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With the rise of data-driven recruitment, it is imperative for each recruitment tool, including candidate sourcing and screening tools, to integrate with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) for enabling centralized data management for end users. 

However, there are hundreds of ATS applications available in the market today. To integrate with each one of these applications with different ATS APIs is next to impossible. 

That is why more and more recruitment tools are looking for a better (and faster) way to scale their ATS integrations. Unified ATS APIs are one such cost-effective solution that can cut down your integration building and maintenance time by 80%. 

Before moving on to how companies can leverage unified ATS API to streamline candidate sourcing and screening, let’s look at the workflow and how ATS API helps. 

Candidate sourcing and screening workflow

Here’s a quick snapshot of the candidate sourcing and screening workflow: 

1) Job posting/ data entry from job boards

Posting job requirements/ details about open positions to create widespread outreach about the roles you are hiring for. 

2) Candidate sourcing from different platforms/ referrals

Collecting and fetching candidate profiles/ resumes from different platforms—job sites, social media, referrals—to create a pool of potential candidates for the open positions.

3) Resume parsing 

Taking out all relevant data—skills, relevant experience, expected salary, etc. —from a candidate’s resume and updating it based on the company’s requirement in a specific format.

4) Profile screening

Eliminating profiles which are not relevant for the role by mapping profiles to the job requirements.  

5) Background checks 

Conducting a preliminary check to ensure there are no immediate red flags. 

6) Assessment, testing, interviews

Setting up and administering assessments, setting up interviews to ensure role suitability and collating evaluation for final decision making. 

7) Selection 

Sharing feedback and evaluation, communicating decisions to the candidates and continuing the process in case the position doesn’t close. 

How ATS API helps streamline candidate sourcing and screening

Here are some of the top use cases of how ATS API can help streamline candidate sourcing and screening.

Centralized data management and communication

All candidate details from all job boards and portals can be automatically collected and stored at one centralized place for communication and processing and future leverage. 

Automated profile import

ATS APIs ensure real time, automated candidate profile import, reducing manual data entry errors and risk of duplication. 

Customize screening workflows 

ATS APIs can help automate screening workflows by automating resume parsing and screening as well as ensuring that once a step like background checks is complete, assessments and then interview set up are triggered automatically. 

Automated candidate updates within the ATS in real time

ATS APIs facilitate real time data sync and event-based triggers between different applications to ensure that all candidate information available with the company is always up to date and all application updates are captured ASAP.  

Candidate engagement data, insights and patterns using ATS data

ATS APIs help analyze and draw insights from ATS engagement data — like application rate, response to job postings, interview scheduling — to finetune future screening.

Integrations with assessment, interview scheduling and onboarding applications

ATS API can further integrate with other assessment, interview scheduling and onboarding applications enabling faster movement of candidates across different  recruitment stages. 

Personalized outreach based on historical ATS data

ATS API integrations can help companies with automated, personalized and targeted outreach and candidate communication to improve candidate engagement, improve hiring efficiency and facilitate better employer branding. 

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Undoubtedly, using ATS API integration can effectively streamline the candidate sourcing and screening process by automating several parts of the way. However, there are several roadblocks to integrating ATS APIs at scale because of which companies refrain from leveraging the benefits that come along. Try our ROI calculator to see how much building integrations in-house can he.

In the next section we will discuss how to solve the common challenges for SaaS products trying to scale and accelerate their ATS integration strategy.

Addressing challenges of ATS API integration with Unified API

Let's discuss how the roadblocks can be removed with unified ATS API: just one API for all ATS integrations. Learn more about unified APIs here

Challenge 1: Loss of data during data transformation 

When data is being exchanged between different ATS applications and your system, it needs to be normalized and transformed. Since the same details from different applications can have different fields and nuances, chances are if not normalized well, you will end up losing critical data which may not be mapped to specific fields between systems. 

This will hamper centralized data storage, initiate duplication and require manual mapping not to mention screening workflow disruption. At the same time, normalizing each data field from each different API requires developers to understand the nuances of each API. This is a time and resource intensive process and can take months of developer time.

How unified ATS API solves this: One data model to prevent data loss

Unified APIs like Knit help companies normalize different ATS data by mapping different data schemas from different applications into a single, unified data model for all ATS APIs. Data normalization takes place in real time and is almost 10X faster, enabling companies to save tech bandwidth and skip the complex processes that might lead to data loss due to poor mapping.

