Enhancements to Custom Connectors in Zoho Creator

Enhancements to Custom Connectors in Zoho Creator

Hello everyone,

At Zoho Creator, we believe in providing you with the necessary tools to achieve a well connected ecosystem of apps. Our Custom Connectors feature is a testament to this, enabling you to integrate with a wide range of external services beyond those available through built-in connectors.

While our built-in connectors already cover over 500 popular services (with new ones being added regularly), custom connectors take this a step further by allowing you to connect with virtually any third-party service.

To make this powerful feature even more robust and enterprise-ready, we've rolled out a series of enhancements designed to support advanced authentication methods, enable secure cloud integrations, and ensure seamless connectivity with external services. In this post, we'll walk you through the most recent updates:
  • OAuth 2.0 - Client authentication modes
  • AWS Signature authentication 
  • Bearer token authentication
Let's explore each in detail:

OAuth 2.0 - Client authentication modes

Different APIs have varying expectations for how client credentials should be presented during OAuth token exchange. Until now, our OAuth authentication type assumed a single client authentication method, and users faced issues when credentials had to be sent in the authorization header. To address this, we've introduced a new Client Authentication option for custom connectors using OAuth 2.0. This allows you to specify how your client credentials (Client ID and Client secret) are transmitted to the authorization server during the token request process. You can choose from two options:
  • Include in the form data (Default): This method adds your credentials to the form data submitted within the body of the request.
  • Include in the authorization header: This method places your credentials in the request's security header using HTTP basic authentication.
Why this matters
  • Improved compatibility with APIs that enforce strict authentication rules
  • Smoother integrations with enterprise-grade APIs
  • Reduced authentication errors

Example
Assume you want to integrate Zoho Creator with Reddit, a popular social media platform. The Reddit API uses OAuth 2.0 and its documentation explicitly states that client credentials must be sent in the Authorization header using basic authentication.

Now, when configuring your OAuth 2.0 custom connector in Zoho Creator, you can simply select Include in authorization header under the Client Authentication field. This ensures your authentication flow will work as expected, without any custom code or middleware.

AWS Signature authentication

The industry-standard authentication required to securely interact with AWS services is now supported in Zoho Creator. The new AWS Signature 4 authentication type within Custom Connectors enables you to integrate with AWS services without relying on any middleware or authentication workarounds. This unlocks the ability to connect to a wide range of popular AWS services (such as S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, and more) and perform the required actions.

Why this matters
  • Enterprise-grade security for applications that deal with critical workloads or sensitive data
  • Seamless automation of workflows with your existing AWS infrastructure from within Zoho Creator
  • Complies with AWS's Signature Version 4 method, which ensures robust security and maximum compatibility while authenticating requests to AWS services
Example
Consider a setup where your organization generates critical business documents using a Zoho Creator application. You may need to store these documents in their AWS S3 bucket for recordkeeping and auditing purposes.

With the introduction of the new AWS Signature authentication in Custom Connectors, you can easily connect to S3 by providing your AWS credentials and region. Then you can use the invokeURL task to transfer documents from Zoho Creator to your S3 bucket.

This enables seamless and secure integration with AWS, bringing the full power of AWS's cloud capabilities into your Creator apps.

Bearer token authentication

Zoho Creator now supports Bearer token authentication. Many third-party services, like GitHub and Slack, use this authentication type, which is a lightweight method that enables secure API calls without the need for full OAuth. Now you can seamlessly integrate these services into your applications using custom connectors.

Why this matters

  • Eliminates the need for complex setups associated with other authentication types, like OAuth, making it ideal for APIs that use token-based access
  • Enables faster, hassle-free integrations with internal tools, developer platforms, and microservices
Example
Assume your sales team relies on Slack for internal communication. With Bearer token authentication now supported in Zoho Creator, you can establish a custom connector with Slack. Then you call Slack's API using invokeURL to automatically post updates to a channel whenever a new lead is generated.

In essence, this is a simpler, more secure path to connect Creator with modern APIs from GitHub and Notion to your own internal systems.

Help documentation

We've updated our help resources to reflect the recent enhancements to Custom Connectors. For detailed information, please refer to the Understand Connectors page.

