Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Who is this extension for?

This extension is exclusively for Zoho Partners and not for standard Zoho customers. It leverages the Zoho Partner API to pull all the data from https://store.zoho.com into your CRM so you can build reporting and automation actions to help your Zoho consulting practice.

The purpose of this extension is to get the information from the store into the CRM and not be a complete solution for Store transaction management. It was built with the assumption that partners will build their own automation and reporting on top of this framework.

Is this an official extension from Zoho?

No. This extension was produced without any assistance from Zoho outside of the standard extension marketplace process.

This extension is great! How can I thank you?

Mike is always open to new opportunities, whether it be subcontracting as part of your project or engaging leads that you don't have the capacity to support. If you would like to discuss more, grab a time on his calendar: https://hello.caretgrowth.com.

If you would like to make a direct monetary thank you, Mike is open to those as well! You can use this link to buy him a coffee for his hard work.

What information does this sync with the CRM?

Subscriptions - The particular app or bundle and set of licenses for a specific customer tagged to your organization.
Transactions - Any actions taken against a particular Subscription. This can be renewal payments, cancellations, add-on changes, etc.
Commissions - A record is created for each Transaction that is eligible for a commission.

A scheduled sync of any new Zoho Store Transactions and Commissions records are added to the CRM. Additionally any Subscriptions related to new Transactions are also updated. Both Active and Requested Commissions are updated, but due to the inefficiency of the API, marking Commissions as completed is not possible at this time.

Commission records are created with a day lag to ensure that the Transactions and Subscriptions have loaded into the system. So any Commission records created today by Zoho, will not be loaded until the daily sync run tomorrow. Open and Requested commissions are updated for any commission created prior to yesterday.

All fields provided by the API are stored, including the full JSON payload of the transaction. This can be helpful for more advanced organizations that would like to further extend the automation to meet their needs.

What datacenters are supported?

All datacenters supported by the Zoho Partner API. Currently those are the United States, Australia, India, and European Union. Please note that only the US datacenter has been fully tested as there is no sandbox available to test other countries. If you have issues, please submit a ticket.

The extension is only designed to sync records from a single datacenter.

Who do I talk to if I have questions or issues?

Please remember that this is a free extension and that it is supported by volunteer/free time. You can ask questions on the Zoho Partner Community or open a ticket using the ASAP widget on the settings page. There is no SLA for a response or guarantee of a working solution. If this functionality is mission critical to your business, consider building your own solution or hiring Caret Growth Strategies to build you one.

There is no SLA for a response or guarantee of a working solution with this extension. Use at your own risk.

Why do you need the permissions requested of the extension?

Only the minimum permissions have been requested to provide useful functionality.
  1. ZohoPayments.subscriptions.READ - To retrieve all subscription information from your store
  2. ZohoPayments.transactions.READ - To retrieve all transaction information from your store
  3. ZohoPayments.commissions.READ - To retrieve all commission information from your store

Does this extension send any of my information outside of the CRM?

The only data that is collected by Caret Growth Strategies is basic information about the status of the extension. Zoho Pagesense is used to track the settings page usage and activity to improve the page. The information below is only collected to help understand the popularity of the extension.

Data is Sent When...
  1. Extension is Installed
  2. Extension is Uninstalled
  3. Connection is Setup
  4. Connection is Revoked
Data Items Collected
  1. Zoho Organization Id (unique 19 digit number - 44406230000########)
    1. This is used to understand unique installs across all organizations.
    2. Note - There is nothing you can do with this version of the ID via any Zoho API
  2. Action Type - Installed, Uninstalled, Connected, Revoked
    1. Helps understand if extension is installed an active
  3. IsInstall - True if the extension is a brand new installation
  4. IsUpgrade - True if extension is being upgraded to newer version
  5. Previous Version - The previous version of Extension installed prior to this installation

Do you harvest any of my info to benefit your own consulting practice?

Absolutely not! Significant effort was put into this extension to keep all of the data processing either on the Zoho platform or within your local web browser without assistance from any middleware to process or store your data. This presented many technical challenges when designing and testing, but it was important that partners feel comfortable that the data is not leaving their protected space. Other things to consider:
  1. Zoho will do an extensive review when this is published on the Marketplace
  2. Feel free to monitor the settings widget from the browser console. At no point will the settings widget ever make a call other than to a Zoho API.
  3. Other trusted partners will be invited to do a code review and provide their own confirmation that the extension does what it says it does.

Why is there not an option to sync Subscriptions?

The information on a Subscription only changes as a result of a Transaction. Therefore the Subscriptions are only updated when a new Transaction is created as part of the data sync.

Are there any processing limits?

Yes, there are limits, but most, if not all, partners should be well under these limits. The reason there are such small limits is because all the data processing is done completely in Deluge which has finite limits per run. You may be able to push the boundaries by running transactions and commissions processing at different times. If you still face issues, please reach out so we can better understand your use case and make adjustments (if possible).

Higher volume accounts should schedule the Transaction and Commission jobs separately to minimize the chance of hitting these limits.

How do I change the frequency of or disable the transactions data sync?

Go the the "ZPartner Settings" tab and click on the Transactions Update Frequency field and select the frequency. Your options are "Disabled", "Daily", or "Every 2 Hours". When you change the value, the update will automatically be saved.



Do you have a data dictionary for what each of these fields mean?

Yes, but given this is not supported by Zoho, it is based on a best guess looking at the data. If you notice any errors or differences in your data, please help the community by submitting a ticket and pointing out the error in the documentation with you example.