Bonus: Knit also offers an custom data fields for data that is not included in the unified model, but you may need for your specific use case. It also allows you to to request data directly from the source app via its Passthrough Request feature. Learn more

Challenge 2: Delayed recruitment due to inability of real-time sync and bulk transfers

Second, some ATS API integration has a polling infrastructure which requires recruiters to manually request candidate data from time to time. This lack of automated data updation in real time can lead to delayed sourcing and screening of applicants, delaying the entire recruitment process. This can negatively impact the efficiency that is expected from ATS integration. 

Furthermore, Most ATS platforms receive 1000s of applications in a matter of a few minutes. The data load for transfer can be exceptionally high at times, especially when a new role is posted or there is any update.

As your number of integrated platforms increases, managing such bulk data transfers efficiently as well as eliminating delays becomes a huge challenge for engineering teams with limited bandwidth

How unified ATS API solves this: Sync data in real-time irrespective of data load/ volume

Knit as a unified ATS API ensures that you don’t lose out on even one candidate application or be delayed in receiving them. To achieve this, Knit works on a  webhooks based system with event-based triggers. As soon as an event happens, data syncs automatically via webhooks. 

Read: How webhooks work and how to register one?

Knit manages all the heavy lifting of polling data from ATS apps, dealing with different API calls, rate limits, formats etc. It automatically retrieves new applications from all connected ATS platforms, eliminating the need to make API calls or manual data syncs for candidate sourcing and screening. 

At the same time, Knit comes with retry and resiliency guarantees to ensure that no application is missed irrespective of the data load. Thus, handling data at scale. 

This ensures that recruiters get access to all candidate data in real time to fill positions faster with automated alerts as and when new applications are retrieved for screening. 

Challenge 3: Compliance and candidate privacy concerns

Since the ATS and other connected platforms have access to sensitive data, protecting candidate data from attacks, ensuring constant monitoring and right permission/ access is crucial yet challenging to put in practice.

How unified ATS API solves this: Secure candidate data effectively

Knit unified ATS API enables companies to effectively secure the sensitive candidate data they have access to in multiple ways. 

• First, all data is doubly encrypted, both at rest and in transit. At the same time, all PII and user credentials are encrypted with an additional layer of application security. 

• Second, having an events-driven webhooks architecture, Knit is the only unified ATS API which does not store any copy of the customer data in its server. Thus, reducing changes of data misuse further. 

• Third, Knit is GDPR, SOC II and ISO27001 compliant to make sure all industry security standards are met. So, there’s one less thing for you to worry about.

Challenge 4: Long deployment duration and resource intensive maintenance

Finally, ATS API integration can be a long drawn process. It can take 2 weeks to 3 months and thousands of dollars to build integration with  just a single ATS provider. 

With different end points, data models, nuances, documentation etc. ATS API integration can be a long deployment project, diverting away engineering resources from core functions.

It’s not uncommon for companies to lose valuable deals due to this delay in setting up customer requested ATS integrations. 

Furthermore, the maintenance, documentation, monitoring as well as error handling further drains engineering bandwidth and resources. This can be a major deterrent for smaller companies that need to scale their integration stack to remain competitive.  

How unified ATS API solves this: Instant scalability

A unified ATS API like Knit allows you to connect with 30+ ATS platforms in one go helping you expand your integration stack overnight. 

All you have to do is embed Knit’s UI component into your frontend once. All heavy lifting of auth, endpoints, credential management, verification, token generations, etc. is then taken care of by Knit. 

Other benefits of using a Unified ATS API

Fortunately, companies can easily address the challenges mentioned above and streamline their candidate sourcing and screening process with a unified ATS API. Here are some of the top benefits you get with a unified ATS API:

Effective monitoring and logging for all APIs

Once you have scaled your integrations, it can be difficult to monitor the health of each integration and stay on top of user data and security threats. Unified API like Knit provides a detailed Logs and Issues dashboard i.e. a one page overview of all your integrations, webhooks and API calls. With smart filtering options for Logs and Issues,  Knit helps you get a quick glimpse of the API's status, extract historical data and take necessary action as needed.

Extensive range of Read and Write APIs

Along with Read APIs, Knit also provides a range of Write APIs for ATS integrations so that you can not only fetch data from the apps, you can also update the changes — updating candidate’s stage, rejecting an application etc. — directly into the ATS application's system. See docs

Save countless developer hours and cost

For an average SaaS company, each new integration takes about 6 weeks to 3 months to build and deploy. For maintenance, it takes minimum of 10 developer hours per week. Thus, building each new integration in-house can cost a SaaS business ~USD 15,000. Imagine doing that for 30+ integrations or 200!

