Integrations

Hi Eoin,  

Sorry for the delayed response on this, I was working to connect with another customer who had integrated ZOHO Analytics and it took a few days for us to connect. Understanding you were looking for ZOHO Inventory (vs Analytics) the integration experience should be similar. 
 
When it comes to effort, what it really comes down to is the complexity of the workflow your team plans on deploying. 

 
As an example, if the objective is to use ProntoForms for basic inventory counting, where the counts are written to a destination, the integration should be straight forward. 
 
An increase in the level of workflow complexity will ultimately reflect in the complexity of the API code to be written. This will come if there is any potential need for multiple repeatable sections on multiple tabs. To manage multiple repeatable sections on multiple tabs the customer I spoke to wrote their data to a Multi-Sheet Excel Workbook where they had one tab per equipment type to push the data to flat tables. Each tab then became a data source back out to ProntoForms.   
 
Depending on your needs, you could potentially set your destination to be Dropbox (or similar) so if also using this data as a data source for ProntoForms, have it refresh hourly to ensure the (Pronto) form has current data to reference. 

Taking this even further on the complexity scale where, for example, the details of items in your inventory need to be updated (make, model, serial number, etc) based on a specific location, then you may need to look at scripting to a third party tool and use views or if ZOHO has a tool to manage this on their side, you may be able to leverage that. 

The most time spent by the customer I spoke with on their implementation was the lengthy inbound form needed to update a piece of equipment where they needed to determine if it was a new asset or an update to an existing asset. 
 
The key takeaway is to understand your transformational vision for the complete workflow you plan to incorporate, at the onset. If it is, in fact, a simple inventory count then, as stated earlier, this should be straight forward. If it will be more complex, invest the time to map out the entire flow of data in/out and integration points along the way. Build and test in phases making sure each phase is working as expected before moving onto the next stage of the workflow. 
 
If you would like to speak to a third-party integrator at all, let me know and I can broker an introduction.

Hopefully this helps.