Understand Connectors | Zoho Creator Help

Understand Connectors

Overview

Connectors allow Zoho Creator applications to communicate with third-party services. It contains the properties required to connect to a particular service and reduces the complexity, thereby, establishing a secure connection.

Let us consider a situation where you must connect with PayPal to create a payment workflow in your application. Conventionally, you must write lines of code describing the required parameters for API calls. As PayPal has OAuth2 authentication, you need to regenerate the access tokens using the refresh token whenever the token expires. This entire process can be automated using a connector.

The connector is configured with the required parameters to create the connection with the service. It regenerates the token automatically when the token expires. Once a connector is created, it can be reused to create multiple connections with that service. It makes the authorization parameters secure, as they will be accessible only to the admins of the Creator account.

In Zoho Creator the connectors are distinguished as:
  1. Built-in Connectors
  2. Custom Connectors

Built-in Connectors 

Zoho Creator includes a set of connectors that have been preconfigured with the Zoho Creator applications. These connectors perform REST operations from the cloud services. As they are preconfigured, they are simple to use and enable you to create a connection quickly.

Note: The connections created using the built-in connectors can be used in Data sources, Deluge scripts in Workflows, and Payment workflows. 

List of supported Built-in Connectors


Type of service

Description

Service

Supported areas

Availability across DCs

US

EU

AU

IN

CN

JP

CA

SA

Accounting & Invoicing

Create invoices/financial reports in the required accounting service when a workflow is triggered in Zoho Creator.

QuickBooks

Datasources & Workflows

Expensify

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Books

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Expense

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Invoice

Datasources & Workflows

CRM & Contact Management

Add and manage customer information in the required CRM service from within Creator.

Salesforce

Datasources & Workflows

Copper

Datasources & Workflows

Salesmate

Datasources & Workflows

Streak

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho CRM

Datasources

Customer Support

Manage and analyze support tickets in the required customer support service from within Creator.

Teamwork Desk

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Assist

Datasources & Workflows

Human Resource

Perform employee management using human resource services from within Creator.

Zoho Recruit

Datasources

Zoho People

Datasources & Workflows

Payment Processing

Accept online payments from customers.

Authorize.Net

Payment workflow

Forte

Payment workflow

PayPal

Payment workflow

PayflowPro

Payment workflow

PaymentsPro

Payment workflow

Razorpay

Payment workflow

Stripe

Payment workflow

Paytm

Payment workflow

Project Management & Time Tracking

Add, manage, track tasks using the supported services from within Creator.

Forecast

Datasources & Workflows

Jira Cloud

Datasources & Workflows

Teamwork Projects

Datasources & Workflows


Toggl Track

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Projects

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Orchestly

Datasources & Workflows

SMS

Send SMS notifications such as appointment reminders, transaction details, status updates on orders, and device approvals.

Twilio

Workflows

Clickatell

Workflows

Hoiio

Workflows

ClockworkSMS

Workflows

SMS-Magic

Workflows

Zoho

Used for secure access of other Zoho applications.

Zoho OAuth

Workflows

Calendars & Scheduling

Track schedules from within Creator.

Lucid Meetings

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Calendar

Datasources & Workflows

Documents & Spreadsheets

Add and manage data in document management services from within Creator.

Zoho Sheet

Datasources & Workflows

Ecommerce

Manage data in ecommerce services from within Creator.

BigCommerce

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Commerce

Datasources & Workflows

Event Management

Create and fetch data in event management services by triggering Creator workflows.

Zoho Backstage

Datasources & Workflows

Inventory Management

Add, manage, and analyze data in inventory management services from within Creator.

EZOfficeInventory

Datasources & Workflows

Marketing Campaigns

Send and get data from campaign services using Zoho Creator workflows.

ActiveCampaign

Datasources & Workflows

ActiveTrail

Datasources & Workflows

ConvertKit

Datasources & Workflows

Moosend

Datasources & Workflows

Zoho Campaigns

Datasources & Workflows

Dashboards & Reports

Incorporate dashboards from supported services in Zoho Creator.

Zoho Analytics

Datasources & Workflows

Custom Connectors

Note: This feature is only available in C6.

Custom Connector enables you to integrate your Zoho Creator application with other third-party cloud

services which are not available in Built-in ConnectorsYou can configure your own connectors for services with Basic, API Key and OAuth2 authentication.

Once a connector is created and connection is established, you can use it to perform REST operations on the target service from Zoho Creator. For example, to access your Google Drive account using Google's REST APIs, you can create a custom Google connector, establish a connection and connect to it, and use this connection to perform the specified integrations to your connected Google account.

Flow of creating a Custom Connector



Obtain API from the target service

In order to create a custom connector, you need an API to communicate with the target service. These API's can be:
  1. Public - Publicly available on the internet. For example, Slack, Shopify, Dropbox etc.
  2. Private - Visible only to your network to use within an organization or a group.

Describe the API 

Once you get the API with the authentication access, you need to describe them to create a custom connector. You can specify the API parameters in the custom connector builder while creating the custom connector.

Secure the Custom Connector 

You can use one of these standard authentication methods to secure your connectors.
  1. Basic authentication - This method allows a connection to third-party APIs by authenticating with a username and password.
  1. API key authentication - This method allows a connection to third-party APIs by authenticating with an API key.
  1. OAuth1 authentication - In OAuth1, the user grants permission to access their resources in the third-party applications without sharing their credentials. The Creator application can use an access token provided by the third-party application to access the user's resources. OAuth1 is efficient only for connecting with web-based applications.
  1. OAuth2 authentication - In OAuth2, the user will be redirected to the third-party API's page, where access to protected resources is granted without necessarily revealing the long-term credentials or the identity by exchanging an access token for a request token. OAuth2 consists of scopes that allow Creator applications to request specific permissions from the user and are more compatible with both web and non web-based applications. 

Use a Custom Connector in your app

You'll need to create a connection to your API and use that connection in your app to call any operations that you've exposed in your custom connector. Click here to learn how to create connections.
Note: Connections using Custom Connectors should be invoked only using the Deluge invoke URL task, mentioning the respective action API, for any specific scenario/workflow. 

  Related topics

  1. Create Custom Connector
  2. Manage Custom Connectors
  3. Understand Connections
  4. Create and Authorize Connections

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