Integrating Zoho Directory with Zoho CRM Plus

Integrating Zoho Directory with Zoho CRM Plus

What's Zoho Directory? 

Zoho Directory is a workforce identity and access management software that helps businesses manage access to applications and devices from a centralized location. This single point of control simplifies the process for the admins in your organization to allow, deny, or moderate access, enhancing security, defining, and following a simple, streamlined process.

Why integrate Zoho CRM Plus with Zoho Directory?  

The following capabilities are available by integrating Zoho CRM Plus with Zoho Directory: 

A centralized space to manage access to CRM Plus 

CRM Plus consists of various modules across Sales, Marketing, and Service, making it easy for businesses to offer exceptional customer experience. Integration with Directory simplifies the process of adding users to the CRM Plus account with the appropriate roles and permissions for the various modules from a single place. You can also modify the permissions when required and view active sessions and login history. 


Facilitate single sign on (SSO) 

Businesses use multiple applications everyday to manage various processes, and the one step that's common across all of them is signing in to the account with the right credentials. Managing different credentials for different products/accounts can get chaotic and can raise security concerns with the way those credentials are handled. Directory simplifies this process by allowing you to sign in to these applications with a single password. So, if you are using CRM Plus along with various other applications, you can use the same credentials to login to all of them; eliminating security risks and making the login process hassle free. 

Establish security policies 

Directory lets you setup the following measures to enhance the security of your business applications.
  1. Password Policy: This lets you define how users in your organization should set their password to be. You can define the Password Complexity such as minimum length, special characters, and numeric digits and mandate mixed passwords. i.e. passwords with both lower and upper case alphabets. You can also define the maximum and minimum age for the password.

  2. Mandate Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): This adds an extra layer of protection apart from the user name and password. You can enable OneAuth, YubiKey, or OTP authenticators available for your organization.

  3. Allowed IP: This restricts access to the applications based on the IP address. Only users from the allowed IP addresses can login and access the application, making the system extremely secure.

  4. You can also configure various limitations for the web session management, such as the lifetime of a session, idle session timeout, or number of concurrent sessions. The lock period of the account can also be defined by specifying the monitoring period for number of sign-in attempts, the limit for maximum number of invalid sign in, and the duration of the lock period.

Synchronize all your directories 

Managing multiple directories and the users can get tricky to manage. Zoho Directory gives you the option to synchronize users from various directories such as G Suite, Okta, OneLogin, GreytHr, Active Directories, or even CSV as a source. With this, you get a central space to manage all the users in your organization, and grant appropriate permissions to the required applications. 


Condition based application assignment 

Employees in your organization might need access to the right set of applications based on their role and responsibilities. For example, a support agent will need access to all the service apps used in your organization; a sales rep might need access to CRM, and other apps pertaining to sales. For the admin, it gets difficult to identify the right employee, map the role and responsibilities, and assign the appropriate apps. Zoho Directory simplifies the process by helping you automate the process of assigning apps to the employees in your organization. You can set a criteria based on which the users will be automatically assigned the apps that they need. These criteria can be defined based on an individual, group, or everyone. 


Access in-depth reports

Directory offers various in-depth reports to monitor and visualize important metrics such as successful sign-ins, failed sign-ins, most signed in users, sign-in activity, and a lot more. You can also visualize these important metrics from the Dashboard.
Notes
Note:
  1. Users with Zoho CRM Plus subscription will be able to enable and access the Standard version of Zoho Directory.
  2. Once the integration is enabled, all the users from your CRM Plus account will be added to Zoho Directory. Any new users added to CRM Plus will also be part of Zoho Directory.
  3. Users in Zoho Directory with the following role: organization owner, organization admin, or application admin can add users to CRM Plus or manage their permissions.

Setting up Zoho Directory integration in CRM Plus 

Enable Zoho Directory from CRM Plus Settings, and a portal will already be created for you in Directory if you don't already have one. All the users part of CRM Plus will be added there, making it easy for you to manage the users and their permissions.



Adding users to CRM Plus from Zoho Directory
  1. Go to Settings in CRM Plus and select the Directory tab.
  2. Click Access.
  3. Navigate to Users in Zoho Directory and click + Add User.
  4. Enter the details such as First Name, Last Name, Email, Company Information, Locale, Additional Information, and Custom Fields if required.
  5. Select the Send Notification Email checkbox and click Add.
  6. In the Applications tab of the user, click Add and select Zoho CRM Plus in the Assign Applications popup.  
  7. Select the Role from the drop down list.
  8. Select the modules that you would like to give the user access to and select the appropriate Role, Profile, and Departments.
  9. Click Done.
    The user will be added to Zoho CRM Plus with the specified permissions.