Page 14 - Demo

Automating Anything We have to report everythingsold at the end of every week to Mitel.There are 2 reports, one is a %u2018position%u2019 report which has details of items sold, and the other an %u2018inventory%u2019 report which shows current stock levels for each item held.We use Zoho books for this process; we raise sales orders and then invoice those sales orders. This information is already available to us, just not in the format we need to send it!We were manually taking this information from Zoho, writing it down and then keying it into a spreadsheet. This can be error prone and time consuming.The first step was to understand what we can access programmatically from Zoho. As per the introduction, a quick google of %u2018Zoho API documentation%u2019 yielded numerous results, the first one was the official page where Zoho have laid everything out. In fact, from their opening page, they proudly state: %u201cBuild integrations for Zoho using any programming language and infrastructure. Extract or input data in an XML or JSON format between Zoho and any third-party app.%u201dPerfect. Exactly what we need, and this is freely available on most software packages.So, the first thing is how to access the data. Nearly all APIs will require some kind of authentication/token to gain access. Again, providers will give instructions on how to do this.Now completed we can easily query the sales orders and invoices we need for the given time period. Mitel themselves provide a template which clearly defines what data we needed to provide and in what format. Being able to start with the end in mind and work backwards from it is a great way to deliver the solution we needed.Having done the core functionality we then wrapped this into a web page with a login so that it can be accessed from anywhere by anyone who is authorised.Example: Mitel Sales Out ReportsThis got us to an 80% solution within a couple of weeks.Nothing fancy but here is the screen: