How to connect to Zoho CRM

Connecting Zoho CRM takes one sign-in: you authorise the connection from Vault, sign in to Zoho, and accept the access the integration asks for. Apideck stores the resulting credentials and keeps them refreshed, so you only do this once per Zoho CRM organisation.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

A Zoho CRM account. Any Zoho CRM edition works, including the Free edition, which includes API access.
A profile with the "Zoho CRM API Access" permission. In Zoho CRM this lives under Setup > Security Control > Profiles > Developer Permissions. Administrators have it by default; other profiles may not. If you are not sure, ask your Zoho CRM administrator to confirm it is enabled for your profile, or see Zoho's profile permissions guide.
The right Zoho user. Sign in as a user in the Zoho CRM organisation whose data you want to share. The connection is tied to the user who authorises it and to the organisation they pick.

You do not need to know your Zoho data centre, look up an API domain, or copy any credentials by hand. Zoho sends you to the sign-in page for your own data centre automatically, and Apideck records it with the connection.

Steps

In Vault, find Zoho CRM and click Authorize.
Sign in to Zoho if you are not signed in already. You are taken to the accounts server for your own Zoho data centre, so there is no data centre to choose or type.
If your Zoho user belongs to more than one Zoho CRM organisation, select the organisation you want to connect. Everything the integration reads and writes afterwards happens in that organisation only.
Review the access Zoho lists on the consent screen and accept it. The integration asks to work with your CRM records (such as contacts, leads, accounts, deals, activities and notes), to read your field configuration so records map correctly, and to access your Zoho CRM user list.
Zoho returns you to Vault and the connection shows as connected. You are done.

Notes

One authorisation covers one organisation. A Zoho CRM Sandbox organisation or a Developer Edition organisation is a separate organisation with its own data, so each one needs its own connection and its own authorisation. Credentials for your production organisation cannot read a Sandbox organisation.
Avoid re-authorising more often than you need to. Zoho keeps at most 20 refresh tokens per user per client. Each fresh authorisation by the same Zoho user issues another one, and once the limit is reached Zoho silently invalidates the oldest, which can disconnect a connection somebody set up earlier without any warning. Reconnect when something is genuinely broken rather than creating duplicate connections.
Access stays live until it is revoked. Apideck refreshes the connection in the background, so you do not need to repeat these steps on a schedule. If you or an administrator revokes the integration in Zoho, the connection stops working and you simply authorise it again.

Troubleshooting

Issue	What to do
Zoho blocks the authorisation with a permission error, or the connection completes but no CRM data appears	Your Zoho profile probably lacks Zoho CRM API Access. Ask your Zoho CRM administrator to enable it under Setup > Security Control > Profiles > Developer Permissions, or to move you to a profile that already has it, then authorise again.
The connection points at the wrong Zoho CRM organisation	Remove the connection in Vault and authorise again. Sign in as a user in the organisation you want and select that organisation when Zoho asks which one to use.
Authorisation fails before you reach the consent screen, or Zoho reports that the application is not available for your account	The provider of the application you are connecting has to enable your Zoho data centre on their Zoho client. Tell them which data centre you are on: it is the domain you sign in to, for example `zoho.com`, `zoho.eu`, `zoho.in`, `zoho.com.au`, `zoho.jp`, `zoho.com.cn`, `zohocloud.ca`, `zoho.sa` or `zoho.uk`. They can enable it and then you can retry.
A connection that used to work has stopped, without anything changing on your side	The authorisation may have been revoked in Zoho, or it may have been pushed out by the 20 refresh token limit described above. Authorise the connection again from Vault.
Something else	Contact Apideck Support.