Zoho Super Admin

Welcome

Are you the Zoho Super Admin, the business owner, the head honcho? You’re in the right spot…

If you’re not your Zoho organization’s Super Admin, all you probably need for now is the place to login: https://one.zoho.com/

Terms

Okay, so you’ve signed up for Zoho One… as a reminder, here are the terms:

Zoho One is a unique offer, so there are two items in our Terms of Use that you should be aware before moving forward. Here are they in plain English in case you don’t feel like reading our license agreement:

  1. You must buy a Zoho One license for each employee in your organization.
  2. Zoho reserves the right to audit your books and records to ensure you’re complying with our Terms of Use.

FYI: I discussed the above with multiple people at Zoho regarding a lawn care company — because the guys mowing the lawn don’t need an email, access to shared documents or CRM — and they assured me these type of employees do not need an account.

That being said, even if you have a regular contractor that you want to have access (like Cliff), you can have accounts for them; you’re just not required to.

The main thing they want to ensure is not sharing your login with anyone else (although their attorneys might not technically agree with the Zoho staff members I spoke with).

Where to Administer

All users can login and view all their apps at https://one.zoho.com/

It’s the main sign-in link to share with everyone. It’s also where you can find the “My Account” page in the menu bar if you need to update your display name, update preferences, or change your password or add 2FA.

At this screen, Super Admins can access their own apps like regular users (e.g. check your own email) or go to the Admin Panel.

The Admin Panel is where you would add give specific users access to specific apps or change organization-wide settings per app (such as email policies, migrations, and aliases), create Groups of users, update the Organization’s information, or add additional domains you own (if you want to use Zoho apps with them, such as a secondary email address or website).

Learn more about the Zoho One Admin Panel at https://www.zoho.com/one/help/admin-guide/overview.html

The Mail Admin seems to be the most difficult to navigate to, so here’s the direct link: https://mailadmin.zoho.com/

  • This is where you setup your MX, SPF, and DKIM records; add email aliases; perform (or check the status of) account migrations; and more.

Tips

After getting your organization setup, here are a few recommendations from experience:

  • Take advantage of the free trial. You don’t have to add billing right away, but get your user accounts and the basic settings for each app setup over a few days. Do your email migration, setup email forwarding from each of old email addresses to the new ones, etc. Know that there are some settings in some apps that will require you to start payment, such as publishing your Zoho Site to your own domain with HTTPS. If you really aren’t liking it from the start, check in with me so I can help straighten things out.
  • Do not enable all the apps. No business needs them all. Once an app is enabled, you can’t disable it. (Worst case scenario it’s just visually cluttering up your administration area, even if none of your users actually have access to the enabled app.)
  • First setup your own account fully. This includes creating your branded email address (so you have to go through the domain verification steps), setting up CRM, etc. It forces you to do the necessary steps so you’re at least familiar with things other users might ask you about. It also ensures each app has the initial settings as you want them instead of another admin user clicking the wrong buttons, and lower-level users don’t get a saddening error about an app they have access to not yet being setup and therefore they can’t click into it. This isn’t a good onboarding experience for them, which is very important getting everyone excited about this new thing.
  • Create all your user accounts right away. If you’re going to have 3 signed up in Zoho One, sign all of them up right away, even if you don’t give them their credentials for a bit of time. This allows you to create groups, assign permissions, and remember to set each account up consistently and thoroughly.
  • Don’t give users higher permissions than they likely need. An office admin who does your handles your finances and all of your customer interactions needs Manager-level or User-level access (your choice) to Books and CRM but does not need any access to Sites (edit the website) or Campaigns (create marketing emails)… unless they do those functions as well (in which case they probably deserve a raise). You can always upgrade someone’s permissions later if needed.
  • Go to Admin Panel > Security Policies > Default Policy and review those settings. You might want to require a strong password at least 14 characters, require 2FA, or even set the password to never expire (the default is to reset every 60 days, which can annoy users).
  • yyyy-MM-dd is the best date format. Set it for all the things you can. (Your users can change their display preference for some things, like their personal calendar.) It’s the best because everyone, everywhere will know which is the month and which is the day of the month, even that employee who grew up in Europe. Plus, things will sort properly in all programs if you ever export with this format.

How to Get Support

I can always help! But my support is not included in your monthly fee to Zoho. (I’d like to think I provide the absolute best help, but it is more expensive than free.)

Zoho provides email and phone support 24/5 (Monday-Friday). I’ve found phone support to usually be dissatisfying, mostly because a feature request is usually best expressed in written form, and a complex issue or customization is difficult for anyone to understand and then solve all in one phone call. Plus, there are hold times.

Therefore, here is a list of support knowledgebase links and email addresses. If you can get your answer in their documentation, great! If not, email them if you’d prefer their free help to my paid help.