Prerequisites

Before you begin building the application, you must have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

1. Catalyst CLI
   
   Catalyst CLI contains a host of tools that enable you to initialize, develop, test, and deploy the components of your application from your local machine. We will be working with Catalyst CLI in this tutorial. You must perform these actions:

   1. Install Catalyst CLI: Catalyst CLI is installed through NPM. You must therefore have NPM and Node.js installed on your system before you install the CLI. Refer to the Install Catalyst CLI help page for details on the pre-requisites and the steps to install it.
   2. Login Catalyst CLI: After you install Catalyst CLI, you must authenticate the CLI with your Catalyst account before using it. Refer to the CLI Login help page for the steps to login from Catalyst CLI and the various options available for it.

2. GitHub Account with Repositories
   
   You must have an account on GitHub that contains one or more repositories. Ensure that the repositories contain valid files. This will enable you to test the execution of the commands in the Cliq bot, and also verify if the bot sends you an alert when you push a commit to a repository. We will access GitHub to generate an access token and to configure a webhook with Cliq.

3. Zoho Cliq Account
   
   You must have a Zoho Cliq account set up. We will access the developer console of Zoho Cliq to create and configure the extension and associate it with the Catalyst Integration function.

4. Install Python version 3.9

   Before you begin developing your application logic in Python, please ensure you have the following package manager and programming environment installed on your local machine:

   • Pip - Python Package Manager
   • Python version 3.9

   You can install Python from their official website and the pip package manager will be auto-installed in your local system. Please make sure you install the pip package manually if you install Python from other sources. You can refer to this doc for installing pip.

   Note: If you have other versions of Python installed in your local machine (any version other than Python 3.9), then the execution of the Python functions in your directory will be skipped when the application is being served or deployed.

5. Any IDE tool for Python code development

   You can use any IDE to work with the Integration function code. Some popular choices include Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, and Sublime Text. Download and install an IDE of your choice in your system.