Each industry comes with a unique set of problems to solve. To accommodate this diversity within the business world, we've created the Zoho Developer console, which allows you to integrate almost any third-party application with your CRM product. This integration can be achieved by building and installing a remote extension, using the Zoho Developer console.

Before you start building these integrations, it is important to know the type of authentication and authorization protocols followed by the third-party application. Different applications follow different protocols. Certain applications (like Twilio, Zillow, etc.) use simple token based authentication while some applications (like QuickBooks, HubSpot, etc.) follows OAuth and OAuth 2.0 protocols.

For the applications that support token based authentication you will have to make use of Custom Variables  and for applications that support OAuth and OAuth 2.0 you should make use of Connectors .

 Custom Variables

Custom variables are global variables that are used to static organization-specific data in Zoho CRM. This allows users to replace certain key values- such as username or brand- in various elements of CRM, allowing customers to easily make system-wide changes and personalizations. Learn More .

 Connectors

Connectors are special components that helps you integrate with third-party services that supports OAuth 2.0. Connectors allow you to add the APIs for every individual operation that has to be performed with the help of the integration. For example, if the third-party service has different APIs for pushing different types of data, all individual APIs can be associated with one single connector. Learn More .