On the other hand, by building and maintaining integrations for you, Knit can bring down your annual cost of integrations by as much as 20X. Calculate ROI yourself

In short, an API aggregator is non negotiable if you want to scale your ATS integration stack without compromising valuable in-house engineering bandwidth.

How to improve your screening workflow with Knit unified ATS API

Get Job details from different job boards

Fetch job IDs from your users Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) using Knit’s job data models along with other necessary job information such as departments, offices, hiring managers etc.

Get applicant details

Use the job ID to fetch all and individual applicant details associated with the job posting. This would give you information about the candidate such as contact details, experience, links, location, experience, current stage etc. These data fields will help you screen the candidates in one easy step.

Complete screening activities

Next is where you take care of screening activities on your end after getting required candidate and job details. Based on your use case, you parse CVs, conduct background checks and/or administer assessment procedures.

Push back results into the ATS

Once you have your results, you can progmmatically push data back directly within the ATS system of your users using Knit’s write APIs to ensure a centralized, seamless user experience. For example, based on screening results, you can —

• Update candidate stage using <update stage> API See docs
• Match scores for CV parsing or add a quick tag to your applicant See docs
• Reject an application See docs and much more

Thus, Knit ensures that your entire screening process is smooth and requires minimum intervention.

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Get started with Unified ATS API

If you are looking to quickly connect with 30+ ATS applications — including Greenhouse, Lever, Jobvite and more — get your Knit API keys today.

You may talk to our one of our experts to help you build a customized solution for your ATS API use case. 

The best part? You can also make a specific ATS integration request. We would be happy to prioritize your request. 

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Today, recruitment without ATS applications seems almost impossible. From candidate sourcing and screening to communication and onboarding — every part of the recruitment workflow is tied to ATS apps. 

Research shows that 78% of recruiters using an ATS report that it has improved the quality of the candidates they hire. 

Hiring qualified talent for an organization can be a resource intensive and long drawn process. The entire recruitment workflow has multiple steps and layers, which when accomplished manually can be extremely time consuming. However, companies which leverage recruitment workflow automation by using ATS APIs can save 100s of hours spent in heavy lifting. 

Recruitment workflow and automation with ATS APIs

Let’s start with understanding the various stages of recruitment workflow and how automation with ATS APIs can help. 

Job requisition and posting

The first step involves creating job requisitions based on hiring needs across different teams. This is followed by creating appropriate job descriptions and posting on job boards to attract candidates. 

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With ATS APIs, this entire process can be automated. ATS APIs come with pre-defined templates to create job requisitions and job descriptions. They also have integrations with leading job boarding to facilitate automatic posting and role promotion of job boards. 

Candidate sourcing and screening

Next, most recruitment professionals focus on collecting data on candidate profiles from different job boards. Then, they engage in screening and shortlisting the resumes following a manual process, which takes a long time. 

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ATS APIs automate the collection of candidate data, resume and other basic information. It goes a step beyond with resume parsing to automate extraction of relevant candidate data from the resume and facilitate storage in a ready to use format for easy screening. 

Interview scheduling

Once the screening is complete, interview scheduling for the shortlisted candidates is the next step. Manually, the process requires a lot of back and forth with interviewers and interviewees, managing schedules, sending invitations and reminders, etc. 

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ATS APIs led automation takes care of all scheduling struggles and automates the process of sending invitations, reminders and other candidate communication in the process. 

Candidate assessment

Scheduling interviews/ tests is followed by conducted assessments to gauge the candidate's aptitude, skills, knowledge, personality and cognitive abilities for the role. 

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ATS APIs can easily automate test assessment via online proctored solutions and even record scores and present it to the decision makers in a streamlined and easy to understand format. 

Decision making

When it comes to decision making, ATS APIs can collate evaluation, assessment results and feedback of all candidates and even rank them based on comprehensive scores to help decision makers with data-driven insights on the best candidate for the role. 

Job offer and onboarding

Once a candidate has been selected, the ATS API can automatically send the offer letter based on pre-defined templates. Acceptance of the offer letter by the candidate can automatically trigger document signing digitally, thereby automating the entire onboarding process. Bi-directional data sync will ensure that all steps of employee onboarding are conducted automatically. 

