Title: Creating custom connections for extensions | Community | Zoho Finance

Title: Creating custom connections for extensions | Community | Zoho Finance

In our previous post, we discussed the significance of connections, identified their types, developed a predefined connection, and demonstrated how it can be integrated with Zoho Books using an example. In this post, we'll walk through the process of creating a custom connection using an example.

Custom connections facilitate the integration of applications with Zoho Books by aiding in configuring the required application's connection manually by providing application-specific details. Let's go over the steps involved in configuring custom connections in detail using a use case scenario.

Use case

Let's say an organization uses Zoho Books to manage its financial operations. To improve sales for the organization, one must contact and communicate with multiple clients, as well as check in with vendors on a regular basis to remain up to date on new products on the market, take demos, and assess whether the products need to be brought into the organization.

In these cases, it is best to schedule appointments with clients and vendors in order to conduct business in an organized manner. This can be easily performed by integrating an appointment scheduling software so appointments can be scheduled with a click.

For our demo purpose, let's consider Zoho Bookings as the appointment scheduling software. Since it is not available under the default list of services in predefined connections, let's create a custom connection to achieve this.

Steps to create a custom connection
  • Go to Sigma and access your workspace.
  • Enter the developer portal of the Zoho Books extension you're creating a connection for.
  • Navigate to the Build section and click Connections.
   
  • Click New Connection to create a new connection.
NotesNote: Alternatively, you can use the View All option under a connection type to see all the services under that particular connection type and begin creating connections.
     
  • Choose Custom Services and click Create Service.
   
  • Provide the details of the service.
➤ Enter a name for the service, and the service link name will be immediately filled in.
➤ Choose the authentication type that corresponds to the authentication mechanism supported by the service for which you are building the connection. These details will be available as part of the service's API documentation. For our example, we'll use OAuth2, because Zoho Bookings supports it as an authentication mechanism.         
  
➤ The remaining fields to be configured for the service differ based on the authentication type used. In our case, the parameter type is Header, and the grant type is Authorization Code.
   
➤ Please refer to the table below for the values that need to be configured in the remaining fields.
Note: Register the service in the Zoho Developer API console to get the client credentials.
  • Finally, click the Create Service button.
  
  • The service is created successfully. Click Create Connection to create a connection for this service.
  • Provide the connection details, select the scope, and click Create and Connect.
 
  • Proceed with the flow to accept the scopes and authorize the connection.
 

The connection is now authorized, and you'll be directed to the connection details page. This page will also contain sample code in both Deluge and JSON formats that can be used to utilize this connection as part of your extension components. Depending on which component you want to invoke the connection in, you can use the appropriate sample code format.

Additionally, a predefined connection for Zoho Books is created to perform operations on Zoho Books data to implement our use case. Get more information on predefined connections in our previous post.

Now, in accordance with our use case, let's create a custom button that includes this connection to schedule appointments (in Zoho Bookings) with clients and vendors using Zoho Bookings with a single click (from Zoho Books).
We require two custom fields for our logic, one for setting the meeting start time with the client or vendor, and the other to display the Bookings appointment calendar link once the meeting is scheduled.
  • Create custom fields for the Customers and Vendors module by selecting Preferences > Customers and Vendors > Field Customization > New Custom Field.
 
  • Next, create a custom button and include the logic to schedule an appointment.
  • Create a custom button for the Customers and Vendors module by selecting Preferences > Customers and Vendors > Custom Buttons > New.
InfoBook meeting custom button function Deluge code - Please find code snippet as an attachment in the post
  • In the above code, the Get Contacts API of Zoho Books is invoked through the InvokeURL method using the predefined connection to get the contact/customer details for whom the appointment has to be scheduled in Zoho Bookings. Refer to this post to get complete details on the parameters required to call the InvokeURL method.
  • From the API response, the required details are fetched from which the start time (custom field data) is formatted to the way required by the Zoho Bookings API.
  • Next, the Zoho Bookings API to get the service ID and staff ID are invoked consecutively through the InvokeURL method using the custom connection created.
  • The Book appointment API is used to schedule the appointment using the service ID, the staff ID obtained from the Zoho Bookings API, and customer details obtained previously via the Zoho Books API.
  • Finally, using the update contact Zoho Books API, the Zoho Bookings calendar URL is updated in the custom field created to display the calendar booking URL.
We've now completed the extension setup for our use case.

After testing and publishing the extension, as per our use case, you can book a meeting for a Zoho Books customer through Zoho Bookings and have your Zoho Bookings calendar reflected inside Zoho Books as well.

z
This is an example demonstration of the benefits of using a custom connection in a Zoho Books extension. This is a versatile use case that may even be used to schedule an internal meeting with your Zoho Books teammates who are working on a project. Similarly, this use case can be enhanced and implemented based on your needs.

We hope you found this information useful. Keep following us for more tips.

