Advanced Settings
Establishing a Connection
Authenticating to Zoho Books
Zoho Books uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.
Custom Credentials
This section describes desktop authentication using the credentials for your custom OAuth app.
Desktop Authentication with your OAuth App
Follow the steps below to authenticate with the credentials for a custom OAuth app.
Get an OAuth Access Token
After setting the following, you are ready to connect:
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id in your app settings.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the Client Secret in your app settings.
- CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URL in your app settings.
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
- Extracts the access token from the callback URL and authenticates requests.
- Saves OAuth values in OAuthSettingsLocation to be persisted across connections.
Web Authentication with your OAuth App
When connecting via a Web application, you need to register a custom OAuth app with Zoho Books. You can then use the provider to get and manage the OAuth token values.
Get an OAuth Access Token
Set the following connection properties to obtain the OAuthAccessToken:
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id in your app settings.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the Client Secret in your app settings.
You can then call stored procedures to complete the OAuth exchange:
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Set the AuthMode input to WEB and set the CallbackURL input to the Redirect URI you specified in your app settings. If necessary, set the Permissions parameter to request custom permissions.
The stored procedure returns the URL to the OAuth endpoint.
- Open the URL, log in, and authorize the application. You are redirected back to the callback URL.
- Set the AuthMode input to WEB. Set the Verifier input to the "code" parameter in the query string of the callback URL. If necessary, set the Permissions parameter to request custom permissions.
To connect to data, set the OAuthAccessToken connection property to the access token returned by the stored procedure.
Creating a Custom OAuth App
To obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, CallbackURL, and OrganizationId you first need to create an app linked to your Zoho Books account.
Create and Configure a Custom OAuth App
You will have to first register your application with Zoho's Developer console in order get your Client ID and Client Secret. You can create an app linked to your Zoho Books account as follows:
- To register your application, go to https://accounts.zoho.com/developerconsole.
- Click Add Client ID, specify an Client Name Client Domain.
- Fill the required details in the form.
- Set the Auth Callback URL to https://localhost:33333 or a different port of your choice.
- You can choose Client Type as WEB Based/Javascript/Mobile, then click on Create.
The parameter organization_id along with the organization ID should be sent in with every API request to identify the organization.
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- Click Organization Name, on the top right section. Inside that you can choose the Organization Id.
- If the value of Organization Id is not specified in the connection string, then we will make a call to get all the available organizations and will select the first organization Id as the default one.In Zoho Books, your business is termed as an organization. If you have multiple businesses, you simply set each of those up as an individual organization. Each organization is an independent Zoho Books Organization with its own organization ID, base currency, time zone, language, contacts, reports, etc.
- After completing the changes the browser will prompt you to save.
Once you are done with creating a new client, it will be displayed on your screen. From there, you can click More Options > Edit to reveal your newly created app's Client ID and Client Secret. You can now use these credentials to connect to Zoho Books by setting them as the following connection properties:
- OAuthClientId = Client Id
- OAuthClientSecret = Client Secret
- CallbackURL = Auth Callback URL
Fine-Tuning Data Access
You can use the following properties to gain more control over the data returned from Zoho Books:
- OrganizationId: The Id associated with the specific Zoho Books organization you wish to connect to. In Zoho Books, your business is termed as an organization. If you have multiple businesses, you simply set each of those up as an individual organization. Each organization is an independent Zoho Books Organization with its own organization ID, base currency, time zone, language, contacts, reports, etc. If the value of Organization Id is not specified in the connection string, then we will make a call to get all the available organizations and will select the first organization Id as the default one.
- Domain: Determines the domain where authentication calls will be sent to. If the Zoho account you plan on using this driver on was made in a European country, then set the value of the connection property Domain to `eu`. Otherwise, leaving it blank will redirect calls to the `com` domain.
Customizing the SSL Configuration
By default, the provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats to do so.
Connecting Through a Firewall or Proxy
HTTP Proxies
To connect through the Windows system proxy, you do not need to set any additional connection properties. To connect to other proxies, set ProxyAutoDetect to false.
In addition, to authenticate to an HTTP proxy, set ProxyAuthScheme, ProxyUser, and ProxyPassword, in addition to ProxyServer and ProxyPort.
Other Proxies
Set the following properties:
- To use a proxy-based firewall, set FirewallType, FirewallServer, and FirewallPort.
- To tunnel the connection, set FirewallType to TUNNEL.
- To authenticate, specify FirewallUser and FirewallPassword.
- To authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, additionally set FirewallType to SOCKS5.
Troubleshooting the Connection
To show provider activity from query execution to network traffic, use Logfile and Verbosity. The examples of common connection errors below show how to use these properties to get more context. Contact the support team for help tracing the source of an error or circumventing a performance issue.
- Authentication errors: Typically, recording a Logfile at Verbosity 4 is necessary to get full details on an authentication error.
- Queries time out: A server that takes too long to respond will exceed the provider's client-side timeout. Often, setting the Timeout property to a higher value will avoid a connection error. Another option is to disable the timeout by setting the property to 0. Setting Verbosity to 2 will show where the time is being spent.
- The certificate presented by the server cannot be validated: This error indicates that the provider cannot validate the server's certificate through the chain of trust. If you are using a self-signed certificate, there is only one certificate in the chain.
To resolve this error, you must verify yourself that the certificate can be trusted and specify to the provider that you trust the certificate. One way you can specify that you trust a certificate is to add the certificate to the trusted system store; another is to set SSLServerCert.