Best Practices for Integration Design

There are many benefits to being thorough during the integration design phase. Proper strategizing increases alignment between the integration builder and the end users, identifies potential function gaps, and minimizes costly backtracking. Consider these key questions and prompts to help align expectations among stakeholders and develop a clear roadmap for your integration.

Key Considerations

1. Integration Purpose

   • Define the scope and objectives of the integration.

   • Consult with an end user of the products or software to account for actual use cases and identify hidden human processing that might occur in current procedures.

   • Is the integration designed for one end user or many? If many, you may wish to make it more configurable. 

   • Be very detailed:

     1. Exactly what data do you need to get out of system A? 

     2. Exactly what data do you need to move into system B?

     3. Exactly what data do you need to get out of system B?

     4. Exactly what data do you need to move into system A?

     5. Do you need additional supporting data? e.g. Vendors in Vista can be associated with tax information as well, if mapping Vendors from another system, do you have that data if needed?

2. Object Level Mapping e.g. Venders >>> Vendors (See example below)

   • Complete a high-level mapping of the objects that need to be moved between system A and system B indicating the direction of the eventual data flow.

3. Field or Property Level Mapping e.g. CompanyID >>> VendorID

   • Complete any mapping of properties and dependencies identified in the high-level object map.

4. Scope and Connectivity Questions 

   • Can existing connectors provide all necessary connector objects, actions, and endpoints?

   • If not, can you use the HTTP connector?

   • If neither an existing connector nor the HTTP connector is sufficient, do you need to build a connector using the Connector SDK? 

     2. • Is there a public API to support that, with supported authentication and all needed endpoints? 

        • What is the minimum viable product state?

Example Object Map

The following is a sample Integration Template between Trimble products Flashtract and Vista:

Example Field Map

Each object is followed by a field map, such as this one for adding a Vista Project to Flashtract Project: