RYSA Technologies and Services - Blog #SAAS&Cloud

How to Automate PDF Data Extraction in Zoho Creator with AI

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 13:04:39 +0530

Introduction

One of the widespread practices in any industry nowadays is the electronic way of sharing documents in PDF format. These PDF documents are very much part of e-KYC procedures, bank statements, financial statements, research reports, etc. If you are from any industry, you always have the challenge in converting some of the structured content into data in any application platform. It could be an in-house developed application or off-the-shelf applications. You will either be forced to do the boring job of doing data entry of multiple records manually or relying on a data entry person. This will take your considerable time, resources, and investment as well. Also, the accuracy of the manual data entry will be questionable if there are any issues to be investigated from the application back to the PDF documents.

How to solve this problem?

There are million ways to solve this problem depending upon the expertise and resources available at your disposal. However, by adopting the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), this job will be made easy and accurately done.

Low Code App and Gemini Integrated Solution

Let us assume your finance department needs to produce consolidated reports, selective reports which require certain calculations and any other integration with other systems.

Assuming all your documents are in PDF, which are collected over a period of time. If your management wants to see those data presented in a single report or bunch of reports for decision making, a Low Code Platform like Zoho Creator will be very handy.

Zoho Creator will allow you to design the forms, reports, pages, and workflow necessary to process, enter, and present the data in any supported format. However, with your scenario of uploading PDF documents into the Creator database, it may not be straight forward. As we mentioned before, you can have an integrated solution that helps to achieve the same.

Gemini API

Gemini API will help in processing the structured PDF documents and provide a structured JSON response. Using the REST API based integration provided by Gemini, the collected response can be further processed and transformed into individual fields by Zoho Creator Deluge scripts. By defining the correct prompt for the Gemini Text Processing API, the resultant JSON will be accurate to extract the relevant fields from the uploaded PDF.

Example, you can have a Zoho Creator file upload form that will allow you to upload the PDF file. Upon uploading of the file, Zoho Creator workflow has to be triggered. This will work with Gemini API to read through the file and return JSON content (content will be defined in the Prompt which is part of the Gemini API Payload). From the Zoho Creator end, we can quickly process the response and right away insert the mapped fields into the Zoho Creator Form.

Sample Invoice Processing - Review:

An invoice ideally contains the Supplier, Client, and Billing address, tax details, along with data of the invoice, invoice number, plus the line items and the sub total of prices and final price.

By collecting all the relevant details in the invoice PDF, Gemini will be intelligent enough to give a JSON response that will hit your Zoho Creator record smoothly.

All the work that has to be done from the Zoho Creator implementation is to map the fields of JSON with the relevant fields of Zoho Creator. By doing this, a PDF will become a record in no time.

Assuming you have a high volume of PDF files to be processed, we can have a schedule to collect them from the shared drive and process them in batches. All this means for a person who handles the work is to place the PDF documents under the correct folder for the batch process to kick off.

What is the difference between OCR fields of Creator VS Gemini Integration?

Even though Zoho Creator has an OCR AI field to process images and convert them into text, the accuracy is not warranted. That is the reason, Gemini's efficiently trained models take care of this processing quite easily. Also, the development of models and training them at Zoho end is no longer needed.

Conclusion

As we discussed above, a question may arise why should we use Zoho Creator here? Reason being, the presentation of data in dashboards, different style reports, quick to scale up and efficient third party integration via REST API will be an ideal choice for any department who deals with the laborious work of manual pdf conversions into data.

If you have more questions and any implementation assistance, feel free to reach out to us here.

ERP for PO Management and Workflow with Zoho Creator

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 18:27:20 +0530

“Reduce complexity through standardization.” -Michael L. George

Introduction

Purchase Order management is one of the fundamental aspects of any business where a single or multiple suppliers are involved in providing materials to run your business. Managing the PO effectively and releasing the funds to the suppliers play a vital role in making your business grow as well.

Although there are so many ways to manage your POs either in a notebook by handwritten notes, excel sheets where you can manage or a high cost PO Software which has wide varieties of features and reports which you never use.

