Getting Started with Connected Apps

A Connected App provides you with the means to integrate Zoho CRM with other applications, using APIs. This allows you to incorporate capabilities offered by external applications, thereby extending the feature set of your CRM. The data exchange between the third-party application and Zoho CRM is established through APIs and the authentication and single signon are implemented via standard SAML and OAuth protocols.

Connected App Overview

Connected Apps offer integration support in the following ways:

  • Widgets - contextual embedding of data
  • SAML - support for single signon
  • OAuth - determines authorization to access Zoho CRM data

Widgets

Widgets are GUI components that you embed in your application to achieve a functionality or access a service. Widgets enable you to provide contextual information along with your application data. The below examples illustrate the use cases which can be achieved through widgets:

  • Calling customers from within your application
  • Display inside CRM, geological locations of in transit vehicle/person
  • Viewing unresolved ticket(s) of a Contact from within the Contact record
  • Enriching your contact information using any third party market intelligence service
  • Ability to ascertain weather conditions using location coordinates. 

We provide a Javascript SDK that includes API wrappers for accessing Zoho CRM's inbuilt functions. Using this SDK, we can enable the widget(s) embedded inside your CRM application to access/manipulate application data and control the UI, on behalf of the logged in user. Refer this link to learn how to build a widget.

SAML Support

Connected apps offer SAML support which will allow you to log into other applications using your Zoho CRM credentials. For e.g. using connected apps, you can log into an marketing automation tool like Marketo, using your Zoho CRM credentials. Refer this link for more details.

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