Connections in Zoho IoT provide a secure and standardized way to integrate the Zoho IoT application with other applications, including other Zoho services and third-party services. They establish authenticated access, enabling the application to securely and reliably use the data and functionality offered by these applications or services.

Why use Connections?
Below are some key reasons to use connections:

1. Simplifies secure authentication with Zoho and third-party services.
   
2. Eliminates the need to manually handle OAuth tokens or credentials.
   
3. Streamlines integrations across applications with minimal setup.
   
4. Enables centralized credential management for better control and security.
   
5. Allows seamless data transfer between Zoho IoT and external services without extra coding.
   
6. Ensures compliance with Zoho’s authentication and security standards.
   
7. Once created and connected, the same connection reference can be reused across multiple places in the Zoho IoT application to access Zoho or other service APIs.  
   

Creating Connections  

1. Default Services 
   
   These are pre-configured services available in Zoho IoT. You can easily create a connection for any of the default services listed and authenticate it using your credentials.
   
   
   
   

These default services are provided to simplify and speed up integration between Zoho IoT and other Zoho applications such as Creator, CRM, Books, Contacts, Mail, and others that organizations commonly use. Each of these pre-configured services includes the necessary OAuth scopes, endpoints, and authentication settings, so you don’t have to manually configure them.

1. Custom Services 
   
   If the service you need is not listed by default, you can manually configure it. Once configured, you or other members of your organization can create multiple connections to that service as needed, simply by providing the required credentials.
   
   
   
   Note: For existing default services, when certain scopes are not listed we can add connections for those scopes also via custom service like accessing time series data in Zoho IoT.
   
   

1. Creating a Connection Using Default Services
   
2. Creating a Connection Using Custom Services 
   

Creating a Connection Using Default Services

1. Access the Developer Application.
   
2. Select the Automate tab, and select Connections in the left pane. The available connections will be displayed.
   

   (or) 
   

4. As we are creating a connection for Zoho IoT. Click Zoho OAuth service in the default services screen. All Zoho scopes are available under Zoho OAuth service.
If the OAuth service is not available under Default services, you can follow the steps provided in the Custom Service section and create a connection.

IMPORTANT: We are currently working on including Zoho IoT as a default service. Once available, you can directly choose Zoho IoT service. All Zoho IoT scopes will be available for selection in this service. 

5. Click Create Connection.

6. Enter the connection name. The connection link name will be auto filled and displayed.

7. Set the Use Credentials of Login User toggle to ON.

Use credentials of login user: This allows other users to utilize the connection that you've created. If this switch is turned on, other users can authenticate your connection using their credentials and a copy of it will be listed under “Shared connections” in their connections page.
Consider the following scenarios to understand the "Use credential of login user" switch and shared connections:

Example:

Let's assume you want to create and publish a Zoho Cliq bot for everyone in the organization that will upload the files forwarded to it into the user’s Dropbox account. To achieve this integration, you must create a connection to Dropbox and use it in the invoke URL Deluge task. And while creating the connection, you must turn on the "user credential of login user" switch so that the users can authenticate your connection using their credentials. Hence, the files will be uploaded to the user’s Dropbox account. If the switch was not turned on, the connection will run using the credentials of the connection owner, and the files sent by all the users will be uploaded to your (connection owner’s) Dropbox account.

In this example, the "Use credential of login user" switch should be turned on, and all the bot users will authenticate your Dropbox connection using their credentials. Therefore, a copy of your connection will be listed under "Shared Connections" in their connections page while it will be listed under “My Connections” in your connections page.

8. Select from the scopes available for the selected service. Scopes specify what level of access your application should have to that service.

Refer to the Scopes document for more details.

 9.  Click Create and Connect to provide permission for this to access your account.

 10. Click Connect in the Service Name screen. 

Note: This screen will vary based on the selected service.

Note: When multiple applications exist in the portal, select the specific application you want to use for authenticating the connector.

11. In the case of multiple applications, select the Application for which you want to associate the newly created connection.

12. Click Submit. The DRE IDC screen with the selected service and scope is displayed. This is required for providing access to data.

13. Click Accept in the Deluge access permission screen displayed below.

       

 Note: This connect screen will vary based on the selected service.

                       

12. The resultant screen displaying the connection details appears. Refresh the page to view the connection status as Connected, along with the Revoke button next to the connection name.

Note: The Deluge and JSon sample code will be displayed in the respective tabs below the Connection Summary. The entries in the codes such as url, type, parameters, and connection can be used inside the Deluge Script (in custom function) to establish the connection.



Important: You need to provide your custom values for url, type, and parameter entries when writing your logic in the custom function.

Refer to the Deluge Connections document for additional details.

6. Provide the connection details as in the screenshot.

To know more about the fields including mandatory fields to be provided in this screen, refer to the Creating Custom Services document for the possible values.

Note: The Oauth details such as Client ID and Client Secret can be obtained by registering the client.

Note: The scope ZohoIOT.settings.cirrus.data.READ is provided in the above example as the connection is created to fetch data from the Zoho IoT application. You can configure any scope you require in the Scope and Scope Display Name textboxes.

9. Click Create Service. Once the service is created, you can use the same to create the connection. The authentication details provided in this service will be used for the connections created using this service.

10. Click Create Connection in the resultant screen.

Image: Custom Service screen

Using Connections in Webhook & Custom Function

Note: Connections in already connected state connector cannot be updated. The connection must be revoked, updated, and connected again.

If the connection is being used in a Webhook, you cannot update its scope while it is in the connected state.

For additional details, refer to the deluge Connections document.

Deleting  Connections

Connections that are not associated to any webhook can be deleted from the application.

To delete a Connection:

1. Click on the ellipsis next to the connection name and connect/revoke button.
2. Click Delete.
   
   
   
   

or

Click the Delete icon on the Connection in the connection's home page.

3. Click Delete in the confirmation box. The connection will be deleted if there are no associations.
   
   
   
   If there are associations to the connection from webhook, the dependency message popup will be displayed, and the connection will not be deleted.