Zoho launches free agentic AI across core apps: what HR should do next
Zoho has rolled out agentic AI features across Collaboration, Customer Experience, and Human Resources apps-at no extra cost for customers on relevant plans. The goal is simple: automate routine work and connect actions across apps without new tools, custom integrations, or added spend. For HR teams, this means faster hiring cycles, cleaner documentation, and fewer manual touchpoints.
Why this matters for HR
- Reduce admin: draft offers, agreements, and emails in minutes.
- Speed up hiring: auto-rank candidates and generate assessments.
- Standardize processes: reuse proven answers and templates across the org.
- Fewer tools to manage: agents operate inside the Zoho stack you already use.
Key updates that impact HR directly
Zoho Recruit: Agentic AI now matches candidates to roles by reading resumes against job descriptions, ranking and filtering by fit. AI-Assisted Assessment Generation creates tests and exercises for specific roles, supporting automated or manual workflows for candidates, recruiters, and interviewers. Expect faster screening and more consistent evaluations.
Zoho Sign: AI-driven agreement generation lets you prompt the system to draft contracts and agreements (offers, NDAs, policy acknowledgments) that you can edit. Ask Zia inside Zoho Sign also proofreads, suggests edits, and answers questions about key clauses-no third-party add-ons required.
Zoho Workplace (Tables, Mail): In Tables, you can describe what you need and get a working database-plus keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, and language detection for cleaner classification of feedback and internal notes. In Zoho Mail, Ask Zia understands multi-step instructions, such as summarizing interview threads into a document and sharing it with a hiring manager.
Customer service crossover HR can use
Zoho Desk: New Zia Agents include a Resolution Expert that builds a repository of ticket resolutions. If HR runs a People Ops help desk, this can speed up answers to common policy and benefits questions while improving the internal knowledge base.
How it works under the hood
The update builds on Zia Hubs (AI that learns from unstructured company data) and Zoho's business-focused large language model, Zia LLM. Because everything sits on Zoho's single, internally built stack, agents can act across multiple apps and data sources. "Because Zoho is built on a single, internally-developed tech stack, incorporating agents into daily business operations requires nothing from the business... no extra costs," says Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho.
Privacy, cost, and data control
Zoho says its generic AI models do not train on customer data and do not retain customer information. The company owns and operates its data centers and includes these AI features for free with relevant paid subscriptions. Review Zoho's privacy details here: Zoho Privacy Policy.
What customers are seeing
"We've implemented several significant changes across Zoho Desk, Analytics, and CRM, allowing our sales team to scale from managing 300 leads a week to almost 1,000," says Philip Edey, Business Analyst at Arctic Spas Inc. While that's a sales example, the takeaway for HR is clear: agentic workflows can remove bottlenecks fast when embedded in daily tools.
Quick-start playbook for HR (30-60 minutes per item)
- Recruit: Enable candidate-job matching for a high-volume role. Compare AI rankings with your top hires to calibrate.
- Assessments: Use AI-Assisted Assessment Generation to build a skills test for one role. Pilot with 10 applicants and review outcomes.
- Sign: Prompt an offer letter template with variable fields (comp, location, start date). Use Ask Zia to proof and surface clause risks.
- Tables: Generate a requisition tracker via prompt. Add sentiment analysis to candidate feedback to spot risk signals early.
- People Ops desk (Desk): Seed the Resolution Expert with your top 50 HR FAQs. Track first-response and resolution time improvements.
- Governance: Define which data sources agents can use, set approval flows for sensitive actions, and communicate usage boundaries to hiring teams.
Bottom line for HR
If your organization runs on Zoho, you now get agents that cut repetitive work without adding tools or cost. Focus your effort on process design, data access rules, and change management; the infrastructure is already in place.
If your HR team needs structured enablement on AI adoption and workflows, explore curated learning by role: AI courses by job.
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