Fundamental requirements of a Business For PO Management

In a small/medium size company, a Purchase Order is the one sent out by a supplier or multiple suppliers to push their products after acceptance of the quote by a customer. Upon sale, invoices will be generated and expected to be paid by the company on agreed payment terms.

The problem of validating the Purchase Orders from multiple suppliers for making a product will be a daunting task. That includes the right supply of materials, quantity, quality, credit limits, payment terms, etc. Not each supplier has the same template or model for you to work with.

In addition, in some of the organizations, before the Purchase orders are converted into Sale, the total cost or sales amount to the company involves multiple levels of approval before released by the Finance Team. What this means is, let us say you are buying raw materials/seeking services from a supplier where the cost involved is $100,000. A front desk PO processing agent cannot be able to approve the same or communicate to the supplier to raise the invoice. It has to go through different department approvals and finally marked as Fully Approved for the Finance Team to release funds.

Imagine the above mentioned activity is handled in the excel sheets/hand-written notes. It will be a total disarray, and the relationship with the suppliers will also get affected. As we saw before, there are wide varieties of high-cost software available in the market with high prices. However, specific requirements of your business related modification or customization need a lot of efforts and investment.

How to have a PO ERP System to match your needs?

In order to have a PO ERP System to match your specific needs of tracking, approving, invoicing, and reporting, a custom application alone will be the solution. Simultaneously, you may want to integrate that application with your Books, Inventory, Approval cycle, Warehouse, etc., as well.

Investing the money on building the software by going through a traditional way of purchasing separate UI/UX Software, Servers, database, storage, development resources and maintenance will shoot up your budget if you are a small/medium size enterprise. To reduce the development cycle and also get the best quality software that can be scalable, secured, and extendable for any integrations, you have to go with Low Code Platform software. By choosing this, you will be able to get the software developed in real quick time and ready for use in cycles/phases.

How Zoho Suite Helps here for this?

Zoho Creator, a low code platform software, helps in rapid development of the ERP. In addition, the application developed in the platform is web/mobile/tab friendly and also allow you to white label or brand based on your corporate standard. By adopting the platform, you can plan to develop applications in multiple phases or cycles. Given, the application is ready to use right away by the development team, as a decision maker/business owner, you should have a hands-on experience before you proceed with go live.

Coming back to the ERP discussed for PO Management, the stakeholders involved here are:

Suppliers
Front desk operators
Internal Approvers
Finance Team

All these stakeholders have to operate in the same application, but with a specific set of roles and responsibilities. This can easily be achieved by using the customer portal feature of Zoho Creator. Using this, specific departments deal with their own approvals and rejections quite easily.

Abundant Integration features:

As we also mentioned about integration, the Zoho Creator app will allow your ERP to be integrated with your legacy systems or with other finance applications if you already use them. Confined to the Zoho suite for this use case, below are possible integrations you can think of:

Zoho Email Notifications (for email alerts)
Zoho Books Integration (for accounts/book keeping/invoicing)
Zoho Inventory (to update your stocks)
Zoho Sign (for digital Sign of the documents)
Zoho Analytics Based Dashboard
Zoho CRM for supplier/lead management as well

Conclusion

Given, Purchase Order Management requires a clear planning and fund management for the organization as well as their production/services, it is critical to have a system in place for the Business Owners to handle them effectively. Zoho Suite of products will help in solving these problems quite easily.

For more help, fell free to reach us at: contact

Digital Automation of Dental Health Services

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 11:53:00 +0530

"A smile is a curve that sets everything straight." ― Phyllis Diller

Introduction

A Dental Services Clinic will have a wide variety of services for the patients which includes registration of the patient, booking of appointments, collection of Consents prior to treatment, complete record entry/updates of patient, X-Ray/dental scan reports, treatment procedure advise, follow up treatments, billing, payment processing, etc., Managing all these manually will be a very difficult task even for a small clinic with less than 50 patients on a daily visit.

However, with the abundance of technology availability, using Low Code platforms like Zoho Creator make the whole chain of operations relatively easier and allow the management and Dental practitioners to make a proactive mode of treatments and actions.

Challenges

Below listed points are some of the challenges we have in a Dental Clinic.

Long Registration Process

Given, the patient has to fill up lengthy application forms to register, which involves collecting demographic information along with medical specific details; filling them up manually will be time-consuming and cause the operation team to be busy in dealing with multiple patients at the same time.

Manual Consent Forms and Historical Reports Collection

Also, getting the consent from the patient involves filling out another form and Sign. If you get this form in a simple webform, the patient can simply tick the consent and can even Sign in the screen itself. The stored information can be a permanent record kept in his/her file.

Likewise, the periodic reports can be scanned and uploaded in the patient file and stored in the system. Even if the patient does not bring his old records, the storage can give the complete picture of the patient data since on boarded in the system.

Appointment Booking

Even at this information age, most of the clinics still maintain a paper/excel sheet to manage appointments. Any updates/reschedules/removals will cause further confusion, and the maintenance of the same will be a nightmare. By having a proper Appointment Booking form, we should be able to fill up fresh data for new patients who called for an appointment, and we will be able to auto populate the data for the registered patients in the system. Even we can link the Patient Record file in the appointment report itself for the doctors to view what was done before and others.

Along with Email/SMS/WhatsApp integration, the patient can be notified real time once the appointment is booked. Likewise, a reminder email/SMS/WhatsApp notification can be sent to the patient a day before their scheduled appointments. With specific reports like current day and next day appointments, the operations team can also manage the data and update/notify both patients and doctors quite easily.

Laboratory Reports and samples status

In most of the dental procedures, the dental service provider refers the patients to a specific lab for their reports to be done. In some of the cases, the labs which deal with the procedure, at times, make an incorrect procedure due to a wrong patient prescription. By unifying the data of the patients with the Laboratory department/company, where the relevant person accesses the prescription via a customer portal, it reduces the mistakes and improves accuracy. Even the doctors have the data view even before the patient arrives and can even let the lab to redo the procedures if the reports are not clear/incorrect.

Feedback of Patients

The final feedback of patients of the overall procedure and services of the clinic has to be captured for improving the service has to be made easy. Again, asking the paper form to fill up feedback may not be effective.

How does Zoho Creator Low Code Platform Help here?

As you see, the above challenges are very much of basic nature if not taken seriously will cause severe issues for both the clinic, patient, and servicing doctors. Zoho Creator, a low code platform, will help in completely digitizing the operations in a very smooth manner. Some of the below features can be added advantages along with Zoho Creator application.

Zoho Creator Customized application development allows you to have a quick development of forms, reports, and pages based on the need.
Generation of QR code of Unique ID (UHID) of patients and scan the same UHID for multiple actions by Doctors, Front Desk and Lab technicians ensure accuracy and improve productivity. You can refer the link for generating QR Codes.
Integration of Finance applications like Zoho Books help in pushing the Billing actions easy to manage for accountants who do not have to worry about the application logic.
Dedicated Profiles setup for Doctors, Patients, Technicians, and Operations team will ensure the subset of data is visible and relevant to their roles. This is achieved by using the Customer Portal with simple configuration in Zoho Creator. For managing profiles, customer portals, you can refer this link
Email Notifications and SMS/WhatsApp Integrations help real-time and scheduled alerting easy for application management team.
Dashboards with Zoho Analytics Integration give us good insight of data for the Management Team

Conclusion

As the Low Code Zoho Creator application simplifies the operations of a clinic/hospital, digitalization will be very valuable for a long-term perspective.

Automation of Legal Contracts using Zoho suite

Tue, 30 May 2023 12:15:43 +0530

“Thought is measurable; intelligence is not.”― J. Krishnamurti

Introduction

Contracts or legal agreements between parties occur in all businesses. However, the paperwork is mostly based on a specific template for a business with only the data differ for the parties involved. In addition to this, the Signatures of the parties too have to be either manual or scanned and imprinted.

