Portal APIs in Zoho CRM - Part I

Portal APIs in Zoho CRM - Part I

Welcome back to another week of Kaizen everyone! 
This week, we will be discussing the Portals API in Zoho CRM.

What are Portals in Zoho CRM?

Portals in Zoho CRM allow businesses to extend access to their CRM to external stakeholders, such as customers, partners, vendors or franchisees. Portals allow users to view, edit and create records within the CRM, depending on their level of access and permissions. This helps businesses to manage customer and partner interactions, share information and improve communication. 

Sample Business Cases:

In Health care Industry - If you run a health care facility, you can provide your patients the access to their medical records using portals. Through the portal, the patients can have controlled access to their medical records like their appointments, tests done and medication prescribed. Patients can request appointments, provide updates to their information, and request copies of their medical records through the portal. 

In a consulting firm - If you run a consulting firm, you would want to keep your clients updated about the status of their projects in real time. To do this, you can create a portal and share it with your clients. The clients can view the status of their projects, including the progress, the budget, and the schedule. Clients can view the updates and provide feedback on the project through the portal. 

In the automobile industry - If you have an automobile shop, and you want to track the customer details, your sold vehicle details and service schedules, you can create a portal and share it with your customers. They can view and update their details and book for services using through the portal.

Creating a Portal via API

Let us consider the context of the automobile industry. To create a portal for your customers, you can use the Create Portal API.

Request URL : {api-domain}/crm/v4/settings/portals
Request Method : POST
Scope : ZohoCRM.settings.clientportal.ALL/CREATE

Sample Input

 {
    "portals": [
        {
            "name": "ZylkerAutomobiles"
        }
    ]
 }

Input Keys

 Key Description
 name Unique name of the portal. 

Sample Response

 {
    "portals": [
        {
            "code": "SUCCESS",
            "details": {
                "name": "ZylkerAutomobiles"
            },
            "message": "Portal created successfully with given name.",
            "status": "success"
        }
    ]
 }

Update Portal via API

You can update the portal name via Update Portal API. 
Request URL : {api-domain}/crm/v4/settings/portals/{portal-name}
Request Method : PUT
Scope : ZohoCRM.settings.clientportal.ALL/UPDATE

For instance, the following request renames the already created portal ZylkerAutomobiles to ZylkerAutos.

Sample Input 

 {
    "portals": [
        {
            "name": "ZylkerAutos"
        }
    ]
 }

Input Keys

 Key Description
 name Unique name of the portal. 

However, changing the portal name will also alter the portal URL. As a result, it is crucial to communicate this change to all existing portal users.

Get Portals via API

At any point, if you want to get the details of all the portals configured in your CRM account, use the Get Portal API.

Request URL : {api-domain}/crm/v4/settings/portals
Request Method : GET
Scope: ZohoCRM.settings.clientportal.ALL/READ

Sample Response:

 {
    "portals": [
        {
            "created_time": "2023-02-07T20:13:20+05:30",
            "modified_time": "2023-02-07T20:13:20+05:30",
            "modified_by": {
                "name": "Patricia Boyle",
                "id": "4876876000000327001"
            },
            "name": "ZylkerAutos",
            "active": true,
            "zaid": "10052946888",
            "created_by": {
                "name": "Patricia Boyle",
                "id": "4875876000000327001"
            }
        }
    ]
 }

Response Keys

 Key Description
 name The name of the portal
 active Represents whether the portal is active or not.
 zaid The unique id of the portal.

Now let us consider the case where you may want to extend the portal access to beyond your customers. There would be multiple user groups you may want to extend the access to, including the employees and partners. For instance, you may want to share the portal with your employees to give them access to customer information, sales data and service schedules. If you have partners, you may want to share the portal with them to keep them informed about the customer behaviors, sales data etc. Each of these groups may require to access to different types of data within the CRM.

To accommodate the different needs and access levels of the different types of users, you may need to create multiple user groups in the portal. For example, you could create a user group for customers and another user group for employees. The business can then configure different permissions for each user group, allowing or restricting access to the relevant data in the CRM account. This way, each type of user will be able to access the information that is most relevant to them, without compromising the security and privacy of the rest of the data in the CRM account.

Get Portal User Types API

The Get Portal User Types API allows you to retrieve the user types available in the portal of your org. It is important to note that when you create a portal, the default user type Client Portal is added by default.