Managing information

An ATS API also enables recruitment professionals to automatically capture, manage and update all the relevant information about the candidate, application and status in a common platform, which can be accessed as and when needed. 

Candidate communication

Throughout the recruitment workflow, there are several touchpoints with the candidate. ATS API: can help recruitment professionals with personalized communication templates for candidates based on their application status, interview performance, feedback, etc. 

Post-recruitment evaluation

Finally, the ATS API can provide recruitment professionals with key data points and metrics to gauge recruitment performance. Metrics like time to hire, source, open positions, candidate diversity, interview to hire ratio, can all be collated in one report by the ATS API and presented. 

Process of automating the recruitment workflow with ATS APIs 

With understanding of the recruitment workflow, let’s understand the process of automating the same with ATS API. 

Identify the recruitment stages to automate

To begin with, you need to understand the recruitment stages in your organization and identify the ones which require a lot of heavy lifting and can be automated. For instance, while conducting the interviews cannot be automated, scheduling them and compiling the feedback and evaluation can be. Thus, identify the stages to automate and what benefits you seek to achieve as a result of automation. 

Choose the ATS APIs 

There are multiple ATS APIs in the market today. While each one of them comes with multiple functionalities across the recruitment workflow, some are likely to be better over others for particular use cases. Therefore, to leverage automation with ATS API, choose the ones that best suit your industry and requirements. You might even choose multiple ATS APIs and integrate them to your system for different purposes, while also integrating one with another. 

Obtain the necessary API credentials from the ATS provider.

Once you have selected the ATS APIs, it’s time to get into the technical aspects of getting the integration in place. To integrate the ATS API, you need to get access to specific credentials and authentication from the ATS provider. These include API key, access tokens, client ID, client secret, endpoints, etc. Once you have these, only then can the integration process begin. Also, ensure you understand the authentication process well.  

Integrate with the ATS APIs

Once you have the necessary credentials, get started with the integration. This will require coding and engineering effort as you will be building the integration from scratch. Understand the data models, endpoints, authorization by going through the API documentation for each ATS API you choose. Simultaneously get started with data mapping, authentication, error handling, etc. followed by testing to gauge the effectiveness of your integration. Each integration can take anywhere between a few weeks to a few months. 

Monitor, manage and maintain your ATS APIs

Post integration, you need to keep track of your data exchange and transformation process. Ensure that data synchronization is happening as per your expectations. Your need to keep track of unstable APIs or any updates in the same, error logging challenges, expiry or deactivation of webhooks, management of large data volume, among others. At the same time, monitor any security threats or unauthorized access push. 

Optimize processes

Finally, optimize your ATS API integration process. Identify the major challenges from the maintenance and management standpoint and focus on fixing the issues to create a better integration experience for your teams. 

Limitations of using different ATS APIs for automating recruitment workflow  

While using multiple ATS APIs to power different functionalities is enticing, it can be challenging and a major burden on your engineering and other teams. Here are a few limitations that might face while trying to integrate different ATS API for recruitment workflow automation. 

Scale and optimization challenges 

Each ATS API comes with different data fields, documentation and processes that need to be followed for integration. Integrating each one requires a steep learning curve for the engineering team. From a resource standpoint, each ATS API integration can take an average of four weeks, costing ~USD 10K. As you scale, there is an exponential time and monetary cost that comes along, which is applicable to each API you add. After a certain time, chances are that the costs and efforts associated with integration scale will significantly surpass the savings and benefits from automation. 

Data transformation challenges 

Each API, even within the same category of ATS will have different data models. For instance, the field of candidate name may be categorized as cand_name for one ATS API, while candidate_name for another one. To ensure that data from all APIs is consolidated for processing, you need to engage in data normalization and data transformation to process the data from different ATS APIs. 

Data synchronization challenges 

Next, data synchronization in real time can be a big challenge. If you are using a polling infrastructure, you will have to request data sync time and again, that too across multiple APIs. At the same time, data sync can be a challenge with scalability, when the data load becomes unmanageable. The inability to facilitate real time data synchronization can lead to delays in the entire recruitment process or exclusion of applications during a particular round. 

Monitoring and management 

Error handling, monitoring and management is extremely resource intensive. It is extremely important to maintain the health of your integrations, by constantly logging their performance. It is important to keep track of API calls, log errors, data sync requests, etc. This is required to catch any potential errors early on and manage integrations better. However, monitoring each API for every second is manually very burdensome. 

