Adding and managing developers | Creator Developer Console help

Adding and managing developers

1. What does this page cover?

Learn how to add developers to your app and assign them different levels of permission to customize, publish, test, and distribute the app for clients.
Idea

2. Availability


Only the super admin can add developers to edit and manage applications.

3. Overview

As a super admin, you can add developers to assist you with the development of an application. Developers are users who have been permitted to edit the application by the super admin. Apart from editing applications, the developer can also be given access to test and publish the application to the Stage environment. Post testing, the super admin can share the application with clients privately and the developer can send updates to a client privately. 
Notes
Note:
  1. The super admin is the individual administrator who created the account. They have access to all the features that are present in Developer Console. An account can have only one super admin. 
  2. Developers who are added to a Developer Console account should be on the same data center as the account holder (super admin). They must have a Zoho account to start developing an application.
  3. Both super admins and developers can share the application with clients privately, whereas only the super admin can distribute apps to Zoho Marketplace.

4.Use cases

Consider a company using Developer Console to develop a customer support application, with the head of the project as the super admin. The super admin creates an application and then assigns the IT team as developers, granting them the necessary permissions to test and enhance the application. Developers make updates and improvements in the development environment, ensuring the application is robust and secure. Once the application is fully developed and tested, the developer can share it privately with their clients. 

5. Adding a developer to an application

  1. Click the Developers section under the MANAGE module in the left pane. 
  2. Click the Add Developer button. The Add Developer tab appears. 
  3. Enter the first and last name and email address. Under the Add to Application section, select the application to which the developer is to be added.
NotesNote: Click +Add Application to add the developer to multiple applications.
  1. Under the Development field, choose the permission to be assigned to the developer in the Development environment. The permission options available are Access and Publish. You can choose either one or both. 
  • Access: Gives the developer permission to edit and access the app in the Development environment. They can then access the data that has been entered by other developers.
  • Publish: Gives the developer permission to publish development changes to the Stage environment.

  1. Similarly, under the Stage field, choose the permission to be assigned to the developer in the Stage environment. The permission options available are: Access and Distribute to Clients. You can choose either one or both. 
  • Access: Gives the developer the permission to access the app in the Stage environment to test changes. They can then access the data that has been entered by other developers.
  • Distribute to Clients: Gives the developer permission to distribute the application, after testing it, to clients.

  1. Click the Add Developer button in the tab to save the details. The All Developers page will then list all the developers added to the account.

If the developer already has a Zoho account, they can log in using this email address. If not, they will need to sign up for a Zoho account. Once logged in or signed up, the developer can continue making edits to the applications, provided they've been granted the necessary access permissions.
NotesNote: The maximum number of developers that can be added to an account is five.

6. Actions on the Developers page

The following actions can be performed from the Developers page:

Action

Location

Description

 Add Developer


Lets the super admin add a developer to an application. A maximum of five developers can be added.

NotesNote: This action can only be performed by the super admin.

 Search


Search for specific developers using their Name or Email Address.

NotesNote: When a filter is used, the search shows developers only from the filtered results.

 Filter




The Filter option lets you filter all your developers based on Application and/or Status. Status comes in two types:
Inactive or Active.

A developer is considered inactive when the super admin deactivates them.

Individual actions for developers

  • Add to Application - Add a developer to a specific application.
NotesNote:
- Only the super admin can deactivate or delete developers.
- When you deactivate/ delete a developer with authorized connections, the third-party connection authorizations will be revoked and the connection will become unauthorized.

7. Points to note

Permissions

  • The option to let developers access and publish to the Stage environment can be chosen while adding them.
  • Developers can privately share apps with clients if they have the Distribute to Clients app permission. They don't have permission to publish apps to Zoho Marketplace, though; only the super admin can do that.

Data access

  • The super admin and developers have access to all the data (even the data added by other developers) in the Development and Stage environment of the application. They can also see each other's test data, facilitating collaborative testing and debugging. 
  • The super admin and developers do not have access to client-submitted data.


What's next
Previous step
What's next
The next step after understanding the why and how of adding developers is to learn about environments and how to test your application after publishing it to the Stage environment.
Previous step
And to further build on this knowledge, you can explore how to create and manage applications.