Zoho is a web application provider competing with Google Docs, Microsoft Office and Live.

Zoho provides a very wide set of browser based applications from text editing and spreadsheets to project management and customer relationship management (highlighted items should ring a bell for small software development companies). Especially the last one, CRM, is a very attractive deal as you get a hosted complex CRM application with API services for very affordable or free price. Small organizations are not necessarily rich enough to go for Salesforce API supported edition which would be 135 € / month / user.

mFabrik has been working on Zoho Python bindings as we use Zoho internally.

Zoho API is HTTP GET/POST based.

• Authentication, which is called a ticket in Zoho language, is HTTP POST with custom plain-text responses. The same authentication mechanism works in-browser (Javascript) and for machine-to-machine communication as far as I know
• Most functions can be performed as HTTP POST or GET. If you need to input compex data (like CRM leads), you’ll do it as HTTP POST of custom XML payload
• Some functions expose the output as JSON for HTTP GET, so that it can be directly consumed inside browser Javascript

mfabrik.zoho is a GPL’ed Python library which provides basic facilities for Zoho API calls. Currently the feature set is very CRM weighted, though it can be easily expanded for other Zoho applications.

mfabrik.plonezohointegration is a Plone CMS add-on product which marry Plone and Zoho together. The add-on provides a control panel where you can enter Zoho API key details for Plone. Forms for CRM lead generation are provided as standalone and as a portlet (you can see them in action on our web and blog site).

The source is hosted on Github, so you can easily start tailoring it for your own organization needs. I happily accept all merge requests, providing that unit tests for new features are included. If you do not feel comfortable with Python programming, but still want to integrate Zoho to your systems, please contact us for further help.

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