With the Zoho People integration, you can automatically transfer employee master data and absences from Zoho People to ZEP. Zoho People is an HR system for internationally based teams. Zoho People remains the leading system.

Data direction:
• Employee data: Zoho People → ZEP
• Absences: Zoho People → ZEP
• Time entries: ZEP → Zoho People, optional

Product line availability

Note: The Zoho People interface is included in all product lines.

For setup and configuration, you need the Administration Area permission with Edit under Roles & Permissions. Administrators always have this permission.

Prerequisites

To set up the integration, you need:

Access to the Interface Marketplace in ZEP
A Zoho People account with sufficient permissions
An OAuth2 app created in Zoho with Client ID and Client Secret, and the ability to authorize an OAuth2 connection in the browser
The matching Zoho data region: Europe, United States, or India
Your Zoho Organization ID
Reasons for Absence created in ZEP for the leave types that are to come from Zoho People

Setting up the integration

In ZEP, go to Administration > Interfaces > Interface Marketplace. Select Zoho People and click Configure.

Then configure the integration on its detail page. Under OAuth2 Setup Instructions, ZEP shows the Callback URL (Redirect URI). Enter this URL as the redirect URI in your Zoho OAuth app.

Under Authentication Settings you enter:

Client ID and Client Secret: from your Zoho OAuth app.
Region: the region where your Zoho People data is stored, that is Europe, United States, or India. The default is Europe. This is important for establishing the correct connection and meeting data protection requirements (e.g. GDPR).
Organization ID: your numeric Zoho organization ID.

Then click Connect with OAuth2. You will be redirected to Zoho in the browser and grant ZEP a one-time authorization to retrieve data. The access token is then renewed automatically, so no repeated login is required.

Under Sync Master Data and the following areas you define what is transferred:

Import Employees: adopts employee data from Zoho People. Active by default.
Username Generation: defines how ZEP forms the username for newly imported employees. Available are the external employee ID, the email prefix with ID, FirstName.LastName, the first letter of the first name with the last name, the email prefix on its own and the full email address. The default is the email prefix with ID.
Export Time Entries: transfers time entries from ZEP to Zoho People. Inactive by default.
Import Absences: adopts absences from Zoho People. Active by default.

Under Employee Defaults you find the defaults for newly imported employees:

Default Price Group: the price group code new employees receive. The default is 01. The code must exist in ZEP.
Show Cost Accounting: defines whether imported employees may view their own expense report under My Reports. Switched off by default.

If custom fields for employees exist in ZEP and fields with the same name exist in Zoho People, they are automatically taken into account during import.

Data transfer

The integration transfers the following data from Zoho People into ZEP:

Employees

ZEP imports the following employee data from Zoho People:

Zoho employee ID
Email address
First and last name
Mobile number
Personnel number (from the Zoho Financial ID)
Full address (street, postal code, city, country)
Start date and end date, if available

Start and end dates are stored as employment periods in ZEP. ZEP primarily uses the Zoho employee ID for matching. The email address can be used as a fallback.

In addition, ZEP applies two assignments, provided an entry with exactly the same name exists in ZEP:

Category: The Zoho field Department becomes the employee category. It replaces the categories previously assigned to the employee.
Department: The Zoho field Entity Name becomes the department in ZEP.

Create matching categories and departments in ZEP before the first synchronization. You use departments with the Locations & Departments area.

Note: The interface creates the working time model itself: the hours from the Zoho field Expected working hours per business day on every day from Monday to Friday, or 8 hours per day if Zoho People has no value, valid from the start date. If ZEP has a holiday calendar with the name of the Zoho location, the working time model receives that calendar, otherwise the Standard calendar. Every synchronization resets the most recent working time model in ZEP to these values. New employment periods receive a vacation entitlement of 30 days, which you can adjust per employee in ZEP.

Absences

ZEP imports approved absences from Zoho People:

Assignment to the employee
Absence type
Start and end date
Reason or note
Indication of whether the absence is full-day, half-day, or hourly

Only approved absences are transferred. The synchronization covers a three-year period (previous, current, and next year). ZEP automatically recognizes which entries are new, changed, or deleted.

Assigning absence reasons

For an absence from Zoho People to arrive in ZEP, the Zoho People leave type must be assigned to a ZEP absence reason. You make this assignment on the absence reason itself, under Administration > Overtime & absences > Reasons for Absence. There, below the Abbreviation, is the field External Connector ID. Enter the name of the leave type there exactly as it is written in Zoho People.

For a leave type without an assignment, ZEP transfers nothing; the synchronization still transfers all other absences. After the first synchronization, check whether the absences of all leave types in use have arrived in ZEP, and add missing assignments.

Example: If the leave type in Zoho People is called Casual Leave, enter the external connector ID Casual Leave on the ZEP absence reason Urlaub. The ZEP abbreviation stays untouched, both systems keep their own names.

Time entries

Data direction ZEP → Zoho People. This transfer is inactive by default and is switched on with Export Time Entries. Per entry, the start and end of the working time are transferred. Zoho People receives them as attendance entries. Entries from the previous month and the current month are included, for employees adopted from Zoho People.

This makes the working times recorded in ZEP available in Zoho People as well, without entering them there a second time.

Synchronization and log

ZEP synchronizes the data hourly in the background. ZEP also handles the various date formats that may be delivered from Zoho People.

Zoho People remains the leading system for the imported data. Make changes in Zoho People – ZEP picks them up automatically in the next sync.