Zoho Writer, Zoho Creator and Zoho Sign combination will help in Document template creation, customization of the data entry based on template selection and finally the e-Sign of documents will be done quickly and securely.

Use Case

Assuming you are running a real estate firm which takes care of creating rental agreements/contracts for the Land Lords and Tenants. There will be a definite template you have to stick with for the overall terms and conditions as well as clauses.

The different data which you normally enter are date of agreement, names of tenant and landlord, property name and location, renewal frequency and the agreement period validity. Every time you have to open the template document and find/replace the old data with new information. This at time may be causing incorrect entries and needs proofreading manually. Finally, in order to get the Signature of the parties involved, you will have to wait for the best time for both to arrive and do physical sign and other issues.

To avoid this difficult or duplicate process, Zoho Creator app with simple data entry form along with Zoho Writer which holds the Document Template and fields to be populated from the data entry form. Upon filling up the Zoho Creator Form, the values which are entered in the front end will automatically be mail merged into a new Document based on your naming convention. This document is an extract of the template created by you/your company. Upon submission of the form, the API integration takes care of populating the right fields with the right values, sending the document for Signature to both parties.

Below are the mandatory items needed to make this work:

1) A document template for the contract with the relevant fields configured in Zoho Writer along with Signature fields

2) A valid Zoho Sign License to take care of sending notifications to the parties to Sign and complete

3) A Basic Zoho Creator Form with the API Integration of Zoho Writer and Zoho SIgn workflows to complete the overall flow.

Advantages of Zoho Suite

Zoho Creator helps in preparing the relevant form and also generates document based on the template. The workflow optimization uses the Integration APIs of Zoho Writer helps in populating the template with right field values. Thus, it ensures error free documentation for the contract. Finally, with the e-Signature features of Zoho Sign helps in fully automating the overall business process and reduce the manual tasks and also storage of documents in electronic format. Finally, the productivity and cost saving is huge by having the simplified accurate process of contracts or legal documents.

Conclusion

Contracts, Legal Agreements and other key documentation processes involved in every big enterprise. These are time-consuming and also delay the execution of a contract. The adoption of cloud based Zoho Creator Low code app with the integration of Zoho Writer/Sign helps in solving these challenges effectively.

You can check this app for further information.

Managing PDF documents Using Zoho Creator

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 16:07:18 +0530

“There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them.” – Seth Godin

Introduction

In today's digital age, PDF documents have become a ubiquitous file format for sharing information. However, it's not uncommon to find yourself with multiple PDF files that need to be merged into one for easier organization or sharing. That's where PDF merge applications come in handy.So, whether you're a student, professional, or anyone who works with PDF documents regularly, this blog will provide you with valuable insights on how to merge PDF files quickly and easily.

Use Case

Let's say you have a company where you send life insurance quotation to client based on the need and also merge a catalogue along with all the other product details for reference to the client.

Here's how it could work:

The life insurance agent or broker gathers multiple life insurance quotes from various insurance providers.

Each quote is saved as a separate PDF file.

Using a PDF merge tool, the agent can combine all of the PDF files into a single document.

The agent can then add a cover letter or introduction to the merged PDF document that explains the various options and highlights any particular benefits of each plan.

The merged PDF document can then be sent to the client's business via email or a secure file-sharing platform.

By using a PDF merge tool, agent can save time and effort by combining all of the necessary information into a single document. This can make it easier for the client's business to review and compare the various life insurance options, and can help to streamline the overall process of selecting and purchasing life insurance coverage.

How Zoho Suite Helps in Automating this?

Zoho offers a suite of productivity tools that can be used to create and manage PDF files, including PDF merge.By using the Zoho suite of products in conjunction with the PDF merge, you can create, manage, and merge PDF files with ease, all from one platform namely a Zoho Creator Application which covers both your business process workflow and digitalized documents share/sign/email.

Conclusion

So if you find yourself struggling to manage multiple PDF files, consider using a PDF merge Integration with your existing application to simplify the process and streamline your workflow. In addition, you can leverage the digital signing platforms viz Zoho Sign to get the documents signed digitally as part of compliance.

