Over 200,000 companies use Zoho CRM and Creator and, they often need a system that can take in data, add value to it and send the value-added data across Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator, and other services. Catalyst is that system.

Catalyst exposes microservices that you can send your data to and get value-added information back in return.

So what exactly is Catalyst?

Catalyst is a serverless platform from Zoho that lets you build (with ease) microservices that scale. Microservices are programs that do very specific activities like to get weather details or to get forex rates or handle compensation management, etc. To run microservices, you need a server. So it means that you essentially run your own servers with Catalyst.

Consider a case like follows:-

JoyfulMovieWeekends wants to show a movie on weekend nights.

Note: Allow pop-ups to experience the demo in full.

They have created a forum in which members can share whatever movies they have seen and the feedback for those movies. Based on the consensus, they will decide which movie to screen on the weekend.

Try filling the form.

(Non-English movie names are not fully supported for now)

1. Did you notice that when you fill in the movie name, then, suddenly but automatically the trailer of the movie gets loaded ?

2. Watch the trailer

3. Now go ahead and share your feedback. Again, did you notice that you automatically get to see a sentiment-emoji based on your feedback of the movie?

4. Go ahead and submit the form

These automatic responses are actually, microservices in action.

What really is happening?

When you key in the movie name, a microservice call is made which finds out the trailer and shows you the video.

When you fill in the feedback, a microservice call is made (in which a lot of Machine Learning has gone in by the way) which analyzes the text and gets back with an emoji to reflect the sentiment.

You have now seen both Creator -> Catalyst and Catalyst -> Creator flows in action.

What happens when you submit the form?

Whenever someone submits the form,  a call goes from Creator to Catalyst and in turn, Catalyst calls CRM to create a Lead in CRM so that the marketing team can follow up with the customer. The lead name is stamped as JoyfulMovieWeekends. Here we have achieved Catalyst to CRM flow of data and information.

Also, consider that there are more JoyfulMovieWeekends folks who are collecting the survey data in a text file which they later upload to Catalyst.

Note: This is not shown in the demo for keeping the UI flow simple.

Upon receiving the uploaded file in Catalyst, the following actions happen:-

a) The file is downloaded from the Catalyst File Store. (Yes, there is indeed a separate area in Catalyst for just holding files)

b) The file is parsed and read line by line.

c) For each line, a call is made to Creator and an entry made in the form which in turn triggers the Text Analysis Microservice and also the Movie Trailer Microservice in Catalyst. Also as seen above, whenever the call to Catalyst is made, Leads in CRM also get created with Last Name as JoyfulMovieWeekends-N

Here we see Catalyst to Creator and then Creator to Catalyst and Catalyst to CRM flow of data and information.

This is how the Creator form looks like when all the data is imported. Note that the Movie Trailer and Sentiment fields are auto-populated.

This post is to showcase how one can interact with Creator, Catalyst and CRM.

While we have showcased Text Analytics Microservice in Catalyst available out-of-the-box in Catalyst, we have also shown you a custom microservice (Movie Trailer Microservice) in this particular post. Catalyst will keep on providing many such microservices out of the box that you can leverage easily to add value to your data.

Here is the information-flow/architecture diagram for easy understanding -

The Github URL is as follows:-

https://github.com/catalystbyzoho/learncatalyst-creatorcatalystconnection-node

We welcome all queries from you, which you can either post here or you can write to us at support@zohocatalyst.com.
Await for the next post in the Learn Catalyst Series.

- Team Catalyst