We are working with a few lead generating vendors that are currently sending us leads via email. As volume is picking up, some of them are asking for the ability to send the leads directly into Zoho CRM via API.

I have looked at documentation for over 2 hours and am still confused about the OAuth part. Do I need to first create the OAuth Token via API? If I do, it seems that the access token will only be available for 60 minutes. Does that mean that I have to manually create a new access token from the refresh token every hour? If I do, how do I communicate to the vendors that the access token changed every hour and have them update? And do I need to create this access token manually each time? 

I feel like I'm missing something here. Is there a way that I can give these vendors one authentication token and they can just use it for the next year or so? Can I create this authtoken through the browser instead of API? Is there any step by step documentation? I'm assuming many other organizations have leads created in Zoho via API. How was that set up?

Any help would be appreciated.