Notes on Action Required | Activities tab deprecation

Notes on Action Required | Activities tab deprecation

Activities tab deprecation — Overview

Effective March 15, 2024, we will deprecate the Activities tab in Zoho CRM. Please note that you can continue to view and work with your Activity records through the existing individual modules—Tasks, Meetings, and Calls—even after the Activity tab's deprecation. 

The current set up where all your sales activities are tracked in a single module posed technical challenges for us in implementing continuous improvements for the Activities modules. By having Tasks, Meetings and Calls as individual modules, we will be able to address those technical difficulties and roll-out the enhancements at the earliest.

What does the Activities tab deprecation mean for you as a CRM user? 

1. If you have signed up for Zoho CRM after January 2022, you will not be impacted by this deprecation, as the Activities module for these accounts have already been removed and what is effective is Tasks, Meetings and Calls as independent modules. So no action required in this case. 
2. If you have signed up for Zoho CRM before January 2022, you are likely to see an Activities tab, as well as Tasks, Meetings and Calls, as individual modules. Your tasks, meetings and calls in this case are already being tracked under separate modules, no matter where you create them. So you do not have to worry about data loss. Even if you have created a task or meeting or a call under the Activities tab, a copy of those records are already available in the Tasks, Meetings and Calls modules respectively. This migration of records has already been handled. 


So, there is no action required from the point of view of record migration and nothing to worry about loss of Activity records.

Action Required from CRM users before the Activity Tab deprecation

The only action required from your end, is to move the components created originally with the Activities module to the respective Tasks, Meetings or Calls module. 

For example, if you have created a report associated to Activities module, now simply recreate that report with the associated independent module — Tasks, Meetings or Calls. If you fail to recreate these components before the deprecation date, you are likely to lose those components as the Activities tab will cease to exist after the deprecation date. 

The components referred to in this context, which will be deprecated along with the Activities module are: 
  1. Reports (associated with the Activities tab)
  2. Dashboards (associated with the Activities tab)
  3. Home page components (associated with the Activities tab)
  4. Motivator components (associated with the Activities tab)
Therefore it's important that you recreate these components with the associated independent modules, namely Tasks, Meetings and Calls. While this may be challenging, we will help you in this transition phase.

Following are a set of instructions on how to move these components and recreate them with Tasks, Meetings or Calls, in order to successfully prevent data loss post the deprecation of the Activities tab. 

Custom views in the Activities module 

To recreate the custom views created using activities module:
  1. Go to the Activities module.
  2. From the list of custom views, click a view that you would like to recreate in Calls, Meetings, or Tasks module.
  3. Click Edit and view the criteria for the custom view.



    The Edit option will only allow you to view the criteria of the custom view and will not enable you to do edit.


    It will be good practice to take a screenshot of the page so that you can view the screenshot while recreating them in calls, meetings, and tasks.

  4. Go the relevant Tasks, Meetings or Calls module where you want to create the custom view.
  5. Recreate the view that you just viewed in the Activities module.



Reports in the Activities module 

Reports created using the Activities module have to be recreated in the Tasks, Meetings or Calls modules respectively. This involves two types of action— reports involving a single module and reports involving two modules. For example, if you have a report "Leads with tasks and calls", you will have to create reports in both, tasks and calls modules. But this is made easy using the joined report feature. Let's see how this works.

Reports involving single module: For example, you have reports in the Activities module with Tasks, Meetings or Calls. You now want to recreate these reports in the respective Calls, Meetings, and Tasks modules.
  1. Click Reports on the banner or go to the reports module and click the alert pop-up to view the list of reports associated with the activities module.
    You need not search for reports individually. They will be displayed as a list on clicking Reports in the banner.
  2. Navigate to Activity Reports page and view the reports associated with the activities module.
  3. Select the report that you want to recreate with calls, meetings, and tasks.
  4. Click Edit to view the criteria, columns, and other details.
    It will be good practice to take a screenshot of the page so that you can view the screenshot while recreating them in calls, meetings, and tasks.
  5. Click New Report.
  6. In the Create New Report pop-up, select the primary module for the report.

  7. Click Continue.
  8. Select the secondary module.
  9. For example, if you have an existing report as "Leads with Tasks", then choose Leads as the primary module and Tasks as the secondary module.


  10. Mention the required criteria, columns, and so on to create the reports in the relevant module.
  11. Click Continue.
Joined Report: For example, you have a report "Leads with tasks and calls," created with tasks and calls. You can see the reports created in the tasks and calls modules individually, together as a joined report.
  1. Create a report in the tasks module following the above steps.
  2. When creating a similar report in the calls module, a pop-up message, Do you want to join similar reports? is displayed as shown in the image below.

