Zoho states that field updates made by a workflow rule, Blueprint, API, import or web form take precedence over a validation rule, and the CRM accepts the updated value. If a Blueprint validation and a validation rule have different conditions on the same field, the Blueprint validation overrides the rule while the record is in that blueprint. Records from a web form that meet the rule's criteria are submitted for manual record approval.
Zoho also lists field types that are not supported: multi-select lookups, multi-picklists, multi-user fields, formula fields, auto-number fields, image upload fields and multi-line fields.
Using rules to make reports trustworthy (practical advice)
This section is advice from experience, not vendor documentation.
- Start from the reports you do not trust and list the fields they depend on; validate those fields first rather than everything.
- Prefer picklists and required fields where a free-text value would be reported on, and use validation rules for the formats and value ranges a picklist cannot enforce.
- Remember the exceptions: imports, API syncs and web forms bypass the rule, so check data arriving that way separately.
- Choose a warning rather than a hard stop where users have legitimate exceptions; a rule people work around is worse than none.
- Write error messages that tell the user what to enter, not just that it is wrong.
- Try new rules in a sandbox first and test with real examples of both good and bad values.
