Setting up and using connections in Bigin toppings

When building a topping to extend Bigin's functionality and connect it with third-party applications, creating and handling connections is an important step. Connections provide a secure way for your topping to authenticate and communicate with other applications' APIs without exposing sensitive credentials to end users. This abstraction is both secure and makes the integration easier because it eliminates the need for developers to implement complex authorization flows manually or handle authorization tokens directly.

Bigin's Developer Console offers a feature called a connection, which acts as a bridge between your topping and the third-party application you wish to integrate with. Once a connection is configured, you can reference it in your topping's functionalities using its unique link name. This enables the topping to execute REST operations such as fetching, updating, or syncing data with the connected application securely.

Now that we've achieved a basic understanding of what a connection is and how it helps toppings interact with other applications, the next step is to understand the types of connections available in Bigin's Developer Console.

Establishing connections with services

The connections feature in Bigin's Developer Console offers two types of services to help developers configure integrations according to their requirements: default services and custom services. Default services are preconfigured services available in Bigin's Developer Console that simplify integrations with some Zoho and third-party applications. If the application you want to integrate with isn't listed in the default services, you can create a custom service and configure it according to the API specifications of the third-party application.

Default services

The connections feature offers certain default services as preconfigured options that can be easily integrated with Bigin. These services come with predefined settings such as authentication type, token endpoints, scopes, and headers, which reduces the need for manual configuration. Currently, there are around 50 default services available in the Developer Console, covering a wide range of applications and platforms. This enables developers to connect to services with minimal effort.

If the application you want to integrate with your topping isn't listed in the default services, you can create a new custom service.

Custom services

Custom services enable developers to configure all aspects of a connection manually, including the authentication type, endpoints, headers, and scopes, which enables integration with third-party applications.

When setting up a custom service, developers can specify the exact authentication flow required by the external application, whether it's basic authentication, OAuth, an API key, or another method.

Note:

Refer to the official API documentation of third-party applications when configuring these settings, as this will provide the necessary details for authentication and data access.

To create a custom service, navigate to the Connections section and choose Custom Services in the Developer Console. Based on the authentication type supported, configure the custom service for the required product.

For more details on creating and configuring custom services, please refer to this guide.

Note:

Always handle sensitive information such as client IDs, client secrets, and API keys securely, and never share them publicly. After configuring and authorizing a custom service, reference it in Deluge scripts and workflow functions by using its unique connection link name, just as you do with default services.

Next, let's look at how to implement the default service connection with an example.

Create a default service connection

Let's say you're developing a Bigin topping to synchronize contact information between Bigin and Zoho Books. This integration enables contacts created or updated in Bigin to be automatically reflected in Zoho Books. The topping uses Zoho Books APIs to create, update, and retrieve customer data using a default service connection.

To create a default service connection for the topping, choose Connections from the left panel of the Developer Console and click Get Started.

Next, navigate to My Connections or Default Services. To fetch data from the Contacts module in Bigin, create a connection first. From Default Services, select Bigin and then click Create Connection to set it up.

The system will prompt you to enter the connection details. Provide a name for the connection (for example: Bigin Connection). A connection link name is generated automatically.

Next, select the scopes required for the topping's functionality. In this use case, select ZohoBigin.modules.ALL to access data from Bigin's Contacts module.

After selecting the scope, click Create and Connect to initiate the authorization process. The system redirects you to the authorization page. Click Connect, and you'll be taken to the service's login page. Choose the Bigin organization for which the topping was created, click submit, and the connection will be created.

After establishing the connection with Bigin, you must also create a connection for Zoho Books to enable record creation. To do this, create a default service connection for Zoho Books, similar to the one created for Bigin. Select the scope ZohoBooks.fullaccess.ALL to grant complete access to modules and operations in Zoho Books.

Once you've created the connections for both Bigin and Zoho Books, the system will generate connection link names for each. These link names must be used in the business logic.

Note:

During development, authorize the connection in the Sandbox environment to test integration workflows safely.

To understand the authorization process and how to implement them, please refer to this guide on authorizing connections.

After you authorize the connection, set up a workflow rule in the Bigin Developer Console that gets triggered whenever you create or update a contact in your Bigin account. Here, we need to specify the conditions that apply to the workflow and check that the email field isn't empty.

Note:

In our use case, we'll use the email address to check whether the newly created contact in Bigin already exists as a customer in Zoho Books.

When the workflow meets the specified conditions, an instant action - in this case, a function - which will execute a custom functionality that performs the following operations:

1. Retrieves the contact details from Bigin by referencing the established connection link name biginandbooksconnection0__booksconnection.
   