  3. If you want to join the current report that you are creating with an existing report, click Joined Report.
  4. In the Create Joined Report pop-up, the report that you are creating is displayed as Report 1.
  5. From the Report 2 drop-down list, select the report that you want to see along with this report.
  6. Click Done.



  7. You can rename the joined report and click Save.

Dashboards associated with Activities module 

To recreate dashboards with calls, meetings, and tasks:
  1. Go to the Dashboards module.
  2. Select the dashboard associated with the activities module that you want to recreate using the calls, meetings, and tasks module.
  3. Click more icon and then click Edit.
  4. In the displayed Edit Component pop-up, you can view the criteria of the dashboard.


    It will be good practice to take a screenshot of the page so that you can view the screenshot while recreating them in calls, meetings, and tasks.
  5. Click Add Component.
  6. Select the component that you want to recreate. 
  7. Refer to the screenshot to recreate the dashboard component in calls, meetings, and tasks accordingly.

Home page components 

To recreate the home page components associated with the activities module, you must first recreate those dashboards, custom view, and widgets in the respective calls, meetings, and tasks modules and then add those components to the home page.
  1. Go to the home page and select the component that you want to recreate.
  2. Click the more icon and then click Edit.
  3. In the displayed Edit Component pop-up, view the details of the dashboard.
  4. Go to the relevant calls, meetings, or tasks module and recreate the dashboard.

Motivator components 

To recreate the motivator components:
  1. Go to Settings->General->Motivator.
  2. On the displayed page, click Access Motivator.
  3. On the displayed Motivator page, click KPIs on the right pane.


  4. Click the more icon of the component associated with the activities module and then select Edit.


  5. In the Update KPI page, view the criteria of the displayed KPI and take a screenshot, if needed.
  6. Click Cancel to close the Update KPI pop-up.
  7. Click Create KPI   and recreate the KPI that you just viewed, but with the relevant calls, meetings, and tasks module.

  8. Click Save.

How to identify Activity tab components that need recreation/migration. 

Activities deprecation banner

When you sign into Zoho CRM for the next few months, a large popup banner will display the list of Activities module components that will be impacted by the deprecation of the Activities tab, which are as follows:
  1. Reports 
  2. Dashboards 
  3. Home page components
  4. Motivator components


Clicking on respective hyperlinks on each sentence, will redirect you to the corresponding module components that are going to be deprecated. You can manually recreate those components with the Tasks, Meetings, or Calls modules, accordingly. 

You don't need to search for individual reports created using the Activities module; everything is displayed in the Activities Deprecation Banner, which has been created exclusively for this purpose.

Activities deprecation alert
Apart from the banner, a small alert pop-up will also be displayed for all components associated with the Activities module.


Migrate option support for dashboard components and reports

You can migrate dashboard components and reports linked with the Activities module to the split modules.
Rather than manually rebuilding the criteria for each component or report, the CRM system will now offer an option to migrate the dashboard components and report to the corresponding Tasks, Calls, and Meetings modules automatically. 



Furthermore, if you've reached the maximum threshold of 20 components on a dashboard page, the CRM system will notify you and assist in selecting an alternative module for relocating your component.

Now, let's explore the process of migrating dashboard components.

Migrating dashboard components

Scenario 1: If the dashboard component includes only one of the criteria from the Activities module—for example, having criteria and metrics solely from the Tasks module—the "Migrate this component" will be displayed in "More Options".



When you click "Migrate this component," a new component page will appear, automatically filled with all the metrics and criteria from the original component. In this instance, it will be pre-populated with the respective information from the Tasks module. If necessary, you can change the criteria and metric, or just save the component as is.
Scenario 2: If the dashboard component includes multiple criteria from the Activities module—for instance, if it has criteria and metrics from the Tasks, Calls, and Meetings modules—then the "Migrate as <module name> Component" option for the relevant Tasks, Meetings, and Calls modules will be displayed.



You can verify the displayed metrics and criteria on the new component page and then save the component.
After creating the component for the respective split modules the option to migrate the component will no longer appear in the original component.

Migrating reports

Similar to migrating dashboard components, you can also migrate reports associated with the Activities module to the relevant Tasks, Calls, and Meetings modules based on the report's criteria.

You don't have to memorize criteria or juggle screenshots; simply let the system auto-fill fields based on the original criteria. Just review it and save the report in the relevant split modules, unless you wish to modify the criteria.



Before saving the migrated report, you can review the original report linked to the Activities module. This enables you to confirm whether the criteria of the newly migrated report matches the original report associated with the Activities module.



After saving the migrated report, a confirmation message will be displayed, as shown below.



We urge you to use these migration options to ensure the transfer of all dashboard components and reports before the extended deadline. This ensures that you don't miss out on these deprecated activities, components, and reports.

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