Setting up and using connections in Bigin toppings

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.
Notes
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.
Notes
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.



Notes
Notes
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.

Notes
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.

<< Previous                                                                                                                                                      Next>>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

            Zoho Books Resources


              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                Zoho Projects Resources


                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                    Zoho Orchestly Resources


                      Zoho Creator Resources


                        Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                          Zoho CRM Resources

                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                            CRM Community Learning Series


                          • Tips

                            Tips

                          • Functions

                            Functions

                          • Meetups

                            Meetups

                          • Kbase

                            Kbase

                          • Resources

                            Resources

                          • Digest

                            Digest

                          • CRM Marketplace

                            CRM Marketplace

                          • MVP Corner

                            MVP Corner




                            Zoho Writer Writer

                            Get Started. Write Away!

                            Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ



                                ご検討中の方

                                  • Recent Topics

                                  • Can I hide empty Contact fields from view?

                                    Some contacts have a lot of empty fields, others are mostly filled. Is there a way I can hide/show empty fields without changing the actual Layout? I would like to de-clutter my view, and also be able to add information later as I am able. I would be

                                  • Profile Page View Customization

                                    I need to change the fields, sections from the profile view of an emplyoyee.

                                  • Zoho Commerce Microstore to bypass customer portal on spesific items

                                    Hi everyone, I’m currently testing the Microstore feature in Zoho Commerce and trying to understand how it behaves with access restrictions. My goal is the following: Even though the customer portal is enabled (and the main store requires users to sign

                                  • Custom Fields - Conditional Visibility

                                    At one time, it was possible to set visibility rules for custom fields. It seems like that functionality has either been eliminated or placed somewhere not obvious to me. Has that feature been removed, or is it somewhere that is not obvious to me? The

                                  • Business Day Logic Update: More Accurate Scheduling for Your Workflows

                                    Hello everyone, We’re improving how business-day calculations work in workflows, especially when triggers happen on weekends. This update ensures that offsets like +0, +1, and +2 business days behave exactly as intended, giving you clearer and more predictable

                                  • Multiselect lookup in subform

                                    It would be SO SO useful if subforms could support a multiselect look up field! Is this in the works??

                                  • App passwords stop working

                                    Some of my app passwords appear to stop working after awhile. Seems to happen every 6 months or so. Just had to change one again for the second time in a year. Is this a bug or a feature? Or perhaps changes are being made on the back end on occasion that

                                  • How to publish different instances of the same application.

                                    I am using Creator for my internal management my store. I am opening a new location, and I want to have a somewhat separate instance of the same app for my new store to use, since the data will all be different, and there is no need to interact between

                                  • Zoho Analytics - Compensation Information?

                                    I am attempting to put together payroll reports in Zoho Analytics. However, I do not see any way to get compensation information from Zoho People to sync. Am I missing something? The use case seems like it should be obvious; it's difficult to do payroll

                                  • ZOHO Cadence

                                    Can you edit when a cadence is set to enroll? For instance, I currently have it set up to enroll three days after a new record is created that fits the custom view criteria; however, I would like to change it to enroll immediately. I do not see where

                                  • Compensation | Salary Packages - Hourly Wage Needed

                                    The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says 55.7% of all workers in the US are paid by the hour. I don't know how that compares to the rest of the world, but I would think that this alone would justify the need for having an hourly-based salary package option.

                                  • Canvas and calendar

                                    Is it possible to have a canvas view that shows say a contacts details with the meetings calendar on the same page?

                                  • Error when subscribing to any iCal feed in Group Calendar

                                    When I try to add any iCal URL via Settings → Calendar → Calendars → Group Calendars → Manage → Subscribed by Group, Zoho pops up an ‘Internal Server Error’ and nothing is added in the ‘Subscribed by Group’ list. But - the feed then appears under my personal

                                  • FSM- are we getting there

                                    We have now tried the FSM a couple of times. We have been defeated on the offline access. As you can imagine the enginner needs to know the customers details, the job and the equipment. This needs to be cache. Is it yet? Plus Our engineers do multiple

                                  • Zoho CRM Copilot Connector

                                    Hello, Are there plans to release a connector for Zoho CRM and Copilot? I'm in the early research stages of potentially switching our CRM solution to Microsoft Dynamics because of its out of the box integration with Copilot. The advantage being that we

                                  • Mail bounces due to bad reputation

                                    Good evening. I'm seeing these errors from both hotmail/outlook and yahoo, as well as hard bounce from Virgin Media and talktalk for some time now. Bounce category: Connection issues Reason: uncategorized-bounce Message: 4.7.650 The mail server [136.143.188.237]

                                  • The in between line spacing management

                                    In the Microsoft Word, when we write something there is a tool from where we can manage the line spacing. Here in writer app in mobile it is by default 1.5. I request Zoho Team to give the option from where I can control Line Spacing, Remove space between

                                  • Sort by Project Name?

                                    How the heck do you sort by project name in the task list views??? Seems like this should be a no-brainer?

                                  • Bulk upload images and specifications to products

                                    Hi, Many users have asked this over the years and I am also asking the same. Is there any way in which we can bulk upload product (variant) images and product specifications. The current way to upload/select image for every variant is too cumbersome.