SEE ALSO

    • Recent Topics

    • Product Updates in Zoho Workplace applications | May 2025

      Hello Workplace Community, Let’s take a look at the new features and enhancements that went live across all Workplace applications this May. Zoho Mail Increased Preset Limit for Reminder and Snooze Options Preset limits for the Reminder and Snooze options

    • Outlook 365 ('classic') won't connect to Zoho email

      New computer, fresh install of Office desktop. On the old computer Outlook was working fine with Zoho, retrieving/sending mail, etc. On the new one I can't connect the accounts in Outlook--Outlook just keeps popping up the box asking for a password. All

    • login email

      Never logged into email says last log in never loged into

    • Installment plans

      Hi I am looking for a way to allow my customer to make equal monthly payments. For instance if I create an invoice for customer Y for $1000 I want to allow them to make equal monthly payments for the next 6 months. I need those payments to be auto charged

    • Search Mail with URL parameters

      Is it possible to search Zoho Mail by passing URL params like we can in Gmail? eg. mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/from:(jane@doe.com)

    • Need Help Fetching Latest Conversion Rate by Date

      Hi Team, I’m currently working on building a Balance Sheet in Zoho Analytics across different entities, with a common base currency of USD. I receive USD conversion values on a daily basis, and my requirement is to always capture the most recent available

    • Enhance Zoho One Conditional Assignment to Fully Reassign App Settings When Changing Departments

      Hi Zoho Team, We’d like to submit a feature request regarding the current behavior of Zoho One’s conditional assignment logic when moving a user between departments. 🔧 Current Limitation As it stands, Zoho One’s conditional assignment does not remove

    • Category to Alert

      Hi I am looking for help on how to solve an issue. We use the Category field for all items. We also use Composite Items. We would like to create an email alert when a Sales Order is created, however it would need to look at the Item to identify the category

    • Validation Rule (Date)

      Hi There,  Can any anyone help me with the validation rule? I'm trying to fire a rule whereby the End Date cannot be before Start Date.  Any takers?  Manoj Nair

    • Beyond Email: #3 Organize effortlessly with Bookmarks

      With her team’s details now neatly saved under Contacts, Sarah is feeling more settled in Zoho Mail. As she begins exploring her new workspace, she remembers the collection of useful links she has saved on her browser—project trackers, client portals,

    • Notification based on created/updated sales order that contain certain line items.

      Hi, I am finding the workflows within Books somewhat difficult to setup, so I am thinking that a custom function may be the best way to go about this. I want to be able to send a notification to a team member that any sales order that has been created

    • Drawings in forms

      I do a lot of drawings during my consultations and I’d like to add  body maps or stencils that I can draw on in different colours and add explanations etc. I need to be able to erase mistakes etc. Ideally in a form that I can prepopulate with client details and a few questions/ client signature and then save as a form. is this currently possible? if not, is it in the pipeline? thanks, Dennis

    • How can I populate dropdown data with information from another source or app?

      I want to maintain a list of items in another app (say in excel or another database) and sync those as items in a drop down menu, instead of copy pasting to import. Is this kind of a feature available?

    • Workplace - Zoholics Europe Customer Awards

      Dear Zoho Mail Community! 📣 We're excited to announce that at this year's Zoholics events across Europe, we're holding customer awards for the first time ever! Workplace - Zoholics Europe Customer Awards This is your chance to shout about the amazing

    • Zoholics Europe Customer Awards

      Dear Zoho Workplace Community! 📣 We're excited to announce that at this year's Zoholics events across Europe, we're holding customer awards for the first time ever! Workplace - Zoholics Europe Customer Awards This is your chance to shout about the amazing

    • Change Default Currency in Zoho Reports

      Is it possible to default all currency fields in my Reports and Tables to my local currency without having to reformat them every time?

    • [Webinar] Deluge Learning Series - Master Conditional & Operational Logic in Zoho Deluge

      We’re excited to bring you the next session in our Deluge Learning Series—a focused one-hour webinar where you’ll level up your skills in conditional and operational logic using Deluge scripting. From writing clean if-else conditions to implementing powerful

    • UPI QR Code in Invoices

      Hi, It would be easier to make payment, if UPI Qr code is generated by Zoho Books and shown in the invoice itself.  This will promote digital payments and also makes it easier for customers to pay. It would be even helpful, if QR code contains the invoice

    • WebDAV support

      I need WebDAV support so that I can upload/download (and modify) documents from my local file system. Is anything planned in his direction?

    • Recurring Events Not Appearing in "My Events" and therefore not syncing with Google Apps

      We use the Google Sync functionality for our events, and it appears to have been working fine except: I've created a set of recurring events that I noticed were missing from my Google Apps calendar. Upon further research, it appears this is occurring

    • Zoho Inventory Item History

      Hi Zoho Inventory Team, I 've been testing the History feature on Inventory Items in a demo system and I noticed that when I changed the value of a field to a new value, the history just says "updated by - user1", it doesn't say what what field was changed

    • Filter Images in Work Drive

      Hi, what is the best way to be able to filter files by multiple descriptions, for example, the name of a person in the photo as well as, an item in the photo and other descriptions? With labels it looks like you can only select one label at once but this

    • Flow not working when trying to Create a Merged Doc with info from a custom CRM module w/ subform

      I am having a problem creating a flow that gets its info from a webhook connected to a button in a custom module in Zoho CRM. I have made a template in Writer that follows: This is a clone of  the template in the CRM mail merge which works perfectly if i do it manually through there. My flow gets the custom module entry id through a webhook, then fetches the module entry data, and creates a merge document from that data. I know the webhook and the fetch work because if i replace the "create merge

    • Smart Scheduling via Agent Confirmation

      We’re excited to introduce a smarter and more streamlined way to manage dispatched service appointments in Zoho FSM! Feature Highlights Field agents can now approve or reject service appointments assigned to them—helping reduce unnecessary workload and

    • How to delete Inactive users?

