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Create Widget

There might be times where you have to access a service or feature that is not available in Zoho Invoice. In such cases, you can create a widget and embed it in the app.

Set up Runtime Environment

To create a widget you’ll first have to set up a runtime environment. Here’s how:

Insight: Zoho Invoice supports node.js versions 7.1.0 and above. You can test it by running the node -v command in your terminal.

Notes: Install version greater 0.23.15

Insight: The -g command in the above code denotes global installation. This allows you to run ZET commands from anywhere on your machine.

Build Widget

Once you have set up the runtime environment successfully, you can start building your widget. Here’s how:

Create folder

A widget will be created.

Insight: Run cd [widget name] in the terminal, to navigate to the current path of the widget’s directory. In that, the plugin-manifest.json contains meta information about the widget. You can configure the widget details, location, used connections, etc.

Configure Widget

Once you’ve created the widget, you can configure it in Zoho Invoice using a few parameters. Here’s how you can configure the Hello World widget in the sidebar of the customer creation page:.

{
   "locale": [
     "en"
   ],
   "service": "FINANCE",
   "modules": {
     "widgets": [
       {
         "location": "customer.creation.sidebar",
         "name": "Hello World",
         "url": "/app/widget.html",
         "logo": "/app/img/logo.png"
       }
      ]
 },
   "config": [],
   "usedConnections": []
}
 <!--app/widget.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
 <meta charset="UTF-8">
 <title>Hello World</title>
      <script src="https://js.zohostatic.com/zohofinance/v1/zf_sdk.js"></script>
</head>

<body>
   <h4>Welcome <i id="username"></i> to zoho finance widgets.</h4>
  <script>
 	window.onload = function () {
      // Initializing SDK.
      ZFAPPS.extension.init().then( (App) => {
          ZFAPPS.get("user.name").then((response) => {
            let userElement = document.getElementById("username");
            userElement.innerHTML = `Mr/Mrs. ${response['user.name']}`;
          });
        });
      };
     </script>
</body>
</html>

Here, https://js.zohostatic.com/zohofinance/v1/zf_sdk.js is the SDK URL. It contains the global object ZFAPPS. It’ll help you communicate with the Zoho Finance products.

To make the global object work, you’ll have to initialise it once the iframe has been loaded. Inside the initialisation block ZFAPPS’s get API has been used to get the user name from Zoho Finance applications.

Test Widget

Once the widget is created, you can test it on your local machine. To test:

Next, you’ll have to switch to developer mode to test the widget. Here’s how:

Warning:When Developer Mode is enabled, the other widgets installed in Zoho Invoice will become inactive (invisible). Once it is disabled, the installed widgets will be active again.

Navigate to the location where the widget has been configured and refresh the window to render the widget. The Hello World widget that has been created will be displayed on the right sidebar of the customer creation page.

If you want to revert to normal mode, toggle the button and turn it off.

Enable Developer Mode

Validate Widget

Once you’ve tested the widget, the next step is to validate it. Here’s how:

Once the validation is successful, you can start packing the widget files. If not, make the necessary changes and run the command again.

Pack Widget

To upload a widget to the Zoho Marketplace, you’ll have to pack it first. Not all the files of your project directory are required while uploading. To zip the essential files and folders like app and plugin-manifest.json Executing zet pack.

Notes: zip will be generated under your_project/dist (SampleWidget/dist/SampleWidget.zip)

Upload Widget

Once the zip is ready, you can upload the widget to Zoho Invoice so that other users in your organisation can use that widget as well. Here’s how you can upload your widget:

Notes: Please ensure that the zip should not contain empty files, and the zip name should not contain numbers or special characters.

Upload
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