                                  • Side bar menu

                                    It would be great if you could stop the auto collapse of expanded menus when selecting a different module. It would save a lot of mouse clicks for a lot of users that frequently switch between sales & purchases as we do, it's easier to collapse them manually when not required !

                                  • Re: Application Architecture in Zoho Creator — A Platform-Specific Deep Dive

                                    A recent community post on application architecture made some excellent points about planning architecture early in Zoho Creator projects. The core message is right — Creator applications have a habit of growing organically into maintenance nightmares,

                                  • What's New in Zoho Inventory | January - March 2026

                                    Hello users, The first quarter of 2026 has been dynamic! We’ve shipped a powerful set of updates in Zoho Inventory to enhance item control, improve warehouse efficiency, expand integration and reporting capabilities. From a unified item creation experience

                                  • Deliver timely updates across your organization

                                    Keeping your organization informed goes beyond sending emails or sharing links. It requires ensuring that the right information reaches users at the right time, without being missed. Whether it's communicating policy changes, maintenance schedules, webinar/training

                                  • Zoho Commerce -

                                    Zoho Commerce currently only allows merchants to define the United Kingdom as a single shipping zone, which creates a significant issue for businesses operating between the EU and the UK. Under the Northern Ireland Protocol, Northern Ireland follows EU

                                  • Connecting Portals from different Zoho apps

                                    Hi, I note that Zoho has functionality for customer portals for several of the Zoho apps, like CRM, Projects, Desk etc. Is there any way to connect these portals?  It would be great if we could give our customers access to a portal in which they could

                                  • Invalid value passed for line_item_category

                                    duplicating a previous used invoice and trying to save it (new invoice number / po number used) I keep encountering this error when trying to save the invoice Invalid value passed for line_item_category

                                  • Make Task ID and Issue ID columns filterable like all other columns

                                    Hello Zoho Projects Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to submit a feature request regarding the Task ID and Issue ID columns in Zoho Projects list views. Current Limitation: As of now, in both the Tasks and Issues modules, almost every visible

                                  • Full Email Threading for Custom Modules

                                    My clients run their core business operations inside Custom Modules. They need to see their full email history directly within those records. Right now the integration is limited compared to the Deals module. Users have to jump back to the Contact record

                                  • Edit Active Workflows

                                    Workflows are great and extremely powerful, however the inability to edit active workflows makes iterating on their functionality extremely difficult. It would be great to have the ability to edit workflows even while active. When this is done, It would

                                  • Automation Series: Assign Subsequent Task Owner on Completion

                                    When a project progresses, tasks get piled up over time. As new tasks are created, tracking ownership and assigning them can become time consuming. In Zoho Projects, this can be addressed by automating task assignment using Custom Function, so that ownership

                                  • Multiple Pricing for single item

                                    We are doing billing based on batch number. We required multiple Price for an Single Item based on Batch. While billing the POS should fetch the price based on batch. Whether this could be done ?

                                  • Split Bills/Expsense between multiple projects and/or clients

                                    I need to be able to split vendor invoices/ expenses between multiple clients. Entering the bill multiple times is not only time consuming, it defeats the purpose of having a unquie identifity bill number and will allow for possible duplicated entry.  Below is an example from Quickbooks Desktop. Splitting costs over various projects is a common job costing function that I am very sad and surprised is not an option in Zoho Books. Unless I am missing it somewhere? Thanks for your help!

                                  • Disable - order online at zoho store

                                    I'm running cafe with Zoho POS. Doing good, however this enablement (Disable online order only on zakyastore.in) would enhance the business. Support asked to close -> "We can close the store from more options in the Mobile store > Overview > Store details

                                  • Worst product ever designed - Zoho Books.

                                    It is designed and conceptualised by people without any financial background. Basically bunch of software engineers who knows how to code. They dont have any idea how finance people will use this product, what are their requirements, how transactions

                                  • Configuring Email Notifications with Tautulli for Plex

                                    Hi I'm new to Zoho. I am from Canada and I have a I use a web based application called Tautulli for Plex that monitors my Plex media server. It also sends a newsletter to my followers. To set this up they require a "From" email address., a smtp server

                                  • Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

                                    Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

                                  • Last activity time is acting like last modified time

                                    When i edit the description or any field in the potential, account, contact and lead, the Last Activity Time is being updated like the Modified Time. This is messing all workflows and reports and we are unable to track real last time of activities like

                                  • Total Saving in POS Screen

                                    Displaying the Total Saving in POS Screen, while adding the items before before recording the payment. Customer wish to know this total savings before making the payment (i.e., before recording the payment). Currently we can able to view this total saving

                                  • How to skip weekends and public holidays in a scheduled workflow using Deluge in Zoho Creator?

                                    Hi, I have a scheduled workflow in Zoho Creator that runs daily at a fixed time. I want it to execute only on working days skipping weekends and public holidays. Could anyone please help me with how to achieve this?

                                  • Building extensions #1: Creating, testing, and editing extensions for Zoho Sprints using Sigma Cloud Editor

                                    Hello all! We're delighted to announce the beginning of a new series called Building extensions for Zoho Sprints. Our primary goal for this series is to educate developers on the process of creating extensions for Zoho Sprints and guide them through the

                                  • Next Page