Connections

Connections

What are Connections?

Connections serve as a bridge to authenticate and integrate with external services. You can consider connection as a way that allows you to link forms in your Zoho Forms account with a third-party service.
Zoho Forms provides a range of pre-built integrations with popular services like Zoho CRM, Salesforce, Google Sheets, Outlook calendar and more. If the desired service is not available, you can create custom connections on your own and connect to the desired services using webhooks integration.
Note:
  1. You can create more than one connection with the same service.
  2. Connections is supported only in our paid plans.

Enabling Connection for Zoho Forms Org

The Super Admin of your Zoho Forms organization has to initialize a connection. To do this,
  1. Login into your Zoho Forms account as the Super Admin.
  2. Click the    icon in the top-right corner to access the  Control Panel .
  3. Click  Connections  under  Developer Space.
  4. Click Connect .

    Connection window

Creating a Service

  1. In your Zoho Forms account, click the  icon in the top-right corner to access the  Control Panel .

    Control Panel icon
  2. Click  Connections under  Developer Space.
  3. Click Create Service  under Custom Services .

    Creating Service
  4. Provide the following information:
    • Service Name:  This is the display name of the service that you want to create. Display name can contain up to 50 characters.
    • Service Link Name: Link name of the service to help you to uniquely identify your custom service.

      Note:  The link name that you provide must satisfy the following conditions:
      • It must begin with a lower case letter.
      • It can contain lower case letters, numbers, and underscores (_).
      • It can contain up to 50 characters.
    • Authentication Type: Choose from the following authentication types based on the desired service's API documentation:
      Type Description Fields
      API Key This auth type requires you to specify the params for establishing a connection with the desired service. In the next step, you will have to supply values for these params to perform the integration. For example, if you specify authtoken as param, the next step would be to provide your account's auth token to establish a successful connection.

      On choosing API Key as authentication type, you need to provide values to the following fields:

      • Actual Parameter:  Name of the key (as specified in the API documentation of the desired service) against which the parameter needs to be sent 
      • Parameter Display Name:  Display name for the parameter. This name will be prompted when you authenticate a connection.
      • Param Type:   This decides how the authentication parameters will be sent along with the URLs specified in the invoke URL scripts. Supported param types: Query string, Form Data, and Header
      Note:
      • You can add as many parameters as required.
      • Parameter could be any type of key that is required for authentication. Example: api-key, user-key, authtoken, apitoken, etc.
      Basic This auth type requires you to specify the username and password in the next step. The provided username and password will be automatically encrypted with base64 algorithm and passed as header in the format:  basic <encrypted_username>:<encrypted_password>. N/A
      OAuth 1 This auth type requires you to specify the required parameters to perform an OAuth 1 authentication.

      On choosing OAuth 1 as authentication Type, you need to provide values to the following fields:

      • Consumer Key:  Consumer key that is issued by the service provider
      • Consumer Secret:  Your consumer secret to authorize your application
      • Request Token URL:  URL to fetch the request token as specified in the API documentation of the desired service
      • Authorize URL:  Authorize URL as specified in the API documentation of the desired service
      • Access Token URL:  URL to fetch the access token as specified in the API documentation of the desired service
      • Param Type:  This decides how the authentication parameters will be sent along with the URLs specified in the invoke URL scripts. Supported param types: Query string, Form Data, and Header
      OAuth 2 This auth type requires you to specify the required parameters to perform an OAuth 2 authentication.

      On choosing OAuth 2 as authentication Type, you need to provide values to the following fields:

      • Grant type:  Grant type that the desired service uses to perform authorization. You can choose from the supported grant types: Authorization code and client credentials
      • Client Id:  Client ID that is issued by the service provider
      • Client Secret:  Your client secret to authorize your application
      • Authorize URL:  Authorize URL as specified in the API documentation of the desired service
      • Access Token URL:  URL to fetch the access token as specified in the API documentation of the desired service
      • Refresh Token URL:  URL to fetch the request token as specified in the API documentation of the desired service
      • Param Type:  This decides how the authentication parameters will be sent along with the URLs specified in the invoke URL scripts. Supported param types: Query string, and Header.
    • Scope  (applicable only to OAuth 2 auth type): Scopes required to perform integration as specified in the desired service's API documentation.
    • Scope Delimiter  (applicable only to OAuth 2 auth type): Delimiter with which the desired service API expects the scopes to be separated.

      Note:
      • You can select from the supported delimiters: comma, space, and plus. If not specified, comma is assumed as default delimiter.
      • You can choose delimiters only if you provide more than one scope.
5. Click  Create Service  after providing the necessary details.

Creating a Connection

  • After creating a service, go to the  My Connections tab and click  Create Connection .
  • Pick the desired service.
  • Then provide the connection and other required details:
    • Connection Name:  Display name of your connection
    • Connection Link Name: Link names must be unique and can be used in Deluge integration tasks and invoke URL scripts to establish authentication.

      The link name that you provide must satisfy the following conditions:
      • It must begin with a lower case letter.
      • It can contain lower case letters, numbers, and underscores (_).
      • It can contain upto 50 characters.
  • Click Create and Connect .

    Click Create And Connect  
  • User Permissions dialog will pop up, provide your authentication credentials and proceed. 
  • A summary of the connection will be displayed.

    Connection summary
  • Upon successful authorization, the connection will be created and listed in your connections page.
  • Hover over the connection to  edit revoke or  delete it.

    Edit, revoke, delete connection
  • Once your connection for a custom service is successfully created, you can use can use it while  configuring a webhook  to  process the data collected through Zoho Forms in your web application.

Editing a custom service

To edit a custom service,

  1. Navigate to  Custom Services tab.
  2. Click the edit button corresponding to the custom service.
  3. Make the required changes and click the Update button.
Edit a custom service
Note:
  • You can only edit the custom services that you have configured.
  • If a custom service is edited, all the existing connections created using the service will be revoked.
The following table lists the editable and non-editable custom service fields:
Authentication type Editable fields Non-editable fields
Basic
  • Service name
  • Authentication type
  • Service link name
API Key
  • Service name
  • Param type
  • New parameters can be added
  • Existing parameters can be edited and deleted
  • Authentication type
  • Service link name
OAuth 1
  • Service name
  • Param type
  • Consumer ID
  • Consumer secret
  • Authorize URL
  • Access token URL
  • Refresh token URL
  • Authentication type
  • Service link name
OAuth 2
  • Service name
  • Param type
  • Client ID
  • Client secret
  • Authorize URL
  • Access token URL
  • Refresh token URL
  • Scopes can be added but cannot be edited or deleted
  • Authentication type
  • Grant type
  • Service link name



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