Meet the Makers: Kyle Ferrara | Zynchronise

Celebrating Catalyst-powered innovations and the developers behind them

Meet the Makers is a Q&A series that shines a spotlight on the brilliant developers in our community and showcases the diverse range of innovative solutions our community members have built using Catalyst. Join us in celebrating their achievements, learning from their journeys, and exploring how they leveraged Catalyst's capabilities to bring their visions to life.

So grab your favorite coding beverage, put on your coolest developer cap, and join us as we meet the makers who are reshaping the digital landscape with Catalyst!

Let’s kick off our Meet the Makers interview ! Today, we’re thrilled to chat with Kyle Ferrara, Chief Technical Officer at Zynchronise, part of the Both& Digital Transformation Group a passionate software engineer  who’s crafted an outstanding application leveraging Catalyst. Join us as we dive into his inspiring journey and uncover the insights behind his success.

Q1. Hi Kyle! It's a pleasure to have you with us. How did you first come across Catalyst, and what aspects of the platform made it the right choice for your project?

Hi! It's great to be here! Both& Digital Transformation is Premium Zoho Partner based in South Africa. We see Catalyst as a  key component of the Zoho stack. It allows us to experiment and push the boundaries of what's possible within the ecosystem. What's exciting is that Catalyst holds its own against platforms like AWS and Azure when it comes to serverless capabilities, especially in terms of pricing and flexible provisioning.

Q2. That's really cool! Can you tell us more about the project you built using Catalyst? What problem were you trying to solve, or what need were you focused on?

Absolutely! Our project built on Zoho Catalyst aimed to tackle a real challenge that a lot of South African businesses face: the disconnect between affordable, user-friendly payroll systems and powerful HR management tools. 

At Both&, we started Zimple by Zynchronise to create a solution that seamlessly integrates Zoho People, a cost-effective and feature rich HRMS, with SimplePay, which is a popular payroll system here in South Africa.

The core problem we were dealing with was data duplication and inefficiency. Businesses using Zoho People for HR had to manually copy leave and employee data into SimplePay for payroll and then back again. 

That not only wasted time but also increased the risk of mistakes.
Our solution connects the two platforms through SimplePay's API. This integration allows payslips generated by Zimple to combine the latest payroll info from SimplePay with up-to-date leave balances from Zoho People, all in one payslip.

Plus, those payslips are automatically saved in each employee's folder in Zoho People, giving them a single self-service interface.
This bridges the gap for businesses that want to keep their payroll provider but still need a solid HR system. By combining the strengths of both platforms, we offer a smoother, more accurate, and more cost-effective HR/payroll workflow.

And honestly, what's pretty impressive is that the entire integration from infrastructure to logic was built and is maintained by just one developer. Normally, with traditional tech stacks, this kind of cross-platform syncing would need a whole team with backend, frontend, and DevOps skills.

Q3. It's always great to see how Catalyst helps bring ideas to life. Looking back, which features or tools made the biggest impact and really helped move your project ahead?

Several Catalyst features really played a crucial role in building Zimple, and honestly, they enabled us to develop a reliable, scalable integration between Zoho People and SimplePay with minimal overhead.

We actually used AppSail to host our core application logic. Since it's a serverless container environment, it lets us run complex business workflows without having to worry about infrastructure. That was perfect for a sync-heavy integration like ours. 

And the variable provisioning strategy unlocked some pretty significant cost savings compared to the more traditional options out there.

Job Scheduling was key for automating our sync processes. We set up CRON jobs to poll both Zoho People and SimplePay at regular intervals which is especially important on payday to make sure everything stayed in sync and data remained consistent across systems.

We used SmartBrowz to generate PDF payslips. These are then automatically attached to the relevant employee records in Zoho People. It just made the whole process feel seamless.

As far as the CloudScale Suite, we used DataStore (with ZCQL) as our go-to database for storing employee, leave, and payslip data. The performance and pricing? Honestly, just a great fit for what we needed.

We used FileStore for temporarily holding files before syncing them with Zoho People. Super straightforward and reliable.Cache let us share frequently used data across AppSail instances without hitting the DB every time faster, and way more cost-effective.

As far as authentication goes, we leveraged Catalyst's plug-and-play OAuth-based auth system. It saved us from building one from scratch, which is a big time-saver.

The suite's API Gateway made it easy to manage and secure our APIs. The setup was minimal, but the impact was huge.
For web client hosting, we also deployed our frontend here, and honestly, it just worked really well alongside our AppSail backend.

The suite's domain mapping features made it super easy to map our custom domain to Catalyst-hosted resources, and the SSL was handled automatically which is always a plus.

Also, Catalyst's built-in DevOps logging tools helped us troubleshoot and fix issues quickly, both during development and once we were in production. Super helpful.

Putting it all together, Catalyst gave us a really solid, cost-effective full-stack environment. It let us focus on building the product and delivering a good user experience, instead of spending time and energy managing infrastructure.

Q4. That's great to hear! What were some of the key challenges you ran into during the development process, and how did Catalyst help you work through them? Were there any unexpected hurdles where the platform really proved its value?

The ability to iterate rapidly and simplify our solution in a custom development environment was really only possible because Catalyst made it easy for a single developer to handle everything backend logic, integrations, infrastructure, and deployment all in one place. That was a huge win for us.

One operational hurdle we ran into, though, was the lack of real-time notifications or webhooks from either platform. Things like leave submissions or payslip generation couldn't trigger syncs automatically, which made things a bit tricky.

 At first, we built some custom CRON-like logic in AppSail to get around it, but honestly, that setup became hard to manage and was kind of prone to timing issues.

