Zoho CRM

Overview

This article explains how to connect your Kompass account to Zoho CRM. Once connected, clients, contacts and projects are kept in step between the two systems, and quote items are published to Zoho as quotes. Only admin users can set up and manage the Zoho connection.

Prerequisites

  • A Zoho CRM account with administrator access to the organisation you wish to connect
  • A dedicated Zoho CRM user for the integration (see the note below)
  • Admin access to your Kompass account
  • The Zoho permission group on your user. If you do not see a Zoho group in the Admin site, contact Kompass support to have Zoho permissions added to your account.

Create a dedicated Zoho user first. Kompass records which Zoho user made each change and deliberately ignores changes made by the user that authorised the connection, so that its own writes are not read straight back. If you authorise as yourself, your own edits in Zoho will not reach Kompass. Create a user such as Kompass Integration in Zoho, give it access to the records you want synchronised, and authorise as that user.

Step 1: Create a Zoho configuration

  1. Navigate to the Admin site by adding /admin after your Kompass URL (e.g. your-server.kompassbms.com/admin).
  2. Under the Zoho group, select Configurations.
  3. Click Add in the top right to create a new configuration.
  4. Select the Kompass organisation(s) that should use this Zoho connection. One connection can serve several organisations.
  5. Set Notification recipients. These addresses receive an email if synchronisation fails.
  6. Click Save. Leave the Enable checkbox unticked for now; you will enable the sync in Step 5 once existing records have been linked.

Step 2: Authorise with Zoho

Sign out of Zoho first, or use a private browser window, so that you sign in as the dedicated integration user and not as yourself.

  1. On the Configurations list page, select the configuration you just created using the tick-box.
  2. From the Action drop-down menu, select Authorise with Zoho and click Go.
  3. You will be redirected to Zoho. Sign in as the integration user.
  4. Review the access Kompass is requesting and click Accept.
  5. You will be redirected back to the Kompass Admin with a success message.

Kompass works out which Zoho data centre your account lives in (zoho.com, zoho.eu, zoho.in and so on) during this step, so there is nothing regional to configure.

Step 3: Test the connection

  1. On the Configurations list page, select the configuration using the tick-box.
  2. From the Action drop-down, select Test connection and click Go.

Kompass reports the name of the Zoho organisation it reached. If the test fails, repeat Step 2.

Step 4: Link your existing records

Stop here if your Zoho CRM already contains accounts or contacts. Enabling the sync at this point will pull every unlinked Zoho account in as a new Kompass client, and push every Kompass client into Zoho as a new account, leaving duplicates on both sides. Link the records that already exist in both systems first.

Contact Kompass support to run the comparison. For each of accounts, contacts and deals, support produces a spreadsheet listing the Zoho record, the Kompass record it most likely matches, and a confidence score.

  1. Review each spreadsheet and confirm the suggested matches. Correct a wrong match by changing the Kompass ID, and clear the Kompass ID to leave a row unmatched.
  2. Return the reviewed files to support, who will upload them to create the links.
  3. Ask for the comparison to be re-run to confirm that only records which genuinely need creating are still unmatched.

Deals are the exception to the duplicate risk: Kompass never creates a project from a Zoho deal, so an unlinked deal is simply ignored. Linking deals is still worth doing so that projects you already track in both systems stay together.

Step 5: Configure the sync and enable it

  1. Open the configuration and select the modules to synchronise under Sync modules:
    • Clients: Kompass clients and Zoho accounts
    • Contacts: Kompass contacts and Zoho contacts
    • Projects: Kompass projects and Zoho deals
    • Quote items: publishes Kompass quote items to Zoho as quotes
  2. If you enable Contacts, enable Clients as well. A Zoho contact can only be brought across once its parent account exists in Kompass.
  3. Set the Default project category. This is used when a Zoho deal arrives that matches none of your project categories.
  4. Tick the Enable checkbox.
  5. Click Save.

Synchronisation starts within a couple of minutes.

Step 6: Map your values

Kompass and Zoho rarely use identical wording for categories, statuses and similar fields, so the configuration holds a set of maps. Each entry is a Kompass name on the left and the matching Zoho value on the right.

  • Category map: client category to Zoho account picklist value
  • Type map: client type to Zoho account type
  • Source map: project source to Zoho lead source
  • Stage map: project status to Zoho deal stage
  • Tax map: VAT rate to Zoho tax name
  • Country map: only needed where Zoho uses a country name that differs from the standard one Kompass sends

The Zoho value must match the picklist entry exactly, including capitalisation. A value that does not match is rejected by Zoho or leaves the field blank, and the record is then reconciled again on every check.

What syncs, and in which direction

  • Clients and Zoho accounts. A new Kompass client creates the account in Zoho with its current details. After that Zoho is the master copy: changes made in Zoho update the Kompass client, and later changes in Kompass are not pushed. Maintain client details in Zoho.
  • Contacts and Zoho contacts. The same rule applies.
  • Projects and Zoho deals. A new Kompass project creates the deal. The project value, category and status stay owned by Kompass and are pushed whenever they change; the descriptive fields on the deal are owned by Zoho. A deal created in Zoho does not create a project in Kompass.
  • Quote items and Zoho quotes. One-way, from Kompass to Zoho. Services used on the quote are created in Zoho as products the first time they are needed.

Kompass checks Zoho for changes roughly every two minutes, and checks for deletions every fifteen minutes. When your Zoho API credits for the day start to run low it automatically slows down to about five minutes, then returns to the normal rate once credits recover.

Deleting a record in Zoho removes the link only. The Kompass client, contact or project is left in place, and stops synchronising.

Disconnecting from Zoho

To pause synchronisation without breaking the connection, untick Enable on the configuration and save.

To disconnect completely:

  1. Go to Zoho → Configurations.
  2. Select the configuration using the tick-box.
  3. From the Action drop-down, select Disconnect from Zoho and click Go.

The sync stops immediately and the stored authorisation is revoked. Existing links are kept, so you can re-authorise later by repeating Step 2 without having to match records again.

Troubleshooting

  • Authorisation fails or times out. The authorisation request is valid for ten minutes. Start again from Step 2 and complete the Zoho sign-in without pausing.
  • You receive a "Zoho CRM" error email. These go to the addresses in Notification recipients. If the message says the connection needs re-authorising, the Zoho token has been revoked or has expired: repeat Step 2.
  • An edit made in Zoho did not reach Kompass. Check who made it. Changes made by the user that authorised the connection are ignored on purpose, which is why the integration should have its own Zoho user.
  • A record keeps updating on its own. This usually means a mapped value does not match the Zoho picklist. Review the maps in Step 6.
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