Understand connections

Connections are intended to connect to external facilities. They enable you to integrate your Zoho Creator application with various other cloud services. For instance, let's assume you have a product management application in Creator. And, you have details of your vendors and payments in an external service like QuickBooks. Connections can bridge these two services, facilitating interaction of data between the two in a secure manner. This security is achieved by linking an authorizing account with the connection. When you create a connection, you are prompted to associate an account with it, and authorize access to the third party service. It is mandatory to authorize a connection for it to be functional.

Adding a connection to your account is a one-time process. You can use a connection in the context of a form workflow, a report workflow, an integration field, and so on. For instance, you can have a workflow to send an SMS notification on successful form submission. For the SMS to be sent, you need to have a service provider. In this case, you can add a connection for the required SMS service provider and authorize it. This connection can be used while you create the send SMS notification workflow. 

Cloud services are more powerful when they're connected. Connections provide a way to keep your SaaS products together, allowing you to achieve data sync across services. This promotes integration by allowing users to establish authentication with Zoho or other third-party SaaS, and perform REST operations on the authorized accounts. 

Connections are like a gateway to communicate with other Zoho or third-party services from Zoho Creator. In other words, Connections wraps the whole authentication process and lets you effortlessly connect to your accounts in the supported services.

When the connection is created and connected, you can seamlessly transfer data and perform other related operations based on the target service

When the connection is not connected, you will be restricted from communicating with the target service

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There are two types of connections:

User connections - User connections are those which are manually created by users to connect external services. These connections are authorized at the same time when the connection is created.

System connections - System connections are those that are created by default when integration actions are defined by the user. For example when you write an integration task without the connection param, a system connection gets created for the service you are trying to link. Though System connections get created by default, the super admin has to authorize them so that they are linked to the required org or portal in the connected service.

Once connected, you can use these services across all the applications in your account. You will be able to perform various actions like add records, fetch records, and search for records from the connected cloud service.

• User connection: Connections that are created and authorized by users. Learn more
• System connection: Connections that are automatically generated in the backend and authorized by the super admin. Learn more

Related Topics

• Understand microservices
• Manage datasources
• Create and authorize connections