      We want to delete inactive users from our system, but went you deactivate still the names are shown at the inactive section. How to get really rid off these names? Thanks for your response! Fabian van den Barselaar

    • Help me format my signature in zoho mail

      I need to set up my signature in zoho mail then send the format to other colegues to set it up by themselves. I have isues setting up my 5 logos one after another as I am not able to give sapce between logos. After setting up my signature with logos there

    • Can i integrate bigin with google voice?

       I make all my calling through google voice to seprate my personal line from business. I want to log my calls with customers automatically but i domt see anywhere where i can do that. Any help? Im pretty sure i wont be able to. Sad

    • Custom Field for Customer ID in Zoho Commerce's Customer Section

      Hi everyone, I’m wondering if it’s possible to add a custom field in the "Customer" section of Zoho Commerce. Specifically, I need to include a "NIF" or "Customer ID" field, as it's mandatory for invoicing in Spain. I know this can be done in Zoho Inventory,

    • Introducing Zoho CRM for Everyone: A reimagined UI, next-gen Ask Zia, timeline view, and more

      Hello Everyone, Your customers may not directly observe your processes or tools, but they can perceive the gaps, missed hand-offs, and frustration that negatively impact their experience. While it is possible to achieve a great customer experience by

    • API Self Client Authtoken conversion always returns "invalid_client".

      I am having a problem when trying to convert an Authtoken to OAuth for a Self Client script.  I have made sure that the client Id, secret, and organisation are correct, and the domain is definitely ".com"/ This is the python code I am using to create

    • [Webinar] Live demos and user Q&A with Zoho Writer product experts

      Join us on June 12, 2025 for live demos based on your use cases and real-world scenarios raised via form. This is also an opportunity to get your questions answered directly by product experts from the Zoho Writer team. Webinar agenda Live demos based

    • My client requires me to have custom pdf file names to except payment for invoices, how can I customize this before emailing.

      Hello! I love the program so far but there are a few things that are standing in the way. I hope you guys can code them in so I can keep the program for years to come. My client requires I customize the pdf file names I send in for billing. Can you please

    • Schedule mass emails, view mass emails status and more!

      Hello everyone, Mass emails help you communicate with multiple customers in a couple of clicks. We have introduced a Mass Emails dashboard in Bigin so that users can see the status of the mass emails like how many emails were opened, clicked and bounced.

    • Multiple Selection/Select All for Approvals

      I have a suggestion from users regarding Approvals. In our environment, our Regional Managers can receive multiple requests for Approval or Rejection. They find it tedious to approve (or reject) each individual record. They would like to have a way to

    • How to report and analyze a multi-select field entries distinctly ?

      As many of CRM users I have many multi-select fields that allows me to choose more than one chose in one cell for a specific filed Like: Field A - A;BC - A;C -B;C But when reporting the field it will handle each cell as a "String" not multiple entries

    • Merge invoices

      This has come up three times in a month of me using the system. a client whom i do work for on a regular bases asked me to invoice separate jobs on a single invoice. I would then go and cancel the old invoices and make a new one. It would be great if i could just select the invoices and click merge to create a single invoice.

    • Zoho CRM Two currencies on one record

      Hello all, Our country is planning to transition to Euro from our local currency. The government is planning to mandate that all companies show their invoices, quotes, etc. in both currencies for a period of one year in order to protect from speculation.

    • How to get values from both tables in Join in COQL query in Zoho API

      In this below query I can get value either from Deal Table or from Contact table. If I wanted data from both the table it is not working. Can you please help me with this. Thanks in advance. {     "select_query": "select ,A.Deal_Name,B.First_Name,B.Last_Name,

    • 【Zoho CRM】日時のフィルター機能のアップデート

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、各タブで利用可能な日時のフィルター機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 日付項目と日時項目のフィルター及びカスタムビューに、「前へ(Previous)」「次へ(Next)」の選択肢が追加されました。 ⬛︎[前へ(Previous)]：作成日時に基づきレコードをフィルターにより抽出する場合 例1. 前へ6ヶ月：当月を除く直近6ヶ月間のレコードを抽出 例2. 前へ3年：今年を除く直近3年間のレコードを抽出

    • How can I notate on check stub when a vendors credit has been applied to an invoice payment?

      I'm looking for a way of printing vendor credit memo use on a check stub when its been applied to other invoices. To let my vendors know I'm using credit memo XYZ in the amount of $xx.xx. Currently I am having to handwrite it on the stub to show my vendor

    • Next Page