Planning an integration
This page is for the owner who is asked to connect the site with another system. Every integration is a small project: it needs a purpose, an interface, an account, a plan for when it fails, and an owner. Exponential offers several interfaces; your partner chooses the technical one, but the decisions on this page are yours.
Contents
- The interfaces Exponential offers
- Seven questions
- Data protection
- When it fails
- Integration plan template
The interfaces Exponential offers
| Interface | Good for | Read |
|---|---|---|
REST API (ezprestapi) | apps and front ends that read content; writes at v2 | The REST API for owners |
Remote services (expservices) | scripts and portals that do what the administration does | Remote services (expservices) |
| RSS, Atom and podcast feeds | other sites, aggregators and directories that read your news | RSS and podcast feeds |
| RSS import | bringing another site's feed in as content | RSS feeds |
The syndication extension | sharing content between installations, one-way or two-way | Feeds and syndication |
| Directory sign-in (LDAP and others) | staff signing in with their company account | Directory sign-in and LDAP |
| Payment gateways | the store's payments | Payment gateways for businesses |
| CSV export | form submissions, account lists, sub-item lists | Collected information |
Seven questions
- What is it for? One sentence; what changes for visitors or staff.
- Which direction? The site reads, the site is read, or both.
- Which data? Content, users, orders, form submissions; how much, how often.
- Which account? A dedicated account with a narrow role, not a person's account (The REST API for owners).
- Which credential? OAuth2 for apps whose users sign in, a personal API key or a remote services token for a program (Apps and API keys).
- Who owns it? A person in your organization who decides about it, and a partner who maintains it.
- What does it cost to run? Hosting, licenses of the other system, the partner's maintenance time.
Data protection
- Write down which personal data goes from where to where, and why. This is not legal advice; ask whoever is responsible for data protection (Personal data in Exponential).
- Keep credentials out of documents and e-mail; keys and tokens are shown once and only a hash is stored (Personal API keys).
- Every API key event and every remote services write is in the audit trail, which gives you a record of what the integration did (The audit trail).
When it fails
| Question | Answer to agree |
|---|---|
| How do we notice? | an alert, a daily report, or a person who looks |
| What does the other system do when the site does not answer (maintenance, upgrade)? | retry later, queue, or show cached data (App backend reliability) |
| What does the site do when the other system does not answer? | |
| Who can switch it off, and how? | revoke the credential, disable the account, or the service switch |
| Who is told? |
Tell the integration's maintainer before every upgrade of the site (Release and upgrade planning).
Integration plan template
Template.
INTEGRATION PLAN
Name: ______________________ Owner (our side): ______________ Maintainer: ______________
Purpose (one sentence): ________________________________________________
Other system: ______________ Direction: site reads / site is read / both
Interface: REST API / remote services / feed / import / syndication / other: __________
Data exchanged: ________________________________ Personal data? yes / no
Account used on the site: ______________ Role: ______________
Credential: OAuth2 / API key / token Expires: __________ Stored in: ______________
Failure: how noticed ______________ who switches off ______________
Reviewed with data protection on: __________ Go-live date: __________
Next review: __________Related pages
- Mobile and apps
- Selling through networks and partners
- Estimating and scoping with extensions
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
Become an Exponential Partner
Partners share their information, provide funding, contribute back and develop the products with us, and that is how Exponential grows. A partner website and dashboard are planned for mid-2027: please become a partner today to speed up our growth rate and land new features faster.