Simplify Business Data Monitoring with Zoho Creator

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 12:12:13 +0530

“Data really powers everything that we do.” — Jeff Weiner

Introduction

Zoho Creator Applications can be made powerful data monitoring tools which allow businesses to monitor their real time data and give business insights. It provides users with the ability to track and analyse their data, allowing them to make informed decisions quickly and accurately. With Zoho Creator Applications, small and medium businesses can stay on top of their data by monitoring changes in customer behaviour, sales trends, leads pipelines, sources and more. Additionally, they can set up automated alerts to be notified when certain conditions are met or exceeded. This makes it easy for businesses to stay informed and make decisions based on the most up-to-date information.

Use Case

Let us say you own a distribution company of certain manufactured products. You supply these goods/products to different show rooms in multiple cities and also deliver them directly to selective customers. By collecting the data of which distributors are selling more products, which products are overall popular demand, who are the repeated customers, delivery status of the orders, distributors PO request status, pending payments, different warehouses stock status, etc., you can make informed decisions easily.

Using Zoho Creator you can develop applications which can help in managing the back end data and also business insights dashboards to monitor without going to every report for validation. Although, there are multiple products like Zoho Analytics provide comprehensive dashboard, the use case here is selective to Small and Medium enterprises who would want to have a concise dashboard with lightweight requirements to capture data.

Below sample screenshot will give an idea to senior management to measure the day to day progress of the orders, sales to shop/customers, stock details, etc., without waiting for any manual help or assistance to them.

Why Zoho Creator ?

Zoho Creator is a low-code platform that allows users to create custom web and mobile applications with limited/no coding. One of the features of Zoho Creator is the ability to create dashboards that display data from your application in a visual format.It's worth noting that Zoho Creator also has pre-built dashboards templates that you can customize to suit your needs and you can also integrate with other Zoho services to make the Dashboard more powerful and interactive.

Notification support and integration with Zoho Creator will also help in making pre-emptive decisions to run the business in a smooth manner.

Conclusion

Data monitoring is a crucial aspect of any business or organization. It allows businesses to track performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. By leveraging the right tools and techniques, businesses can gain a competitive edge and improve their bottom line.Besides the technical aspect, it's also important to have a clear data governance policy and to establish a data-driven culture within the organization. This ensures that data is being collected, stored, and analysed in a consistent and ethical manner.

Overall, data monitoring is essential for any business looking to stay competitive in today's data-driven world. By implementing the right solution and fostering a data-driven culture, businesses can improve their performance and make better decisions.

Facial recognition using Zoho Creator App

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 13:02:05 +0530

“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.”

– Leo Burnett

Introduction

Facial recognition is a technique that has been around for some time now, but recent advancements have made it more accessible and accurate. It’s not just used by government or law enforcement agencies anymore - it has found its way into the lives of regular people too. In this article you can find how facial recognition be used/implemented in Zoho Creator

Use Case

Facial recognition technology is used in various industries like Manufacturing, Retail, Hotel, Events and Entertainment, Health, Banking and Education.

Imagine if you run a factory and like to track the attendance of the employees who are working in the plant currently in their shift.

The employee master is already uploaded into the application with their photos/images.

You can use a Smart Phone/Tablet at the entry gate to take a photo of the employee during entry at the gate. Once the photo is clicked, the application will recognize the employee's face and will update the status of the relevant employee's record. Based on the successful recognition, you can configure your workflow to mark attendance, record his Time-In, alert if needed to Department Head, etc. using Zoho Deluge scripts. Likewise, when the employee leaves the factory a photo can be taken. This can even be made self-service just by hanging the Tab at exist gate or with a concierge/security desk. Upon taking the snap, the application recognizes the face of your employee/visitor and updates the employee data/visitor register. Using this system you will have full data log/audit log of the employee's activities inside the factory.