Bonus: mTLS in Zoho Creator

While we're on the topic of custom connectors, let's wrap things up with a platform-level security upgrade. For the first time in the Zoho ecosystem, Zoho Creator now supports Mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) across all integrations. mTLS is available for both built-in and custom connectors. 

mTLS provides an added layer of security by enabling certificate-based, two-way authentication and ensures that both the client and server verify each other's identity. 

Why this matters
  • Particularly valuable for enterprises operating in zero-trust environments
  • Helps meet compliance requirements, such as HIPAA, ISO 27001, GDPR, and other industry standards
Availability
mTLS is currently available only on demand. Please reach out to our support team if your integrations require mTLS-based authentication.

These powerful enhancements reaffirm Zoho Creator's commitment to helping you build deeply integrated, enterprise-grade business applications—and we'll continue enhancing the platform to support your evolving needs. Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

Till then,
The Zoho Creator Team
    • Sticky Posts

    • Introducing Zoho Creator's 2025 Release Projection 2

      Hello Creators! I'm Prakash, from the Creator product management team, and today I'm delighted to unveil our next set of features as part of Release Projection 2 for 2025. With thoughtful analysis and planning, we've curated powerful new capabilities
    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 1

      Hello everyone! A very Happy New Year to you and your family. Hope you're all good and having a great time using Zoho Creator to make your lives easier and your businesses prosper. 2022 was an action-packed year for us at Creator, and we hope to continue
    • Zoho Creator User Group meetups in a city near you! - Oct - Nov, 2023

      Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! We're hosting a series of Zoho Creator meetups in various cities across the globe, and we'd love to meet you there! Our meetups are a great opportunity to network with industry peers, exchange ideas and best practices,
    • Zoho Creator - 2023 Release Projection 2

      Hello everyone! Time truly flies when you're having an incredible journey, and today we mark the completion of an eventful and action-packed six months. It feels like just yesterday when we embarked on this adventure together with the launch of our new
    • Upcoming Updates - August 2022

      Hi all, Greetings from the Zoho Creator team! Today we've got news for you on some exciting updates. And rest assured— there’s more to come! In this post, we'll be going over the upcoming features and improvements for this month as mentioned below. A
    • Recent Topics

    • Zoho FSM Work Order Creation Failure

      Hello FSM team and Latha, This automation is built in Zoho Creator and is triggered when a “New Repair Order” is created or updated through form submission. Once the form is submitted, the script automatically retrieves the related customer and company
    • A method for renaming tab titles in Creator to display more relevant information

      Hi Zoho Devs, Updates: Rules Export File attached; you can now import this into Tab Modifier instead of manually entering the rules yourself) 2022-06-08: Updated rules so that crm.zoho.com tabs are not affected; uploaded new .json import file 2022-06-09:
    • Options on the New Auto Logged In User Profile for the Name Field

      Hi, I love the new function, but when used it automatically formats the record and therefore the export with comma separated values, so id you enable First Name & Last Name it puts "First Name, Last Name" rather than just "First Name Last Name". Could
    • Zoho Practice Roadmap

      Hi - interested to understand the roadmap for this product. I think a number of people are watching to see if this is receiving investment prior to exploring more - but it appears to be very quiet on the development front.
    • CRITICAL DOWNTIME IN ZOHO PRACTICE!! NO RESPONSE FROM SUPPORT TEAMS

      Dear Team, We are randomly unable to login to Zoho Practice since this morning. All our team members are reporting this issue. Work has come to a grinding halt and we are not getting any support or answers. This is a highly serious matter of concern for
    • Tip 49#: Obtaining global reports in Zoho Sprints

      Zoho Sprints comes with data analysis capabilities like reports and dashboards that enable the project teams to introspect quantifiable information. These reports and dashboards are project specific. Recently, a user contacted us regarding a requirement
    • Clone entire dashboards

      If users want to customize a dashboard that is used by other team members, they can't clone it in order to customize the copy. Instead they have to create the same dashboard again manually from scratch. Suggestion: Let users copy the entire dashboard
    • Zoho Cliq REST APIs v3 : A complete guide to what's changed and why 

