Zoho

Overview

Integrate and automate across the Zoho ecosystem — CRM, Books, Desk, Projects, Creator, and more. This skill covers OAuth2 authentication, the Zoho CRM API v2 (leads, contacts, deals, custom modules), Zoho Books (invoices, payments, expenses), Zoho Desk (tickets, agents), Deluge serverless scripting for custom automation, webhooks, and cross-product data synchronization.

Instructions

Step 1: Authentication — OAuth2

Register an app at https://api-console.zoho.com/. All Zoho APIs use OAuth2.

# Self-client: generate grant code at api-console.zoho.com → Self Client
# Scope: ZohoCRM.modules.ALL,ZohoBooks.fullaccess.all,ZohoDesk.tickets.ALL
curl -X POST "https://accounts.zoho.com/oauth/v2/token" \
  -d "grant_type=authorization_code&client_id=ID&client_secret=SECRET&code=CODE&redirect_uri=https://www.zoho.com"

Token refresh & API helper:

async function refreshAccessToken(refreshToken: string, clientId: string, clientSecret: string) {
  const res = await fetch("https://accounts.zoho.com/oauth/v2/token", {
    method: "POST", headers: { "Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" },
    body: new URLSearchParams({ grant_type: "refresh_token", client_id: clientId, client_secret: clientSecret, refresh_token: refreshToken }),
  });
  return (await res.json()).access_token;
}

async function zoho(method: string, url: string, token: string, body?: any) {
  const res = await fetch(url, {
    method, headers: { Authorization: `Zoho-oauthtoken ${token}`, "Content-Type": "application/json" },
    body: body ? JSON.stringify(body) : undefined,
  });
  if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Zoho ${res.status}: ${await res.text()}`);
  return res.json();
}

Data center URLs: US .com, EU .eu, IN .in, AU .com.au.

Step 2: Zoho CRM — Leads, Contacts, Deals

const CRM = "https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v2";

// Create a lead
await zoho("POST", `${CRM}/Leads`, token, {
  data: [{ First_Name: "Marta", Last_Name: "Schmidt", Email: "marta@startup.io",
    Company: "TechStart GmbH", Phone: "+49-30-12345678", Lead_Source: "Web Form", Annual_Revenue: 500000 }],
  trigger: ["workflow"],
});

// COQL query (Zoho's SQL-like syntax)
const results = await zoho("POST", `${CRM}/coql`, token, {
  select_query: `SELECT Last_Name, Email, Company FROM Leads
    WHERE Lead_Source = 'Web Form' AND Created_Time > '2026-01-01T00:00:00+00:00'
    ORDER BY Created_Time DESC LIMIT 100`
});

// Update a deal
await zoho("PUT", `${CRM}/Deals`, token, {
  data: [{ id: "DEAL_ID", Stage: "Closed Won", Amount: 75000, Closing_Date: "2026-03-31" }],
});

// Convert lead to contact + deal
await zoho("POST", `${CRM}/Leads/${leadId}/actions/convert`, token, {
  data: [{ Deals: { Deal_Name: "TechStart Enterprise", Amount: 50000, Stage: "Qualification" } }],
});

// Bulk insert (up to 100 per request)
await zoho("POST", `${CRM}/Leads`, token, {
  data: contacts.map(c => ({ First_Name: c.firstName, Last_Name: c.lastName, Email: c.email, Company: c.company })),
  trigger: ["workflow"],
});

Step 3: Zoho Books — Invoicing & Accounting

const BOOKS = "https://www.zohoapis.com/books/v3";
const ORG_ID = "YOUR_ORG_ID";

// Create invoice
const invoice = await zoho("POST", `${BOOKS}/invoices?organization_id=${ORG_ID}`, token, {
  customer_id: customerId, date: "2026-02-18", payment_terms: 30,
  line_items: [
    { name: "Enterprise License — Annual", rate: 50000, quantity: 1, tax_id: "TAX_ID" },
    { name: "Implementation Support (40h)", rate: 150, quantity: 40 },
  ],
});

// Send invoice by email
await zoho("POST", `${BOOKS}/invoices/${invoice.invoice.invoice_id}/email?organization_id=${ORG_ID}`, token, {
  to_mail_ids: ["marta@techstart.io"], subject: "Your Invoice",
});

// Record payment
await zoho("POST", `${BOOKS}/customerpayments?organization_id=${ORG_ID}`, token, {
  customer_id: customerId, payment_mode: "Bank Transfer", amount: 56000, date: "2026-03-15",
  invoices: [{ invoice_id: invoice.invoice.invoice_id, amount_applied: 56000 }],
});

// List unpaid invoices
const unpaid = await zoho("GET", `${BOOKS}/invoices?organization_id=${ORG_ID}&status=unpaid&sort_column=due_date`, token);

Step 4: Zoho Desk — Support Tickets

const DESK = "https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1";

await zoho("POST", `${DESK}/tickets`, token, {
  subject: "Cannot access dashboard after update", departmentId: "DEPT_ID",
  channel: "Email", priority: "High", status: "Open", category: "Technical",
});

await zoho("POST", `${DESK}/tickets/${ticketId}/comments`, token, {
  content: "Root cause identified. Fix deploying in 2 hours.", isPublic: false,
});

await zoho("PATCH", `${DESK}/tickets/${ticketId}`, token, { status: "In Progress", assigneeId: "AGENT_ID" });