Compliance and security challenges

Compliance and security is a big challenge when it comes to integrations. Since you are dealing with a lot of personal data, you need to be on your toes when it comes to security. At the same time, each API will have a different authentication methodology as well as separate policies that you need to keep pace with.  

Custom workflows 

Finally, you might need custom workflows from your ATS APIs, especially during data exchange between them. Building these custom workflows can be an engineering nightmare, let alone maintaining and monitoring them. 

How unified API can help integrate with multiple ATS APIs for recruitment automation 

Don’t get apprehensive about using different ATS APIs for automating your recruitment workflows. A unified API like Knit can help you integrate different ATS APIs effortlessly and in less than half the time. Here are the top benefits of using a unified API.

Easy scalability

Unified API enables you to scale product integrations faster. You can easily add hundreds of ATS applications to your systems by just learning about the unified API. You no longer have to go through the API documentation of multiple applications or understand the nuances, processes, etc. It is highly time and cost effective from a scale and optimization lens.  

Seamless data transformation with custom fields

A unified API like Knit can provide you with a common data model. You can easily eliminate the data transformation nuances and complex processes for different APIs. It enables you to map different data schemas from different ATS applications into a single, unified data model as normalized data. In addition, you can also incorporate custom data fields i.e. you can access any non-standard data you need, which may not be included in the common ATS data model.

Real time data sync

Following a webhooks based event driven architecture, unified APIs like Knit ensure real time data sync. Without the need for any polling infrastructure or request, Knit facilitates assured real time data sync, irrespective of the data load. Furthermore, it also sends automatic notifications and alerts when new data has been updated. 

High security

Knit, as a unified API, helps companies leveraging ATS integration ensure high levels of security. It is the only unified API which doesn’t store a copy of the customer data. Furthermore, being 100% webhook-based architecture, it facilitates greater security. You don’t have to navigate through different security policies for different APIs and can access OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication. Finally, all data with our unified API is doubly encrypted, when in rest and when in transit. 

Easy integration management

With a unified API like Knit, integration management also becomes seamless. It enables you to monitor and manage all ATS integrations using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page. ‍Furthermore, the fully searchable Logs keep track of API calls, data syncs and requests and status of each webhook registered. This effectively streamlines integration management and error resolution 5x faster. 

TL:DR

Recruitment professionals and leaders involved in different stages of the recruitment lifecycle can leverage ATS integrations to automate their workflows. With the right ATS API, each stage of the recruitment workflow can be automated to a certain extent to save time and effort. However, building and maintaining different ATS API can be challenging with issues of scale, data transformation, synchronization, etc. Fortunately, with a unified API, companies can address these issues for seamless scalability, data transformation with a unified data model supported by custom data fields, high security with double encryption, webhook architecture for real time data sync, irrespective of workload and easy integration management with detailed logs, issues, etc.  Get started with a unified API to integrate all your preferred ATS applications to automate and streamline your recruitment workflows.

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Marketing automation tools are like superchargers for marketers, propelling their campaigns to new heights. Yet, there's a secret ingredient that can take this power to the next level: the right audience data. 

What better than an organization’s CRM to power it? 

The good news is that many marketing automation tools are embracing CRM API integrations to drive greater adoption and results. However, with the increasing number of CRM systems underplay, building and managing CRM integrations is becoming a huge challenge. 

Fortunately, the rise of unified CRM APIs is bridging this gap, making CRM integration seamless for marketing automation tools. But, before delving into how marketing automation tools can power integrations with unified CRM APIs, let’s explore the business benefits of CRM APIs. 

10 ways marketing automation tools can maximize results with CRM API integration

Here’s a quick snapshot of how CRM APIs can bring out the best of marketing automation tools, making the most of the audience data for customers. 

1. Customer segmentation and content personalization  

Research shows that 72% of customers will only engage with personalized messaging. CRM integration with marketing automation tools can enable the users to create personalized messaging based on customer segmentation. 

Users can segment customers based on their likelihood of conversion and personalize content for each campaign. Slicing and dicing of customer data, including demographics, preferences, interactions, etc. can further help in customizing content with higher chances of consumption and engagement. Customer segmentation powered by CRM API data can help create content that customers resonate with. 

2. Enhanced lead nurturing for higher conversion 

CRM integration provides the marketing automation tool with every tiny detail of every lead to adjust and customize communication and campaigns that facilitate better nurturing. At the same time, real time conversation updates from CRM can help in timely marketing follow-ups for better chances of closure. 