      APIs are not just consumed by a developer with numerous automations and a series of open browser tabs. They are parsed by LLMs, fed into agent pipelines, and auto-completed by AI coding assistants that have zero tolerance for inconsistency. A verb tucked
    • Allow native Webhooks to authenticate via Connections

      Allow native Webhooks to authenticate via Connections (Basic Auth) instead of plaintext custom headers Summary Please allow native Webhooks (Workflow Rules > Instant Actions > Webhooks) to authenticate against the destination endpoint using the existing
    • Zoho desk extension update custom field

      Hi all, I'm trying to update a custom field in my zohodesk extension. But the documentation is fairly unclear. The custom field is named "testveld". The api name is cf_testveld I'm trying to update it like this: ZOHODESK.set('ticketForm.cf_testveld',
    • Introducing Custom Columns in Forecasts in Zoho CRM

      Release Plan: Enabling in Phased Manner, Enabled for JP DC Hello all, Forecasts in Zoho CRM help sales representatives, managers, and business stakeholders evaluate performance and plan future sales activities. While standard metrics such as Target, Achieved
    • Zoho Expense Auto Tracking Sync Fails "Request Timed out"

      I am testing this feature to move away from MileIQ who significantly raised their prices. It seems to be tracking but it is not syncing unless I manually perform a resync under "Drives pending Sync". I am not sure what would be causing this, as some drives
    • How to show product cards in your chatbot

      Hey everyone, If you are using Guided Conversations to help customers find products, you have probably run into this problem: the bot gives customers a list of options, but they still have no idea which one to pick. There will be no images, no specs,
    • Zoho Team Inbox - roadmap

      Hi, would be good to understand the Teaminbox roadmap, in particular: 1. API / Zoho Deluge connections. We have a process where the each email needs to be either tagged or assigned daily. It would be great if we could automate a 5pm alert for any exemptions
    • Zoho Projects Coming to CRM Teamspaces

      Availability: The US DC Standard Edition is now available. It will be rolled out to customer accounts in all DCs in phased manner. Hello all, You are probably already familiar with Teamspaces, the dedicated workspaces where teams organize the CRM modules
    • Canva Integration

      Hello! As many marketing departments are streamlining their teams, many have begun utilizing Canva for all design mockups and approvals prior to its integration into Marketing automation software. While Zoho Social has this integration already accomplished,
    • Editing Draft Fixed assets

      I have a few Fixed Assets still currently in Draft Status that I need to edit. I need to edit the Fixed Asset Type, the Fixed Asset Account, the Accumulated Depreciation account and the Depreciation account. Once I have done it and attempt to "Save as
    • Zoho Status Pages: Our Domain Has Changed — Here's What You Need to Know

      We're making a change to how you access Zoho Status Pages. Our status page domains have been updated to provide a more consistent and region-specific experience across all locations. If you have the old domain bookmarked or referenced anywhere — emails,
    • Zoho Books and TRAINING SALES receipt label for eTims?

      Hi, Can Zoho Books implement TRAINING SALES receipts and push them to eTims for test? In other words how can we send to Zoho or even create in Zoho training mode invoices and TEST the workflow POS>Zoho Books>eTims and back without actually registering
    • The Social Wall: May 2026

      Hello everyone, This month, we're excited to introduce two powerful features designed to help you create more engaging content and streamline your team's communication workflow. Adding audio via Zoho Social Audio is one of the biggest drivers of engagement
    • SalesIQ : How to disable "Idle chat handling" ?

      Hello SalesIQ Team. SalesIQ, How to disable "Idle chat handling" ? I would like to disable the option “Automatically close chats that have been idle for a specified amount of time.”
    • Zoho Webinar - Sharing System Audio (NOT AVAILABLE)

      Hi, We are having a serious problem with Zoho Webinar. In the webinars we run, we very often share the audio from a video we are streaming directly from YouTube or other applications. Until recently we were using Zoom, but as we use other Zoho applications
    • Customising Outcome drop down

      Is it possible to customize the drop down list for appointment outcomes?
    • Automate Backups

      This is a feature request. Consider adding an auto backup feature. Where when you turn it on, it will auto backup on the 15-day schedule. For additional consideration, allow for the export of module data via API calls. Thank you for your consideration.
    • Mirror Component in Zoho CRM: Access real-time related data without leaving your record

