App building made easy with our all-new cloud editor

App building made easy with our all-new cloud editor



It has been quite a while since we had connected on this platform. A lot has happened in our marketplace and we want you to know what we are up to. You must be familiar with Zoho's extension toolkit that's used by developers for building our extensions. As the next step, you can now build, test, and execute your extensions using Zoho's cloud editor -  Sigma . 

Why do we recommend you to use the cloud editor? 
  • Your extension development can be entirely managed online.
  • The installations of 'Node.js' and 'ZET ( Zoho Extension Toolkit )' are not needed and the user can start coding their app once they are on-boarded to their workspace.
  • The app folders and the default 'plugin-manifest.json' file are automated so one need not spend time in creating them manually using the CLI.  
  • You can choose to build an extension from scratch or import the file from a local editor and manage it here.
  • The editor supports version management so you can revert your extension to its previous version if necessary.
  • Handle events with the help of the triggers available in the editor.

Extend the scope of your extension with triggers
A  trigger is executed when you have to perform an action or a set of actions when a specific  event occurs. This way, you get to do more than what you can do with your extension. We support a few  task-specific events and extension-specific events currently. However, you can also create your own event and handle them in your extension.

Task-specific events (Also called as service events): 
Event Name
When does it occur
create_task
A user creates a task.
update_task_field
The user updates a task field.
delete_task
The user deletes the task.
task_comment_add
The user adds a comment to it.


Extension-specific events:
Event Name
When does it occur
extension_on_run
A user runs their extension to test it.
extension_on_stop
The user disables the development mode to run their extension.
extension_installed
The extension is installed
extension_uninstalled
The extension is uninstalled
extension_disabled
The extension is disabled at the moment.
extension_updated
The extension is enabled at the moment.
extension_upgraded
The user upgrades to a paid version of the extension.

The following are a few sample scenarios where you can use triggers to handle different events with respect to your extensions:
  • When a task is created in a project, a similar entry can be made in the user's Google Calendar.
  • Similarly, when a task is updated, a notification can be sent to its assignee or the manager of the project. 
  • In a different case, after a user updates your app, you can send an email to them asking for their consent to receive email notifications about the app's latest updates frequently. To handle this case, you can associate the ' extension_updated ' event with your ' send_email() ' function block and execute it with a trigger. 


Extensions Gallery
The cloud editor also gives you a collection of available extensions which can be used as templates. You can refer to their source code for your understanding and modify it as necessary. You can also write functions to access the data from the third-party services using APIs in your extension. If you are going to build your first extension, then we highly recommend you refer to this  Extensions Gallery to get a clear picture of the how-tos of it.



For example, the Tasklist extension uses Zoho Projects' own APIs to fetch the task list and milestone related data. On the other hand, the Google Drive extension hits the Google APIs to fetch the user's files present in their Google account so referring to the extensions available in our gallery will give you a clear picture about how the data is fetched and managed in an extension. The Checklist extension gives you an extensive knowledge about storing data against entities.
 
We hope you will explore the cloud editor and give your feedback. You can also give your suggestions at support@zohoprojects.com. We will see you with more features this year :) 




      • Sticky Posts

      • App building made easy with our all-new cloud editor

        It has been quite a while since we had connected on this platform. A lot has happened in our marketplace and we want you to know what we are up to. You must be familiar with Zoho's extension toolkit that's used by developers for building our extensions. As the next step, you can now build, test, and execute your extensions using Zoho's cloud editor -  Sigma .  Why do we recommend you to use the cloud editor?  Your extension development can be entirely managed online. The installations of 'Node.js'

      • Marketplace Extensions for Zoho Projects

        Hello, folks! It's been a month since we launched a few extensions for Zoho Projects on Marketplace so we thought of sharing a few stats with you and what you can expect from us in the near future. We have the Checklist, Google Drive , and Zendesk extensions