2. Churn prediction and customer retention

As customer data from CRM and marketing automation tools is synched in real time, any early signs of churn like reduced engagement or changed consumer behavior can be captured. 

Real time alerts can also be automatically updated in the CRM for sales action. At the same time, marketing automation tools can leverage CRM data to predict which customers are more likely to churn and create specific campaigns to facilitate retention. 

3. Upsell and cross-sell campaigns

Users can leverage customer preferences from the CRM data to design campaigns with specific recommendations and even identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. 

For instance, customers with high engagement might be interested in upgrading their relationships and the marketing automation tools can use this information and CRM details on their historical trends to propose best options for upselling. 

Similarly, when details of customer transactions are captured in the CRM, they can be used to identify opportunities for complementary selling with dedicated campaigns. This leads to a clear increased revenue line. 

4. Automated campaign workflow to reduce operational overheads

In most marketing campaigns as the status of a lead changes, a new set of communication and campaign takes over. With CRM API integration, marketing automation tools can easily automate the campaign workflow in real time as soon as there is a status change in the CRM. This ensures greater engagement with the lead when their status changes. 

5. Event triggered campaigns for faster TAT

Marketing communication after events is an extremely important aspect of sales. With CRM integration in marketing automation tools, automated post-event communication or campaigns can be triggered based on lead status for attendance and participation in the event. 

This facilitates a faster turnaround time for engaging the customers just after the event, without any delays due to manual follow ups. 

6. Lead source automation

The integration can help automatically map the source of the lead from different marketing activities like webinars, social media posts, newsletters, etc. in your CRM to understand where your target audience engagement is higher. 

At the same time, it can facilitate tagging of leads to the right teams or personnels for follow ups and closures. With automated lead source tracking, users can track the ROI of different marketing activities. 

7. Tailored social media campaigns and multi-channel marketing

With CRM API integration, users can get access to customer preference insights to define their social media campaigns and audience. At the same time, they can customize scheduling based on customer’s geographical locations from CRM to facilitate maximum efficiency. 

8. Data enrichment for enhancing lead profiles

With bi-directional sync, CRM API integration with marketing automation tools can lead to enhancement of lead profiles. With more and more lead data coming in across both the platforms, users can have a rich and comprehensive profile of their customers, updates in real time across the CRM and marketing tools. 

9. Lifecycle marketing automation

Overall, integrating CRM API with marketing automation tools can help in automating the entire marketing lifecycle. It starts with getting a full customer view to stage-based automated marketing campaigns to personalized nurturing and lead scoring, predictive analytics and much more. Most of the aspects of marketing based on the sales journey of the customer can be automated and triggered in real time with CRM changes. 

10. Customer reporting and analytics for decision making

Data insights from CRM API integrated with those from marketing automation tools can greatly help in creating reports to analyze and track customer behavior. 

It can help ensure to understand consumer trends, identify the top marketing channels, improve customer segmentation and overall enhance the marketing strategy for more engagement. 

Real-world Struggles of CRM Integration in Marketing Automation

While the benefits of CRM API integration with marketing automation tools are many, there are also some roadblocks on the way. Since each CRM API is different and your customers might be using different CRM systems, building and maintaining a plethora of CRM APIs can be challenging due to:

Data transformation inconsistency and campaign blunders

When data is exchanged between two applications, it needs to undergo transformation to become normalized with data fields compatible across both. Since each CRM API has diverse data models, syntax and nuances, inconsistency during data transfer is a big challenge. 

If the data is not correctly normalized or transformed, chances are it might get corrupt or lost, leading to gaps in integration. At the same time, any inconsistency in data transformation and sync might lead to sending incorrect campaigns and triggers to customers, compromising on the experience. 

Delays in campaigns 

While inconsistency in data transformation is one challenge, a related concern comes in the form of delays or limited real-time sync capabilities. 

If the data sync between the CRM and the marketing automation tool is not happening in real time (across all CRMs being used), chances are that communication with end customers is being delayed, which can lead to loss of interest and lower engagement. 

Customer data privacy and security concerns

Any CRM is the beacon of sensitive customer data, often governed by GDPR and other compliances. However, integration and data transfer is always vulnerable to security threats like man in the middle attacks, DDoS, etc. which can lead to compromised privacy. This can lead to monetary and reputational risks. 

