Software Integration for Zoho and Protractor

Vehicle Repair and Maintenance

.NET framework, HTTP-webhooks.

Autoplex Restyling Centers; a company based in the USA, specializing in providing car and truck owners with tinting accessories, heated car seats, truck toppers & camper shells, and other vehicle equipment.

Our customer approached us with a request for sotware integration between two essential applications they use in their business operations: Zoho and Protractor. These applications play a crucial role in organizing their automotive shop operations and managing customer relationships. Protractor software is primarily utilized to streamline the automotive shop operation. It enables users to create orders, specify the vehicles involved, identify the customer representatives associated with each order, and track order costs and client information. Additionally, Protractor automatically generates and sends invoices to clients based on the order details. Simultaneously, Autoplex relies on Zoho as its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Customers can create accounts, place orders, monitor the progress of their orders through the system, and access the complete history of their orders along with the corresponding budget expenditure.

Both the Zoho and Protractor systems share the same component: the work order. It was crucial to ensure that when a customer account was created in the web system Zoho, it would also be duplicated in Protractor, and vice versa. Conversely, when placing an order for vehicle equipment in Protractor, it should be duplicated in Zoho. To achieve this software integration, it was necessary to develop a specialized service (API) capable of synchronizing the data between both systems.  

The project was particularly interesting because such an API already existed, but it lacked significant functionality and had numerous bugs. Additionally, the source code for the latest version of the service was lost due to a lack of proper version control practices and the loss of communication with the previous software development provider.

With such an approach, the API service was functional and could operate for a certain period of time. However, due to the absence of source code, the API couldn’t be easily developed beyond that time. To address this, our team had to reproduce the working functionality almost from scratch. We followed industry standards by organizing the storage of the source code on GitHub and implemented automated deployment of the API service, allowing new code to be added and deployed automatically in the production environment.

By utilizing HTTP webhooks, we were able to monitor signals from both Zoho and Protractor, facilitating software integration. Whenever any changes occurred in the Protractor database or a new entity was created, the application would send a signal to our API. Our API would then process the signal and make the corresponding changes in Zoho. The same process works for Zoho.

Throughout the project, we addressed a significant number of bugs and resolved issues with data synchronization, including data loss and duplication, and greatly improved the data integrity tracking process. To rectify the errors made by the previous software development provider, we extensively collaborated with Zoho and Protractor support. 

The project presented a challenge of synchronizing data between two systems: Zoho and Protractor, requiring seamless software integration. To achieve this, we undertook the development of a specialized API. However, we encountered complications along the way, including an existing API that had limited functionality and numerous bugs. Furthermore, the loss of source code added to the complexity of the project.

Despite these obstacles, our team successfully recreated the required functionality from scratch. We implemented industry-standard practices and leveraged HTTP webhooks for effective data monitoring and synchronization. Through close collaboration with Zoho and Protractor support teams, we diligently addressed the identified bugs and resolved synchronization issues. Moreover, we implemented improved mechanisms for tracking data integrity.
As a result of our efforts, the customer expressed a high level of satisfaction with the final outcome of the project.