2. Searches Zoho Books for an existing contact that matches the email.
   
3. If a matching contact exists, update the contact's phone and contact person details in Zoho Books.
   
4. If the script doesn't find a matching contact, it creates a new contact in Zoho Books with the relevant information.

Below is the code that automates contact synchronization between Bigin and Zoho Books:

1. //Retrieve contact details from Bigin using the established connection
2. biginContact = zoho.bigin.getRecordById("Contacts",contact.get("Contacts.ID"),Map(),"biginandbooksconnectionnew__biginconnection");
3. //Extract relevant contact data
4. biginData = biginContact.get("data");
5. contactDetails = biginData.get(0);
6. email = contactDetails.get("Email");
7. phone = contactDetails.get("Phone");
8. mobile = contactDetails.get("Mobile");
9. fullName = contactDetails.get("Full_Name");
10. //Search Zoho Books for existing contacts by email
11. searchParams = Map();
12. searchParams.put("search_text", email);
13. booksContactsResponse = invokeurl
14. [
15. url :"https://books.zoho.com/api/v3/contacts"
16. type :GET
17. parameters:searchParams
18. connection:"biginandbooksconnectionnew__booksconnection"
19. ];
    
20. info "Searched by name in Books: " + booksContactsResponse;
21. booksData = booksContactsResponse.get("contacts");
    
22. if(booksData != null && booksData.size() > 0)
23. {
24. // Extract the existingContactId
25. existingContactId = booksData.get(0).get("contact_id");
26. // Update existing contact
27. updateParams = Map();
28. updateParams.put("contact_name",fullName);
29. updateParams.put("phone",phone);
30. updateParams.put("mobile",mobile);
31. updateParams.put("email",email);
32. // Define contact person details
33. contactPerson = Map();
34. contactPerson.put("last_name",fullName);
35. contactPerson.put("mobile",mobile);
36. contactPerson.put("phone",phone);
37. contactPerson.put("email",email);
38. contactPerson.put("is_primary_contact",true);
39. contactPersonsList = List();
40. contactPersonsList.add(contactPerson);
41. updateParams.put("contact_persons",contactPersonsList);
42. //Prepare and execute update request
43. parameters_data = Map();
44. parameters_data.put("JSONString",updateParams.toString());
45. info "parameters_data value:" + parameters_data;
46. updateResponse = invokeurl
47. [
48. url :"https://books.zoho.com/api/v3/contacts/" + existingContactId + "?organization_id=XXXXXXX"
49. type :PUT
50. parameters:parameters_data
51. connection:"biginandbooksconnectionnew__booksconnection"
52. ];
53. info "Updated Contact: " + updateResponse;
54. }
55. else
56. {
57. // Create new contact
58. contactDetails = Map();
59. contactDetails.put("contact_name",fullName);
60. contactDetails.put("email",email);
61. contactDetails.put("phone",phone);
62. contactDetails.put("mobile",mobile);
63. // Define contact person details
64. contactPerson = Map();
65. contactPerson.put("last_name",fullName);
66. contactPerson.put("mobile",mobile);
67. contactPerson.put("phone",phone);
68. contactPerson.put("email",email);
69. contactPerson.put("is_primary_contact",true);
70. // Add to contact persons list
71. contactPersonsList = List();
72. contactPersonsList.add(contactPerson);
73. contactDetails.put("contact_persons",contactPersonsList);
74. // Prepare and execute the create request
75. parameters_data = Map();
76. parameters_data.put("JSONString",contactDetails.toString());
77. createResponse = invokeurl
78. [
79. url :"https://books.zoho.com/api/v3/contacts?organization_id=XXXXXXX"
80. type :POST
81. parameters:parameters_data
82. connection:"biginandbooksconnectionnew__booksconnection"
83. ];
84. info "Created Contact: " + createResponse;
85. }

For details about the API endpoints and request formats used in this code, refer to the Bigin Deluge reference library and Zoho Books contacts API documentation.

After you configure the workflow and associate the function with the instant action, test the topping in the sandbox environment.

1. To do this, click Test Your Topping in the upper-right corner of the Developer Console. This action will redirect you to the Bigin sandbox account, where you can create a new contact to test whether the functionalities work properly.
   
2. After creating a new contact in Bigin, navigate to the Customers module in the Sales section of Zoho Books. When you set up the integration correctly, you'll see the newly created contact here, which confirms that Bigin and Zoho Books are synchronizing as expected. This process provides a safe and effective way to validate the workflow before deploying the topping to a production environment.
   

In this post, we've explained that default service connections in Bigin simplify authentication and connection with third-party applications by using predefined settings such as authentication type, token endpoints, and scopes. These connections are convenient because the Developer Console pre-configures the authentication flow and endpoints of the application you're integrating with.

To sum up: Bigin's connections feature provides a flexible foundation for integrating with a wide range of external services, and using these connections, developers can extend Bigin's integration capabilities.

Stay tuned for more about developing toppings and exploring other related features available in the Bigin Developer Console.

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