Zoho CRM Custom Views: Criteria, Sharing and the Default That Saves an Hour a Day.

A sales manager starts every Monday the same way: open the deals list, scroll past a few hundred records that have nothing to do with the team, and try to spot which deals are slipping. It takes twenty minutes and she still misses some. The fix is not a new report or an add-on. It is a saved view that her reps can open in one click. This video shows how a custom view in Zoho CRM is built, and the three choices that decide whether anyone uses it. Everything on screen is a mock demo of Zoho CRM with sample data.

First, which tool you are reaching for, because three different things get confused. The default list is what a module shows out of the box; you can reorder or hide its columns, but you cannot save a filtered slice of it as its own named thing. A custom view is a named, saved, filtered list, and it is the workhorse. A Kanban or styled view changes how records look, as cards or columns by stage, not which ones qualify. The rule of thumb is simple. If you are changing which records appear, you want a custom view.

If you are only changing how they are arranged on screen, stay in the list. Getting that wrong is the most common reason people think custom views are broken: they built a board and expected it to filter. Criteria are the filter: the rules that decide which records qualify. You can stack many of them in one view and combine them with and and or, using brackets to control which is read first, so grouping is worth getting right. Here is the pattern we use most for a view called my active pipeline.

The owner is the current user. The stage is not closed won. The stage is not closed lost. The closing date is in the current fiscal quarter. The key detail is the first line: set the owner to the logged-in user, not to a named person, and one shared view works for the whole team, each rep seeing only their own records. And criteria can now reach into a related record, such as the account's industry, which retires many of the extra fields people used to add just to make records filterable.

Criteria decide which records show. Columns decide what you see about each one. Drag in the fields you need, in the order you need them, and keep it under ten columns so the list does not force sideways scrolling. Sorting matters more than people think. Sort by the field that drives the daily decision, not by the record name. A collections view sorted by days overdue, longest first, puts the fire at the top. Sorted alphabetically by company, it hides the same fire on page four. A good view answers one question in one screen.

If it needs a scrollbar and a second glance, it is really two views. Sharing is where a custom view stops being a personal convenience and becomes an operations tool. Three scopes: only me, all users, or selected recipients, chosen by user, by group, by role, or by a role and everyone beneath it. Match the scope to the organisation chart. Only me is for drafts. All users is for company-wide definitions such as open deals this quarter. A role and its subordinates gives a manager and their team the same view without naming each rep.

Two habits to build in. When you share a view, tick the option to lock it, so recipients can use it but cannot quietly rewrite the criteria, and your official definition of at risk stays official. And remember that sharing a view is not sharing the records in it: roles, profiles and sharing rules still decide what each person can see. A rep only ever sees the records they were already allowed to see. Put it together for the Monday problem. On the deals module, the criteria: the stage is not closed won, the stage is not closed lost, the closing date is before today, and the amount is above a sensible threshold.

Four rules, so open deals that should have closed and are big enough to chase. Six columns: deal name, account, amount, closing date, owner and stage. Sorted by closing date, oldest first, so the most overdue rise to the top. Shared with the sales manager role and everyone beneath it, with the lock on. That view replaced a twenty-minute scan with a single click, and it is a quiet operational win that adds up. People use what is fast to look at. To sum up. A custom view answers one question for one person: write the criteria once with the owner as the current user, sort by the decision, and share it with a lock.

Keep in mind that sharing a view never shares the records. We are CodeStringers, a Zoho authorised consulting partner. Our article on custom views is linked below, and a no-risk discovery will audit your views, roles and sharing in one session.