So we reached out to Catalyst support, and thankfully, they gave us access to the Job Scheduling (Beta) feature. That ended up being a game-changer; it gave us a much more reliable and structured way to poll both systems at regular intervals.

 It replaced our initial workaround and really helped us build a more stable and maintainable sync process.

Q5. We're thrilled to hear about your overall experience working with Catalyst! What's it been like, and were there any features that really stood out to you?

Sure! The developer experience with Catalyst has been really positive. The platform's still evolving, and, sure, there are a few rough edges here and there but honestly, it offers a solid foundation, especially when it comes to infrastructure setup and boosting developer productivity.

Coming from a background where setting up things like authentication, CI/CD, and hosting usually meant juggling multiple tools or even needing extra team members, it was super refreshing to have just one developer manage everything. 

From the API Gateway to user authentication, it was all handled directly within Catalyst's platform.What really stood out to us was how Catalyst simplifies infrastructure and DevOps tasks. 

For example, setting up authentication or mapping a custom domain with SSL literally takes just a few clicks. Normally, those kinds of tasks would need a dedicated DevOps engineer or some serious backend setup, but Catalyst wraps it all into a really intuitive, guided UI. 

You still need to understand what you're doing, but the actual implementation is fast and straightforward.The authentication system in particular was a huge time-saver. Instead of building and securing our own login and OAuth flows, we just used Catalyst's built-in solution. 

It let us hook into providers and manage sessions with minimal configuration. Once that was in place, we could focus entirely on the frontend experience, knowing the auth and security side was already taken care of.

Now, there are still a few areas that are under development, and sometimes the documentation doesn't quite keep up with new features—but to be fair, the support team was super responsive whenever we hit a roadblock. 

Overall, the direction Catalyst is heading in feels really promising. For startups and small teams, Catalyst offers a fast way to move from idea to deployment with much of the heavy lifting already done.

Q6. Now let's talk about the impact your project has had on your target audience or users. Have you received any standout successes or memorable feedback that really highlights the value you've delivered?

Definitely! The unification of a localized system—like Simple Pay—with the Zoho One platform has reduced the time our clients have to spend performing manual reconciliations, simplified the employee experience to a single system, and created visibility of real-time leave allocation, which ultimately unlocked capacity for more meaningful tasks.

Q7. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently during the development process or any lessons learned that you'd like to share with other developers?

Sure,there are a few key lessons I’d definitely pass on to other developers using Catalyst like, don’t wait around to reach out to support. Getting help early can save you a lot of time

The Catalyst support team was very responsive and helpful, especially when we needed access to beta features like Job Scheduling. These features often address real gaps and can significantly improve your development process.

Check out and try beta feature.They’re worth exploring.Job Scheduling, in particular, solved several of our timing and sync-related challenges. It was far more elegant and maintainable than the workaround we initially built using basic CRON logic.

Set up CI/CD pipelines from the start. We initially deployed manually via the Catalyst interface—which worked, but wasn't scalable or efficient. Implementing CI/CD earlier would have saved us time and reduced deployment errors as the project grew.

Use Job Functions for heavy or long-running tasks. At first, we handled most of our logic within AppSail, but as things became more complex, we realized we could offload certain processing tasks to Catalyst's Job Functions, especially in combination with Job Scheduling. 

This would have made our architecture cleaner and easier to maintain.These are all things we would do differently next time, and they're worth considering early in the development process to make the most of what Catalyst offers.

Q8. As part of the Catalyst community, do you actively engage with other developers or contribute to the platform's ecosystem? If so, how has this involvement benefited you?

We haven't started on that yet, but it's definitely something we're eager to explore moving forward.

Q9. What do you do to take a break from coding?

I enjoy spending quality time with family and friends, whether it's relaxing or sharing good conversation. I also love walking my dogs, especially in the forest or along the beach—it's a great way to unwind and connect with nature. In my free time, I play guitar and enjoy playing video games to relax and have some fun.

Q10. Finally, what advice or words of encouragement would you offer to fellow developers who are considering or just starting to explore Catalyst for their own projects?

To any developers considering or just starting with Zoho Catalyst, I'd say go for it, especially if you're using Node.js, Python, or Java. 

Catalyst provides an incredibly fast and cost-effective way to build and deploy full-stack applications without needing a dedicated DevOps team.
One of the biggest strengths of Catalyst is how it simplifies infrastructure. Whether you're setting up authentication, hosting your frontend, managing domains, or deploying APIs, Catalyst handles it all with minimal configuration. 

It's much easier and faster to set up than traditional platforms like AWS, making it ideal for teams who need to launch quickly.
If you're working on a lean team or don't have infrastructure experts, Catalyst is excellent. 

It gives you just enough control to build serious applications, but without overwhelming you with complexity. For us, it made syncing two separate enterprise platforms possible, without building everything from scratch.

What impressed us most was that this entire project was delivered by just one developer. Catalyst makes that kind of solo development not only possible but productive, by handling so much of the infrastructure and DevOps that normally slow down small teams.

Finally, don't hesitate to engage with the support team and explore beta features early on. Features like Job Scheduling and SmartBrowz became essential to our success. 

They're mature enough to use in production and can significantly reduce the complexity of your architecture.
If your goal is to ship a reliable product quickly and without heavy infrastructure costs, Catalyst is a smart and pragmatic choice.

Stay tuned for our upcoming interviews, where we delve into the journeys of exceptional developers who have made their mark with Catalyst.

Note: If you're a developer and have used Catalyst to create an exceptional app, website, microservice, or solution, we'd love to feature you in our Meet the Makers series. Reach out to us and share your story of innovation and inspiration with the Catalyst community.