Zoho’s project collaboration product and Basecamp-rival, Zoho Projects, is getting a much needed feature today: a Bug Tracking tool. Zoho Projects is a team collaboration and project management application that allows teams to plan, track and collaborate on everyday activities and big software projects with external customers.

Tracking software bugs and then prioritizing these bugs and fixing the issues are an integral part of the day-to-day workflow of any software project. Zoho Projects’ new Bug Tracking module allows teams to submit, track and fix software bugs.

With the new application, users have several ways to tell the team what and where the bugs are. These notifications can be conveyed via messages, screenshots, videos and more to help the developers fix the issue. Users can also indicate the source of a big within a software module and assign the bug to a particular developer in the project.

Users can also define rules that will enable them to organize the bugs and perform actions such as changing the severity, priority, module and assigning the issue to developer when there is a change in the bug status. The interface includes a Bugs list, which gives project leads a view of the bugs that have been recently opened, and offers filtering options (by status, owner, severity, etc). In addition, the list shows what changes each bug has gone through, by whom and when.

Zoho is offering the bug tracing module along with Zoho Projects (plus Wiki and Group Chat) for an annual price of $60 with regular pricing for Zoho Projects starting at $12 per month.

While Zoho faces stiff competition from enormously popular project management application Basecamp, the startup has been trying to spruce up its offering over the past year. Last fall, Zoho added Google Apps integration and launched a Project app in the Google Apps Marketplace earlier this year.

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One of the primary additions to Zoho Calendar is the ability to now privately share your calendars with other users with a Zoho account. You can share your calendar in a read-only mode so that users can view only Free/Busy times or all of your events and meetings. Read-write mode allows other users to edit your existing events or event create and edit events on your calendar. Similar to Google Calendar, you share your calendar with other users by adding their email address to the account and then setting preferences.

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Zoho has added workspaces within Wiki to allow teams to have their own groups within organization wikis. Each workspace has its own administrative and customization options and can serve as a separate portal. Zoho has also added more in-depth access controls to wikis, which allows administrators to set permissions for Workspaces, multiple groups, individuals, domains, public, and for users within an organization. Admins can also assign separate permissions for edit, view, create and delete functions.

Zoho Wikis can now be personalized with widgets to create custom dashboards. Widgets aggregate content from YouTube, Google, Box.net as well as other Zoho apps like Zoho Calendar, Zoho Creator and Zoho Chat. Additionally, Zoho is now allowing organizations to customize their wikis with logos, images, layout and more. And the startup has turned on notifications on all the changes happening in a company’s Wiki or Workspace or a particular page.

Zoho continues to improve upon its offerings, and just launched unified search across all of its properties. This allows a user to do a keyword search across an organization’s entire suite, across multiple applications including email, documents, forums, contacts, and more. Zoho now reaches over 2 million users and is even catching the attention of its competition. And not only is the company profitable, but Zoho has never taken venture capital investment. Zoho Wiki faces competition from PBworks and others.

A few months ago, Zoho launched an application with the rollout of the Google App Marketplace and integrated Facebook Connect.

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The search portal acts much like any search engine within a content site. Users can search by keyword or contact, and view results from multiple apps. Zoho Search indexes data from multiple Zoho Apps, including Zoho Mail, Docs, Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook, Discussions, Accounts and more. Search results are grouped based on applications and filters are provided to view additional results from each category. From within search, users can reply to emails, edit documents, comment on forums, or update contact information.

The idea behind search is that it gives a user context behind each search and keyword. For example, if you search for a keyword in Zoho Mail, Zoho Search will display the content of the mail, and additional information such as the Folder in which this mail resides, Sent date, Sender Information etc. Zoho Search also knows if the sender is currently on your buddy list, and based on that, it displays the current presence information (i.e whether the user is online/offline/busy etc) of the sender.

Of course, Zoho search offers users powerful filters to narrow search results by applications, date, and more. And if the search result is an email, you can view the email directly within search results and reply to that mail without having to open the email app. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations and notebooks can also be viewed within the search portal. And you can interact, share and edit within the search portal.

While Zoho has an independent search portal, a universal search box will be will contextually be integrated within all Zoho Apps in the future. The feature will undoubtedly enhance the interoperability of Zoho’s productivity suite. And of course, all of this is possible because of the fact that all of Zoho’s app are in the cloud. It should make the productivity suite much more attractive to the enterprise community.

Zoho has steadily ramped up the acceleration of its productivity suite, reaching over 2 million users and even catching the attention of its competition. A few months ago, Zoho launched an application with the rollout of the Google App Marketplace and integrated Facebook Connect. Last year, startup unveiled a new version of Zoho Reports; launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; rolled out Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and debuted Zoho Recruit.

And over the past two years, Zoho has also added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing.

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So starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add on-demand CRM app Zoho CRM and project management software Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While Zoho has previously rolled out the ability log-in to its applications via your Google Apps IDs, the two applications have been specially formatted for further immersion into Google Apps with App’s extended APIs. IT admins will now have an option to add Zoho Apps to their domains through Google Apps Marketplace. Once the IT admin adds a Zoho application to their domain, all users within the domain will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation.

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Similar to its integration with Google apps, Zoho users can login to Zoho using their Facebook credentials. Users with existing Zoho accounts can now link the two accounts so that they can login with Facebook credentials alone. But the plus of using Facebook Connect now allows Zoho to transcend platforms. So you can now share documents with Facebook users who don’t have a Zoho Account. Of course this isn’t Zoho’s first foray into Facebook’s territory. Zoho’s Facebook app allows users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations from within Facebook and includes the ability to view and edit all existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations (both personal and shared) from Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show.

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