Scalability 

With the increasing number of CRM applications, scalability of integration becomes a huge challenge. Building new CRM integrations can be very time and resource consuming — building one integration from scratch can take up to 3 months or more — which either means compromising on the available CRM integrations or choking of engineering bandwidth. 

Moreover, as integrated CRM systems increase, the requirements for API calls and data exchange also grow exponentially, leading to delays in data sync and real time updates with increased data load. Invariably, scalability becomes a challenge.  

Integration management

Managing and maintaining integrations is a big challenge in itself. When end customers are using integrations, there are likely to be issues that require immediate action. 

At the same time, maintaining detailed logs, tracking API calls, API syncs manually can be very tedious. However, any lag in this can crumble the entire integration system. 

Vendor management

Finally, when integrating with different CRM APIs, managing the CRM vendors is a big challenge. Understanding API updates, managing different endpoints, ensuring zero downtime, error handling and coordinating with individual response teams is highly operational and time consuming. 

How Unified CRM API ensures maximum integration ROI

Don’t let the CRM API integration challenges prevent you from leveraging the multiple benefits mentioned above. A unified CRM API like the one offered by Knit, can help you access the benefits without breaking sweat over the challenges. 

If you want to know the technical details of how a unified API works, this will help

Integrate in minutes with multiple CRM APIs

A unified CRM API facilitates integration with marketing automation tools within minutes, not months, which is usually what it takes to build integrations. 

At the same time, it enables connecting with various CRM applications in one go. When it comes to Knit, marketing automation tools have to simply embed Knit’s UI component in their frontend to get access to Knit’s full catalog of CRM applications.

Consistent data transfer guaranteed with normalized data models

A unified CRM API can address all data transformation and normalization challenges easily. For instance, with Knit, different data models, nuances and schemas across CRM applications are mapped into a single and unified data model, facilitating data normalization in real time. 

At the same time, Knit allows users to map custom data fields to access non-standard data. 

Real time campaigns and data exchange

The right unified CRM API can help you sync data in real time, without any external polling requests. 

Take Knit for example, its webhooks and events driven architecture periodically polls data from all CRM applications, normalizing them and making them ready for use by the marketing automation tool. The latter doesn’t have to worry about the engineering intensive tasks of polling data, managing API calls, rate limits, data normalization, etc. 

Furthermore, this ensures that as soon as details about a customer are updated on the CRM, the associated campaigns or triggers are automatically set in motion for marketing success. 

Never miss a data update

There can be multiple CRM updates within a few minutes and as data load increases, a unified CRM API ensures guaranteed data sync in real time. As with Knit, its in-built retry mechanisms facilitate resilience and ensure that the marketing automation tools don’t miss out on any CRM updates, even at scale, as each lead is important. 

Moreover, as a user, you can set up sync frequency as per your convenience.

Scale as you go

With a unified CRM API, you only need to integrate once. As mentioned above, once you embed the UI component, every time you need to use a new CRM application or a new CRM API is added to Knit’s catalog, you can access it automatically with sync capabilities, without spending any engineering capabilities from your team. 

This ensures that you can scale in the most resource-lite and efficient manner, without diverting engineering productivity from your core product. From a data sync perspective as well, a unified CRM API ensures guaranteed scalability, irrespective of the data load. 

Security at scale

One of the biggest concerns of security and vulnerability to cyberattacks can be easily addressed with a unified CRM API across multiple facts. Let’s take the security provisions of Knit for example. 

• First, Knit ensures double encryption, i.e. it encrypts data at rest as well as when in transit for exchange. It also encrypts data with an additional layer of application security.
• Second, Knit is the only unified API that doesn’t store any copy of the data and acts as a pure passthrough proxy. Data is only processed in Knit’s server and is directly sent to the customer’s webhooks. Protection of end-user data like this helps you easily gain customer confidence during sales conversations.
• Third, Knit has wide ranging authorization capabilities, including, OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication. Irrespective of what authorization protocol the vendor has, it can integrate with Knit.

Catch potential errors early on

Finally, integration management to ensure that all your CRM APIs are healthy is well taken care of by a unified CRM API. 

• A unified CRM API like Knit provides access to a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page for all integrations to monitor and track them along with possible RCA and solutions. This empowers your CX team to solve customer issues immediately without involving the tech team.
• Furthermore, it enables you to track every API call, data sync, etc. as well as the status of webhooks registered for real time visibility in errors — ensuring that you are always on top of your data and minimizes the chances of any errors.  

