Integration guide: connect external systems
Plan, build, and maintain a connection between an external system and the platform API.
Prerequisites
- API credentials
- A documented source system
Steps
Decide the data flow
Write down what moves in which direction, how often, and who owns each field on each side. Most integration problems are data-ownership problems discovered late.
Set up authentication
Create dedicated API credentials for the integration, scoped to the minimum access the flow requires. Never reuse a person's credentials for system-to-system work.
Build against the API
Use the API reference for endpoint shapes and limits. Start with a read-only flow, verify the data lands correctly, then add writes. Respect rate limits and retry with backoff on transient errors.
Handle failures deliberately
Decide what happens when the connection fails: queue and retry, alert an owner, or degrade gracefully. An integration without a failure plan becomes a silent data gap.
Monitor and document
Log volume and errors from day one, alert on anomalies, and document the flow, credentials owner, and failure behavior. Integrations outlive the people who built them.
Tips
- Prefer native platform workflows for shared data and reserve external integrations for systems that must stay independent.