Trying to Connect Zoho CRM with REST and OAUTH

I’m trying to connect Zoho CRM to the Skuid Platform. I created a client_id and secret_id inside Zoho and tried using it on a page but I’m stumped at how to actually get the data to start flowing. Of course it doesn’t help that Zoho’s documentation is terrible but still.

When I use the authorization URL of https://accounts.zoho.com/oauth/v2/, it seems to make the connection OK without an error but when I try to pull any data (say from the Contacts field) into a page, I either get an error or I get nothing. To access data, the URL is supposed to be https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v2/Contacts. How does that relate to the authorization URL? I’m sure I’m missing something simple but this is definitely not part of the “without code” bit of Skuid’s functionality. With Salesforce everything is plug and play but with outside API’s, I can’t make sense of what I’m supposed to do.

Some clarifications as this was posted 2 weeks ago and I’ve learned a lot playing around with this (tho still can’t make anything work). I have set up an API at Zoho using their less-than-intuitive instructions at https://www.zoho.com/crm/help/api/v2/#oauth-request. Here’s a snapshot of my Authorization page:

Here’s what the Data Source setup looks like:

Here’s the Model Setup in the Skuid Page:

When I do this … I get an endless “Loading Model Data” when I try and reload the page or add fields from the model to the page:

I have tried various versions of things but have no way outside of the page to test the connection or repair the problem.

JD, sorry to hear that this has been so difficult to get setup.

From what I can see in the Zoho documentation, I don’t think you can use the “Client Credentials” grant type — their docs seem to indicate that you have to use “Authorization Code” Grant Type. I think this is the biggest problem you’re running up against with Authentication to Zoho both with your REST-based and OData-based approaches.

Fortunately, this is pretty easy to do — I got it working pretty quickly with my own Zoho account, here’s how to do it:

In pictures:

AUTH PROVIDER

Parameter values:

**Provider Type: ** Other
**Grant Type: ** Authorization Code
**Authorize Endpoint URL: ** https://accounts.zoho.com/oauth/v2/auth **Token Endpoint URL: ** https://accounts.zoho.com/oauth/v2/token Default Scopes: ZohoCRM.users.ALL,ZohoCRM.modules.ALL ---- NOTE: these scopes can be changed depending on what data in Zoho you want to be able to access from Skuid Platform. See the “Available Scopes” section here: https://www.zoho.com/crm/help/api/v2/#OAuth2_0 .
Client Id :
Client Secret:
Common Request Headers > Request Headers — NOTE: You will need to click the arrow to expand this section. For most OAuth / REST Data Sources, this never needs to be changed, but Zoho uses a non-standard syntax here, so what you have to do is to replace where it says “Bearer” with “Zoho-oauthtoken”, so that you have “Authorization” as the Header Name and “Zoho-oauthtoken {{$Auth.Response.Body.acces_token}}” as the Header Value that you want to send as a Header with every normal request to the Data Source.

DATA SOURCE

In pictures:

Data Source Type: REST
URL / Endpoint:
Zoho CRM | Top-rated Sales CRM Software by Customers
Is Active: checked
Use Proxy: checked
Authentication Method: Authentication Provider
Authentication Provider: ZohoCRM

Read-only REST MODEL (in a Skuid Page)

In Pictures:

Data Source URL: /Leads (or whatever Module you care about), e.g. /Accounts …
Path to Contents: data — select the field picker to change this. NOTE: The first time you select the Field Picker, a popup window should open in your browser. You need to click to open this popup window and say “Always allow popups from ”, A popup will appear asking you to authorize your OAuth client to access Zoho with Full data access, or whatever scopes you have configured — click to approve. Once the OAuth popup dance is completed, you should be presented with a dialog allowing you to select the “Path to Contents”. Click the radio button next to “data”.

Then, go click on “Fields” under your Model.

After a second or two, you should be presented with a list of fields to choose from, e.g. the following:

You can select the fields and then drag them into a Field Editor / Table, etc.

Click Save and Preview!

Next steps:

  • There are more advanced things you can do with REST Models, such as Create, Update, Delete, Search, Filtering, etc. These take a bit more configuration but we could follow-up with a sample page XML.
  • Alternatively, you could use an OData library to expose Zoho as OData, as you mentioned doing in another Community post.

Thank you. I got it to connect without issues tho I wouldn’t have been able to come up with that without your tutorial. 

This works well and is, in many ways, preferable to going the OData route so I’d like to pursue it further. A sample page of XML for Create, Update, Delete, etc. would be awesome. I want to see how far I can take the REST approach.

JD, I put together a sample page that gives you read/write access to Zoho Leads, Accounts, and Contacts.

I added the sample page to our Sample Pages repository, here is a link to the XML. Click on “Raw” to get the XML (or just click here to get the raw XML)

https://github.com/skuid/SamplePages/blob/master/pages/ZohoCRM.xml

See the Readme about how to use the sample page XML within Skuid:

https://github.com/skuid/SamplePages#sample-pages


Hi All. I’m back after some time off for other projects. I can get this to work with REST BUT when I run a call, I only get 200 records. I’m not used to this layout in Skuid as it is much harder for me to manage relative to what I learned back in my SalesForce days and working in OData. A couple of quick questions:

  1. With REST methods, how do I get above the 200 record limit?
  2. Is there a way to access Zoho Data API using OData and not REST?

I’ll also add a third question:

  1. Is there a good resource to help me use REST API in Skuid? Not sure how to write the calls when I want to filter requests.

HI jdbuerger,

Did you get a chance to find how to integrate Odata with Zoho CRM ?