      Hi everyone, This feature is now available for the JP, CA, SA, UAE, and AU DCs. We're excited to bring to you Zoho CRM's mirror component, which presents relevant data on a record's details page and keeps everything users need in one place without having
    • Partial payments for retainer invoices

      When a customer does not pay the entire retainer invoice there is no way to apply a partial payment. PLEASE add this function.
    • Custom Display Field for Lookup Dropdowns in Zoho CRM

      Could Zoho CRM support changing the display field in lookup dropdowns, like Zoho Creator does? This would make it much easier to select the right record by showing a more useful field instead of only the default one. It would improve speed, clarity, and
    • Create custom field in multiple modules

      I am trying to create some custom fields that will be in both leads and contacts module without having to create them separately and then mapping them. How is that performed? it is too time-consuming to create 20+ fields and then do the same thing in a different module when they carry the same info. The idea is that when we get a lead from web site, there are items that we capture and once that lead is a client and moved to Contacts, that info should come over. So trying to find an easy way to create
    • Add Specific Identification as an Inventory Costing Method

      --- Business Context We are a security systems distributor handling high-value, serialized products such as IP cameras, NVRs, and RAID storage systems. Each unit is uniquely identified by a serial number and arrives in separate shipments at varying purchase
    • Creator Portal Page Customization Issues

      I have been using Creator to make Portals recently. Yesterday, I created a new portal and noticed that the page customization editor ("Open Builder") was different. Using the new page builder, I was able to customize and add an image to the various sign
    • Zoho Books - Budget Creation and Reporting Tags

      Is there a way to create one budget for multiple reporting tags. For example, if my company has 4 different divisions I would like to be able to enter in what the budgeted revenue for each division is and view that information in 1 budget. I would then
    • Razorpay + Zoho Billing + Zoho Books Integration

      Please help us set up this integration.
    • Why is Approval Hierarchy Not Available for the Expenses Module in Zoho Books?

      Hello, I noticed that Zoho Books allows us to configure approval workflows and approval hierarchies for modules such as Bills, Vendor Credits, and Invoices. However, the same approval hierarchy option does not seem to be available for the Expenses module.
    • Zoho Mail Android app update - Traditional Chinese language and contact nickname support

      Hello everyone! The Zoho Mail Android app now includes support for the Traditional Chinese language. You can change the language to Chinese (Traditional) from the Settings module of the Zoho Mail app. You can also view the nickname of the contacts within
    • Get Cliq Meetings in my O365 calendar

      Hi, we are currently evaluating to replace the Teams Messaging and Meetings with Cliq. We currently still have all our email and calendars in O365. What i want to achieve is, to create a (ZOHO) meeting from Cliq and have this meeting added to my Outlook/O365
    • Latest update in Zoho Meeting | On-demand webinars

      Hello everyone, We’re excited to introduce our new on-demand webinar feature, you can now provide pre-recorded sessions that your audience can access immediately, no need to wait for scheduled sessions. Benefits of On-demand webinars : Scheduling flexibility
    • Replicating Zoho Books "Accounts" and "Accrual Transactions" in Analytics via API: Best Endpoint Strategy?

      Hi everyone, I am working on a custom integration where I need to programmatically replicate two specific tables in Zoho Analytics via API on an hourly schedule: Accounts and Accrual Transactions. Those two tables sync from Zoho Books. (Note: I am aware
    • Terms & Conditions

      I have defined Terms & Conditions in the invoice setting and have set %TermsAndCondition% where I want it to appear but nothing shows up in that area. Is this something we have to define per invoice or can we have a global variable?
    • BUG and HANGUP - Add Row with Fields DOUBLES the amount of rows instead of Adding Just 1 Row

      As it says in the title, there is a bug with forms generated with Zoho Writer where the Add Row With Fields ends up DOUBLING the amount of rows instead of Adding just 1 row.
    • Subform edits don't appear in parent record timeline?

      Is it possible to have subform edits (like add row/delete row) appear in the Timeline for parent records? A user can edit a record, only edit the subform, and it doesn't appear in the timeline. Is there a workaround or way that we can show when a user
    • Next Page