Zoho Notebook Adds Notebook AI, Brings Zia to Note-Taking

Zoho announced a major update to Zoho Notebook that embeds its in-house AI, Zia, into the core note-taking experience. The release folds several AI capabilities — meeting transcription with speaker identification, an Intelligent Q&A Assistant, mind-map generation, and smart structured note creation — into a single app aimed at teams and students.

The update reframes Notebook from a simple capture tool into a knowledge platform that reduces context switching across the Zoho suite. Users can now work in shared workspaces organised by project or department, use an integrated whiteboard for mixed media input, and pull Notebook content into other Zoho applications such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Projects, and Zoho Mail.

AI-Powered Features for Teams

For teams, the headline features are practical:

• Meeting notes that convert spoken content into timestamped text with speaker IDs and automatic summaries.

• “Ask with My Content”, which retrieves context-aware answers from a user’s personal notes.

• “Ask Anything”, which generates insights from broader prompts.

• Long documents can be converted into hierarchical mind maps to make complex information easier to scan.

• Smart Note Creation helps users produce structured artefacts like checklists, tables, and templates.

• Writing Enhancement provides on-demand edits, summaries, and tone adjustments.

Expanding Regional and Language Support

Zoho has also expanded regional language and voice capabilities. The app now supports 80 global languages and eight Indian languages—including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya, and Sanskrit—and offers multilingual voice search and translation. Users can also customise tone and voice to produce text in different styles, from professional to conversational, improving internal and external communication.

Deeper Integration Across Zoho’s Ecosystem

A notable tie-in is the planned integration between Zoho Voice and Zoho CRM. Transcribed calls, meeting notes, and AI summaries will surface directly in CRM records, enabling sales and support teams to review and attach AI-generated artefacts to customer workflows.

The update reflects a broader strategy: to make knowledge capture intelligent and portable across an organisation’s toolset. By embedding AI inside notes and deepening ecosystem integrations, Zoho aims to position Notebook as a central repository for institutional memory rather than just a personal note app.

AI Access for Students

For students, including Notebook AI in the free student edition lowers the barrier to entry for AI-assisted study workflows. The promise is quicker summarisation, better note structure, and voice search in regional languages—features that could transform study habits if executed well.

Despite the extensive feature list, the product’s success will depend on execution and clarity around several key factors:

• Accuracy and reliability: Transcription must perform well in real-world, noisy, multi-speaker environments.

• Data handling and privacy: Transparency on data storage, transcript retention, and sharing controls is essential.

• Localisation quality: Regional language performance will determine real adoption in diverse markets.

• Integration readiness: The Zoho Voice → Zoho CRM flow must deliver low-latency, searchable records to be effective.

Considerations

• Early enterprise feedback on transcription accuracy and CRM integration.

• Documentation around data residency, retention, and export for regulated industries.

• Performance of regional language voice search across India’s varied linguistic landscape.

Pricing and Availability

Notebook AI is included in Zoho One Premium at no additional cost and is also available as a standalone add-on.

• Notebook Essential: Free

• Notebook for Business: ₹333.25 per user per month (billed annually)

• Student Edition (with Notebook AI): Free for users with verified .edu email IDs
  The app is available on Android, iOS, and web.