Request URL : {api-domain}/crm/v4/settings/portals/{portal_name}/user_type
Request Method : GET
Scope: ZohoCRM.settings.clientportal.ALL/READ

Sample Request : https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v4/settings/portals/ZylkerAutos/user_type

Sample Response

 {
    "user_type": [
        {
            "created_time": "2023-02-08T11:56:16+05:30",
            "default": true,
            "modified_time": "2023-02-08T11:56:16+05:30",
            "personality_module": {
                "plural_label": "Contacts",
                "api_name": "Contacts",
                "id": "1306462000000000129"
            },
            "name": "Client Portal",
            "modified_by": {
                "name": "Patricia Boyle",
                "id": "1306462000083528405"
            },
            "active": true,
            "id": "1306462000001813022",
            "created_by": {
                "name": "Patricia Boyle",
                "id": "1306462000083528405"
            },
            "no_of_users": 1
        }
    ]
 }

Response Keys

 Key Description
 default Represents whether the user type is the default one for the portal.
 personality_module Details of the module for which the user type was configured.
 name The name of the user type.
 active Represents whether the user type is active or not.
 id The unique id of the user type.
 no_of_users The number of users in the portal assigned with this user type.

Invite users to Portal via API

Once the portal is created, you can invite the customers to join the portal using the Invite Users to Portal API. This provides the customers with access to the information regarding their automobile including the servicing details, and their information.

Request URL : {api-domain}/crm/v4/{personality_module}/{record_id}/actions/portal_invite
where, personality_module is the API name of the module for which the portal was created and record_id is the ID of the record that you want to invite to the portal
Request Method : POST
Scope: ZohoCRM.settings.clientportal.ALL/CREATE

Parameters

 Parameters Parameter Description
 user_type_id : integer, mandatory
 The id of the user type you want to assign the user with. 
 type : string, mandatory
 Represents whether the user is invited (invite) the first time or is re-invited(reinvite).
 language : string, optional
 The language code of the user you want to invite to the portal

Please note that for the client portal user type, you can invite only clients/customers and not users with the same email domain like your employees or partners. 

In this sample request, 1306462000000659009 is the record id of the customer in Contacts module, and 1306462000001813022 is the user type id.

Sample Response

 {
    "portal_invite": [
        {
            "code": "SUCCESS",
            "details": {
                "record_id": "1306462000000659009"
            },
            "message": "An Invite has been sent to the personality.",
            "status": "success"
        }
    ]
 }

Get Users of a User Type API

The Get Users of a User Type API enables you to retrieve the list of users available in a specific user type of a portal.

Request URL : {api-domain}/crm/v4/settings/portals/{portal_name}/user_type/{user_type_id}/users
Request Method : GET
Scope : ZohoCRM.settings.clientportal.ALL/READ

Parameters

 ParametersParameter Description
 type : string, optional
The type of user. Possible values are AllUsers, AllActiveUsers, ActiveUsers,  DeactiveUsers, NotConfirmedUsers, ConfirmedUsers, and ActiveConfirmedUsers.
 filter : JSON object, optional
To filter based on the value disabled on updation of email of the status_reason__s field in the Users module. The allowed comparators are equal and not_equal. Note that you must encode this JSON object.

The following request retrieves the details of users in your ZylkerAutos portal, with Client Portal user type.

Sample Response

 {
    "users": [
        {
            "personality_id": "1306462000000659009",
            "confirm": true,
            "status_reason__s": null,
            "invited_time": "2023-02-08T18:03:10+05:30",
            "module": "Contacts",
            "name": "Jennifer Spears",
            "active": true,
            "email": "jennifer.spears@abc.com"
        }
    ],
    "info": {
        "per_page": 200,
        "total_count": 1,
        "count": 1,
        "page": 1,
        "more_records": false
    }
 }

Response Keys

 Key Description
 personality_id The id of the module for which the portal was created.
 confirm Represents whether the user is a confirmed user or not.
 status_reason__s The reason the user is disabled.
 module The API name of the module for which the user type was created.
 name The full name of the contact.
 active Represents whether the user type is active or not.
 email The email ID of the contact of that user type.

We will discuss more on user types and users in next week's post. We hope you found this post useful. 
Write to us at support@zohocrm.com if you have any questions.

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