Using Zoho Creator Solution

Zoho creator Mobile App with the camera support of the Tablet/Phone devices will enhance the image capture of the face and validate at the backend of the supported third party vendor image repository. With the developed workflow and data available in Zoho Creator backend, you can easily scan through the database of people and provide a valid responses. For this specific use case, the data collected upon Time In and Time Out helps attendance tracking and also ensure a valid/allowed personnel to visit the premises. In addition, the geo fencing features will also help in handling the application use within the stipulated area.

Conclusion

Given the need of technological adoption to smoothen the registration processes and repeat customer data collection, tracking of attendance and reporting common across different businesses, the Low Code Platform of Zoho Creator with the integration of Facial Scan software will help enterprises to manage their business efficiently with less investment on technology and quick deploy solutions.

If you want to integrate or plan to use such features in your existing app or new app, feel free to contact us on our chat or Contact Us Form.

Enhancing Customer Services with Zoho Suite

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 13:55:38 +0530

"Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer."

– Denis Waitley

Introduction

The way businesses are run today has changed drastically due to the introduction of new technologies and the digital space.There was a time when customers and businesses had limited interactions but in the digital age customers are given the option to interact with the businesses.

Zoho suite of products will help businesses move on to the digital space they are looking for.Zoho will act as a one-stop shop for any function across your business.

Use Case

Let us say you are an Insurance service provider. You let customers login to your customer portal and register themselves.

Once the customer is registered they will be able to select the policy and pay for it. During the process, if the customer is stuck or has difficulty in the process they will need assistance.

This is where technologies like Live chat, Raise a ticket or calling directly to a customer support executive will be needed.

Imagine the customer has certain doubts about the policy and would like to chat with an agent using the live chat option.The live chat can be made available at the bottom right corner of the page so that the customer will be able to chat with an agent.This chat can also be done using a chatbot when the agent is not available or busy with another client.

If the customer wants to raise an issue via email they will be able to do it via a self-service form with the details of the issue and submit. The submitted data will be generated as a ticket which is either assigned to an agent who works with the customer until the issue is solved.

If the customer wants to speak to a support person directly, there is an option in the live chat to make an online call directly with a support person to make it interactive and help in speedy resolution.

Solutions Using Zoho Products

The digital process of on-boarding a customer via the customer portal and letting them choose a service and giving them the best customer service and support can be done using a suite of products which expose their API for integration.

For the specific use case here, below Zoho products are considered:

1.Zoho Creator can take care of the front end of the app interaction with the customer as well as the onboarding of the customer to the application. The app is also mobile/tab/web friendly so that the user can work on the move without any issues.

2.Zoho SalesIQ can take care of the live chat option through with the customer will also be able to call the support person directly. The ChatBot option enables the customer to submit queries which will be answered by a bot when the agents are offline or busy.

3.Zoho Desk will take care of generating tickets raised by the customer which are either submitted in a form or sent by email.

Conclusion

By adopting digital solutions, businesses can seamlessly integrate their services with high productivity and accountability too. Happy Customers will be able to rate your services and also give you repeat business and references too.

Supply Chain Automation and Microservices with Zoho Platform

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 16:05:13 +0530

“When services are loosely coupled, a change to one service should not require a change to another.”

― Sam Newman

Introduction

Microservices architecture enables an organization to evolve its technology stack.The goal is that teams can bring their services to live independent of each other. Microservices reduces all types of dependencies and the complexities around it.

Zoho Creator, a low code platform for custom application development leverages the microservices architecture which allows you to prepare independently deployable components owned by a small team. Any issues in the services can be easy to identify/fix and easy to redeploy as the processes can be very agile.

Use Case

Let us say you have a SME dealing with confectionery. In your business you will have to deal with different services like Shipping items between Multiple warehouses, Inventory management, Accounts/Books Keeping.

Let's assume you have a centralized/primary warehouse where all the stock will be received which acts as a hub for all the other warehouses. The items will be moved from the main warehouse to other warehouses according to the stock availability and the needs of the other warehouses. This will be managed by the logistics team.