Step 5: Deluge Scripting

Auto-create invoice when deal closes (CRM → Books):

dealId = input.Deal.get("id");
deal = zoho.crm.getRecordById("Deals", dealId);
contact = zoho.crm.getRecordById("Contacts", deal.get("Contact_Name").get("id"));

// Find or create Books customer
searchResp = invokeurl [url: "https://www.zohoapis.com/books/v3/contacts?organization_id=ORG_ID&email=" + contact.get("Email")
  type: GET connection: "zoho_books"];

if (searchResp.get("contacts").size() == 0) {
  customerData = Map(); customerData.put("contact_name", deal.get("Account_Name").get("name"));
  createResp = invokeurl [url: "https://www.zohoapis.com/books/v3/contacts?organization_id=ORG_ID"
    type: POST parameters: customerData.toString() connection: "zoho_books"];
  booksContactId = createResp.get("contact").get("contact_id");
} else { booksContactId = searchResp.get("contacts").get(0).get("contact_id"); }

// Create invoice
lineItems = List(); item = Map();
item.put("name", deal.get("Deal_Name")); item.put("rate", deal.get("Amount")); item.put("quantity", 1);
lineItems.add(item);
invoiceData = Map(); invoiceData.put("customer_id", booksContactId); invoiceData.put("line_items", lineItems);
invokeurl [url: "https://www.zohoapis.com/books/v3/invoices?organization_id=ORG_ID"
  type: POST parameters: invoiceData.toString() connection: "zoho_books"];

Step 6: Webhooks & Reporting

CRM webhook (Setup → Automation → Webhooks):

URL: https://your-server.com/zoho/deal-closed
Body: {"deal_id":"${Deals.Deal Id}","name":"${Deals.Deal Name}","amount":"${Deals.Amount}"}

Webhook handler:

app.post("/zoho/deal-closed", (req, res) => {
  const { deal_id, name, amount } = req.body;
  notifySlack(`Deal won: ${name} — $${amount}`);
  syncToERP(deal_id);
  res.sendStatus(200);
});

CRM analytics with COQL:

const revenue = await zoho("POST", `${CRM}/coql`, token, {
  select_query: `SELECT Stage, SUM(Amount) as Total_Amount, COUNT(id) as Deal_Count
    FROM Deals WHERE Closing_Date BETWEEN '2026-01-01' AND '2026-12-31' GROUP BY Stage`
});

// Books financial reports
const pnl = await zoho("GET",
  `${BOOKS}/reports/profitandloss?organization_id=${ORG_ID}&from_date=2026-01-01&to_date=2026-12-31`, token);
const aging = await zoho("GET", `${BOOKS}/reports/receivableaging?organization_id=${ORG_ID}`, token);

Examples

Example 1: Lead-to-invoice pipeline across CRM and Books

User prompt: "When a deal closes as won in Zoho CRM, automatically create the customer in Zoho Books if they don't exist, generate an invoice with the deal amount, and email it to the contact. Show me how to set this up with Deluge."

The agent will write a Deluge workflow function triggered on Deal stage change to "Closed Won". It will fetch the deal and contact details from CRM, search Zoho Books for a customer matching the contact email, create one if not found, build an invoice with the deal name and amount as a line item, and use the Books API to email the invoice to the contact's email address. The full Deluge script will use invokeurl with the zoho_books connection for cross-product API calls.

Example 2: Multi-channel support dashboard with ticket escalation

User prompt: "Set up automated ticket escalation in Zoho Desk: any open ticket past its due date should be bumped to Urgent priority, the assigned agent should get a Slack notification, and I want a daily COQL report showing deal pipeline totals by stage."

The agent will write a Deluge scheduled function that runs daily, queries Zoho Desk for open tickets with due dates before today, patches each to Urgent priority, and sends the agent a Slack notification via webhook with the ticket number and subject. For the pipeline report, it will build a COQL query that groups deals by Stage with SUM(Amount) and COUNT(id), filtered to the current year, and format the results as a summary table.

Guidelines

• Use the correct data center URL — Zoho routes by region (US .com, EU .eu, IN .in, AU .com.au); using the wrong base URL returns 404 errors even with valid tokens.
• Refresh tokens before they expire — Zoho access tokens last 1 hour; implement automatic refresh using the stored refresh token and handle 401 responses as a trigger to re-authenticate.
• Limit bulk inserts to 100 records — the CRM API caps batch creates/updates at 100 records per request; split larger datasets into chunks and add a short delay between batches.
• Use COQL over search for complex queries — COQL supports aggregation, sorting, and multi-field filtering that the basic search API cannot handle; prefer it for analytics and reporting.
• Test Deluge scripts in sandbox first — Deluge errors in production workflows can silently break automations; use the Zoho Developer Console sandbox to test before deploying to live.
• Include trigger: ["workflow"] on record creation — omitting the trigger parameter skips CRM workflow rules and approvals, which can break downstream automations.