Intro - Manage application operations using AI clients via Zoho MCP
1. Overview
Zoho MCP (Model Context Protocol) enables AI clients to interact with Zoho Creator and other connected applications using natural language prompts. Through a set of predefined tools and operations exposed by Zoho MCP, AI clients can retrieve data, perform application operations, and execute workflows. MCP allows users to perform cross application workflows and operations using conversational prompts without manually invoking APIs, handling authentication, or building custom integrations . This tutorial series guides you through using Zoho MCP and AI clients to perform operations in Zoho Creator and other connected applications. Claude AI is used throughout this tutorial series for demonstration purposes.
Note:
- You can use any AI client that supports Zoho MCP. While the concepts remain the same, the setup and configuration steps may vary depending across AI systems. Refer to the documentation of your chosen AI system for detailed instructions on configuration.
- Invoking Zoho Creator tools through Zoho MCP consumes Developer API calls from your Creator account. You can monitor your Developer API calls usage and limit from the Billing section. Additionally, GenAI platforms such as Claude consumes tokens for processing prompts and responses as billed by the AI provider.
2. What you will build
By the end of this tutorial series, you will have a marketing operations AI assistant that uses Zoho MCP to interact with business applications through natural language prompts. The AI assistant will retrieve campaign data from a Zoho Creator marketing application, analyze campaign performance, identify potential risks, and escalate blockers to Monday.com for cross-team coordination. The same implementation pattern can be extended to perform operations across your own applications and business workflows.
3. What you will learn
By the end of this tutorial, you will learn to:
- Configure Zoho MCP with Zoho Creator and other products
- Define the data the AI can access and the actions it can perform in an application through MCP tools
- Connect an AI client to Zoho MCP
- Access data and perform operations in Zoho Creator using natural language prompts through an AI assistant
- Perform cross-application operations and workflows between Monday.com and Zoho Creator using natural language prompts
4. Prerequisites
Before starting this tutorial series, ensure that the required tools are installed and all the given dependencies are configured.
Tools
- Zoho Creator
- Zoho MCP
- AI client (Claude)
- Monday.com
Dependencies
- Create the Marketing Campaign Operations application in Creator
- Generate API token in your Monday.com account
- Get admin user access in Zoho Creator
- Account owner role in Claude AI
5. Explore use case for this tutorial
Zylker technologies is ready to launch a new product and wants to initiate market campaigning. The marketing team uses a Zoho Creator application to manage campaign activities such as content creation, design reviews, approval workflows, launch timelines, budget tracking, and campaign readiness assessments. To ensure successful campaign launches, marketing managers need to retrieve campaign information, evaluate campaign risks, monitor dependencies across work streams, and escalate blocked activities for resolution.
Traditionally, implementing these capabilities would require developers to write custom Deluge scripts, invoke application APIs, manage authentication across systems, and build integrations to coordinate workflows between Zoho Creator and external applications such as Monday.com.
Traditionally, implementing these capabilities would require developers to write custom Deluge scripts, invoke application APIs, manage authentication across systems, and build integrations to coordinate workflows between Zoho Creator and external applications such as Monday.com.
To simplify these interactions, Zylker uses an AI assistant connected to the Marketing Campaign Operations application and Monday.com with Zoho MCP. Marketing managers can interact with the assistant using natural language prompts such as "Show campaigns at risk", "List blocked activities requiring attention", "What is the current status of the Summer Launch campaign?", or "Escalate pending approvals to Monday.com". The AI assistant retrieves the required data, performs the requested operations, and returns an appropriate response to the manager.
5.1. Understand marketing campaign operations application
The following diagram provides an overview of the application's key components, such as forms, reports, pages, blueprints, and workflows, and illustrates how they interact to support the business process covered in this tutorial.
5.2. Create marketing campaign operations application
Choose one of the following methods to create the application:
Quick start
- Import the application: Download and import the provided .ds file and sample data to install the pre-configured application.
- Create using Zia: Download and Use this prompt to generate the application with Zia, Zoho Creator's AI-powered application builder. Zia (GenAI app builder) builds the complete application, including forms, reports, pages, and workflows, and automatically populates it with sample data for immediate use.
Steps to create the application:
Follow the below steps to create the Marketing Campaign Operations application required for this tutorial.
Import the application
Create using Zia
Import the application
- Download the provided .ds file and its sample data and store it in your local storage.
- Navigate to the admin dashboard of your Creator app and click + Create Solution.
- Click Select in the Applications card to create a new Zoho Creator application.
- Click Import in the Import from file card to import the downloaded .ds file and create the application.
- Click Local storage, locate the downloaded .ds file on your system, and select it to begin the import.
- Click Save Script to import the application. After the import is complete, if your browser displays a leave site confirmation, confirm the action to open the imported application.
The Marketing Campaign Operations application has now been successfully imported and is ready to use. Next, import the sample data into each report to populate the application with data required for this tutorial. - Open each report, click Import, and select the corresponding sample data file from your local storage using the mapping provided in the following table:
Report
Sample data file
Campaigns Report
Escalations Report
Risk Report
Approvals Report
Deliverables Report
Once all the sample data has been imported, the application is fully configured and is ready for the tutorial.
Create using Zia
- Navigate to the admin dashboard of your Creator app and click + Create Solution.
- Click Select in the Applications card to create a new Zoho Creator application.
- Click Create in the Create using Zia option to open the GenAI application builder.
- Download this prompt , copy and paste it exactly as provided into the input area, and click the blue arrow (
) icon.
Once the prompt is submitted, the App Builder begins generating the application's Data Model based on the given use cases. The Data Model defines the application's components(forms, fields) and how they are connected. - Click Create Application once the Data Model is generated.
The App Builder automatically generates the application's components(forms, reports, pages), configures user permissions, and establishes the required blueprints and workflows. Marketing Campaign Operations application is created by the App Builder and is ready to use. - Click Access Application, to open your Marketing Campaign Operations application and continue with the tutorial.
Along with the application, Zia also populates the application with sample data, which you can use as is or modify to suit your requirements.
6. Episodes
The tutorial series is structured into incremental episodes, each completing a part of the solution. Complete the given episodes in sequence to build your MCP-powered AI solution.
7. Related topics
- Understand Zoho Creator application
- Understanding user permissions in creator
- Create Zoho Creator applications
What's next
Previous
What's next
The next step is to begin Episode 1, where you will create your MCP server, connect Zoho Creator and Monday.com, and configure the required tools.
Previous
Before starting the tutorial, make sure to understand the concept of MCP and how to create applications in Zoho Creator.
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