Once the items are transferred to the respective warehouses, the stock in each warehouse has to be managed using an inventory management team. This team keeps track of the stock in each warehouse and makes sure that the inventory is always ready for supply and also notifies if the stock is less for a particular item and helps in configuring reorder.

After the inventory is accurately captured, relevant staff can manage the inventory management effectively. Next, the Accounts/Books keeping of the finance team comes into action. This team does all the accounting work like generating invoice, keeping track of the invoice payments, tax filing, and due payments.

All the above teams are separate microservices which work independent of each other. The data can be shared between each team if required. This makes each team independent and makes sure the dependencies are reduced between the services.

Solution Using Zoho Products

This entire process of shipping items from/to the warehouse, Stock keeping/Management, Accounting and Financing can be done by using a simple integration via APIs of supported products. For the specific use case here, below Zoho products are considered:

1.Zoho Creator can take care of the front end of the app interaction with the customer as well as the workflow of the production line in the back end of the application. The app is also mobile/tab/web friendly so that the user can work on the move without any issues.

2.Zoho Inventory takes care of all the materials that are kept in the inventory. This also enables you to manage the stocks in the multiple warehouses, shifting of goods from one warehouse to other, etc.

3.Zoho Books takes care of all the accounting part of the application such as Invoice processing, sale order management, vendor/customers data capture, Tax filing and reports of Balance Sheets/Cash Flow and others.

By combining/integrating these three products together, you will be able to build a microservice that can take care of the business in an efficient and productive way.

The data can also be organized and maintained securely.

Conclusion

Microservice architecture improves productivity by breaking down the application into smaller autonomous fragments. Thus it is making it easier to build and maintain. Continuous integration and continuous delivery are key which gives an agile approach that allows cross-functional teams to work together.Based on the needs of each component, customization will be simple and quick which helps you to improve business operations as well.

Building Business Centric Microservices Using Zoho Creator

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 16:13:50 +0530

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― J. Krishnamurti

Introduction

Microservices provide both a business centric and technology/architecture centric approach for developing software applications. They allow you to decouple or loosely couple the components/services connected using API services framework.

Zoho Creator a low code platform for custom application development leverages the microservices architecture which makes you to prepare independently deployable components owned by a small team. Any issues in the services can be easy to identify/fix and easy to redeploy as the processes can be very agile.

Use Case

Let us say you have to process the Insurance claims submitted by the customer which require to be screened, validated and finally processed by the teams of different skill set.

A customer portal for the customers to login and submit the claims, the operations team to validate the submitted claims and pass them to the Finance Team for processing and finally settlement of the claim amount to the customer. At the high level, we have UI component/Login Page in the portal, Zoho Creator workflows/business logic code, the e-Signing of documents where needed, the invoice generation and payment gateway to settle the claimed amount online.

Taking the specific use case here, the suite of products in the flow are, Zoho Creator customer portal (self service portal), Zoho Creator App for processing, Zoho Sign for e-Signature, Zoho Books for generating invoice, a third party payment gateway integration like PayPal, Razorpay etc. All these products can be integrated via API with proper security access tokens/API Keys. Also, you can make the supplementary components like Invoicing, E-Sign, Payment gateway integration as independent reusable components. This helps in reusability across multiple business processes or applications as well. This reduces the cost of developing again separately for different requirements.

Advantages of Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator helps in preparing the relevant forms/reports/workflows for the application to interact with customers and internal staff. In addition, with the OAUTH based authentication between the other Zoho suite of products via API help in smooth integration. In this case, you can completely prepare the relevant set of forms for Zoho Invoice to generate an invoice, prepare the templates or documents to be used for electronic Signature in Zoho Sign, the in built payment workflow helps in configuring the payment gateway like PayPal or Razorpay (India). In case of any other third party API to be used for any of these operations can be integrated to Zoho Creator via API with limited coding and in a highly secured manner.

Conclusion

Microservices a framework or architecture will help any business to make applications as loosely coupled components. This helps them in a long term to maintain and enhance the features quite easily with very little turnaround time. The choice of the Integration via API helps in choosing different products to evaluate and manage your cost/productivity in an efficient manner.