Online applications are ideal for collaboration, especially for collaborating with users from multiple locations. These browser based applications offer convenience, mobility among many other advantages. But when you have to depend on a locally installed application, to open a document for example, breaks the flow. Integrating document editing capability within in the browser can offer seamless experience and can make users productive as well as remove the hurdle to have an installed application.

We have seen collaboration vendors like Box.net, Huddle, Knowledge Tree etc offer seamless online document editing experience using Zoho editors. Today, another online collaboration & project management vendor, Glasscubes integrated Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet into their application.

If you upload documents or spreadsheets into GlassCubes documents section, you'll notice an additional option to edit the document.

Choosing the 'Edit Document' option opens the document (including 2007 formats) in the appropriate Zoho Editors. You can make changes to the document and save it back to the Glasscubes application. Thanks to our Remote APIs, Glasscubes users need not have a Zoho account to use this functionality.

Rob Hallums explains this integration on their blog. We'd like to thank GlassCubes for integrating Zoho.

As you may know, we have APIs for many of Zoho's services. And we have a good many services implementing our APIs. This allows both Zoho's and our API partner's customers to be mutually benefited. A sample list of API Partners here.

Today, we're excited to announce the API for Zoho Projects. Developers can extend the project management and collaboration capabilities through our APIs and can build their own customized applications for their business needs. We've tried to make the API follow the REST (Representational State Transfer) principles and generate a XML/ JSON object which allows you to access / read / write Zoho Projects data from third-party systems like Google/Yahoo gadgets, web sites, billing & invoicing systems, other web-based products and do much more.

How can you access and use this API ?

Here goes a sample implementation of Zoho Projects gadget built using Zoho Projects API. The below gadget can be embedded in Facebook, Orkut, iGoogle and Gmail.

Stream of latest activities  - for all users in a project

This opens up a new chapter for Zoho Projects, and it’s just a start. With the Zoho Projects API, you will be able to build a customized CRM system with Projects, billing systems, document management, time tracking tools and other web-based products. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to post example uses and implementations for everyone to check out. We hope you will join us to share your ideas, tips and tricks with other developers in the community, through our API forums at Tips and Ideas for API.

As always, we'd love to hear your queries regarding Zoho Projects API at support@zohoprojects.com.

At Zoho, we provide APIs for a good many of our products and they have all been well received. A sample list of our API partners here. The latest one to join the list is Elementool.

Elementool provides web based project management tools for help desk, bug and defect tracking and time tracking tools. Elementool has implemented Zoho's API in their Docs module. All uploaded documents, spreadsheets and presentations to the Elementool's Docs module can now be viewed using Zoho. Not just viewing, you can edit the file too and when you save the file again, all changes get reflected in your uploaded file in the Elementool account.

Such a functionality is useful if you are uploading a lot of your project/work-related documents, spreadsheets & presentations online and want them viewed or edited then and there in the browser itself (instead of downloading each of them and editing them using a desktop application). Try Elementool out and see if it fits your needs.

We have a couple of other API collaborations happening too which we will blog about in the days to come. Stay tuned.

When we rolled out our APIs for Zoho CRM, we were looking for some interesting integrations between Zoho CRM and external applications. Well, we are excited to talk about a new integration between Zoho CRM and an Online Email Marketing application from Contactology.

Contactology is an online email marketing application that lets you send and track emails, newsletters etc. Today, they are announcing a new import driver for Zoho CRM. This means, you'll now be able to automatically export leads and contacts from Zoho CRM to Contactology's email marketing app with just a few clicks - without having to manually export and import between applications. Once the info is in their system, you can send out emails/newsletters from their application.

Contactology built this import driver to meet their own needs. They use Zoho CRM internally and wanted an automated way to import contacts from Zoho CRM to their application. This driver is now available for everyone. To see how this import driver works, take a look at the video here.

We'd like to thank the Contactology team for integrating Zoho CRM. Here is a list of our other API Partners.

WizeHive is an online application for collaborating with groups of people. A WizeHive workspace lets groups to collaborate on tasks, documents etc. In their recent version, WizeHive integrated Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet to create and view documents & spreadsheets. 

The 'Files' section in a workspace provides options to upload existing files from your desktop or create new documents/spreadsheets using Zoho editors. If you choose the document creation option, it launches Zoho Editors. Saving the documents in Zoho Editors saves them back to WizeHive. Existing documents can also be edited using Zoho Apps.

Josh Lowensohn from from CNet says..

 Starting today, WizeHive users can create and collaborate on Zoho documents from within WizeHive, and without having to open a Zoho account. Whatever they save is also stored along with the rest of their files and projects back on WizeHive.

Thanks to WizeHive for integrating Zoho Apps.

A seamless integration like this is possible because of our Remote APIs. Any third party applications looking to add document creation capabilities can take advantage of Zoho APIs to integrate Zoho Office apps (Writer, Sheet & Show) into their environment. The nice part about our APIs is, your users need not create a Zoho account to use Zoho editors. When a document is created using Zoho Apps in a third-party application, the contents are actually saved to the partner's application and no copy is maintained at Zoho's end.

We also have other partners like Box.net, Huddle, KnowledgeTree, Syncplicity, Stoneware etc who did similar integrations using our Remote APIs. If you are looking to integrate Zoho Office suite in your application, our APIs section is a good place to start. Also, take a look at other partners who integrated our APIs.

KnowledgeTree, an ECM provider who focuses on document management software is launching their SaaS offering today - KnowledgeTreeLive. This is a hosted version of their open source online document management system and it integrates Zoho for editing documents.

With this integration, KnowledgeTreeLive users will have options to create new documents and view existing documents using the Zoho Editors. When a document is created/edited with Zoho Apps, the documents are saved back to KnowledgeTree servers as they maintain complete information about your documents.



We have a unique set of APIs which let external applications programatically open documents using Zoho Apps and save them back to their own servers. Here, 'Saving back to their own servers' is an important point as it enables some interesting integration scenarios as it fits into the workflow.

We think adding document editing capabilities to other document management systems is a natural fit. But this need not be restricted to document management systems alone. To be generic, any system/application that has documents attached can add value by integrating document editors for creating/viewing/editing. We have seen some good integrations already from some of our partners and we certainly hope to see more such integrations.

We'd like to thank KnowledgeTree for integrating Zoho and looking forward to a long-term relationship.

Rabbit is a web-based operating system that connects people, processes and content, combining the power of social networking into an enterprise environment. A key component of Rabbit is its information sharing capabilities, which let users work on documents they’ve uploaded to Rabbit’s web workspace, and share this with other users. Rabbit has selected Zoho for this because of Zoho's proven ability to provide high levels of functionality and performance, and to provide a smooth transition for enterprise users from working locally on the desktop to working on the web.

All documents, spreadsheets and presentations uploaded and stored in Rabbit can be opened using Zoho. The documents and spreadsheets can be edited and saved back where as the presentations can be viewed. Below is a screenshot of files in Rabbit being opened using Zoho.



New documents and spreadsheets can be created too from inside Rabbit by invoking Zoho Writer and Sheet. This video by the Rabbit team explains the functionality in detail.