Constant monitoring and on demand customer support

Finally, when you are using a unified API, you don’t have to deal with multiple vendors, endpoints, etc. Rather, the heavy lifting is done by the unified CRM API provider. 

For instance, with Knit, you can access 24/7 support to securely manage your integrations. It also provides detailed documentation, links and easy to understand product walkthroughs for your developers and end users to ensure a smooth integration process.

Get started with unified CRM API

If you are looking to integrate multiple CRM APIs with your product, get your Knit API keys and see unified API in action. (Getting started with Knit is completely free)

You can also talk to one of our experts to see how you can customize Knit to solve your specific integration challenges.

In the world of APIs, it's not enough to implement security measures and then sit back, hoping everything stays safe. The digital landscape is dynamic, and threats are ever-evolving. 

Why do you need to monitor your APIs regularly

Real-time monitoring provides an extra layer of protection by actively watching API traffic for any anomalies or suspicious patterns.

For instance - 

• It can spot a sudden surge in requests from a single IP address, which could be a sign of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. 
• It can also detect multiple failed login attempts in quick succession, indicating a potential brute-force attack. 

In both cases, real-time monitoring can trigger alerts or automated responses, helping you take immediate action to safeguard your API and data.

API Logging

Now, on similar lines, imagine having a detailed diary of every interaction and event within your home, from visitors to when and how they entered. Logging mechanisms in API security serve a similar purpose - they provide a detailed record of API activities, serving as a digital trail of events.

Logging is not just about compliance; it's about visibility and accountability. By implementing logging, you create a historical archive of who accessed your API, what they did, and when they did it. This not only helps you trace back and investigate incidents but also aids in understanding usage patterns and identifying potential vulnerabilities.

To ensure robust API security, your logging mechanisms should capture a wide range of information, including request and response data, user identities, IP addresses, timestamps, and error messages. This data can be invaluable for forensic analysis and incident response. 

API monitoring

Combining logging with real-time monitoring amplifies your security posture. When unusual or suspicious activities are detected in real-time, the corresponding log entries provide context and a historical perspective, making it easier to determine the extent and impact of a security breach.

Based on factors like performance monitoring, security, scalability, ease of use, and budget constraints, you can choose a suitable API monitoring and logging tool for your application.

Access Logs and Issues in one page

This is exactly what Knit does. Along with allowing you access to data from 50+ APIs with a single unified API, it also completely takes care of API logging and monitoring. 

It offers a detailed Logs and Issues page that gives you a one page historical overview of all your webhooks and integrated accounts. It includes a number of API calls and provides necessary filters to choose your criterion. This helps you to always stay on top of user data and effectively manage your APIs.

Ready to build?

Get your API keys to try these API monitoring best practices for real

If you are looking to unlock 40+ HRIS and ATS integrations with a single API key, check out Knit API. If not, keep reading

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Note: This is our master guide on API Pagination where we solve common developer queries in detail with common examples and code snippets. Feel free to visit the smaller guides linked later in this article on topics such as page size, error handling, pagination stability, caching strategies and more.

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In the modern application development and data integration world, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) serve as the backbone for connecting various systems and enabling seamless data exchange. 

However, when working with APIs that return large datasets, efficient data retrieval becomes crucial for optimal performance and a smooth user experience. This is where API pagination comes into play.

In this article, we will discuss the best practices for implementing API pagination, ensuring that developers can handle large datasets effectively and deliver data in a manageable and efficient manner. (We have linked bite sized how-to guides on all API pagination FAQs you can think of in this article. Keep reading!)

But before we jump into the best practices, let’s go over what is API pagination and the standard pagination techniques used in the present day.

What is API Pagination

API pagination refers to a technique used in API design and development to retrieve large data sets in a structured and manageable manner. When an API endpoint returns a large amount of data, pagination allows the data to be divided into smaller, more manageable chunks or pages. 

Each page contains a limited number of records or entries. The API consumer or client can then request subsequent pages to retrieve additional data until the entire dataset has been retrieved.
Pagination typically involves the use of parameters, such as offset and limit or cursor-based tokens, to control the size and position of the data subset to be retrieved. 

These parameters determine the starting point and the number of records to include on each page.

Advantages of API Pagination

By implementing API pagination, developers as well as consumers can have the following advantages - 

1. Improved Performance

Retrieving and processing smaller chunks of data reduces the response time and improves the overall efficiency of API calls. It minimizes the load on servers, network bandwidth, and client-side applications.

2. Reduced Resource Usage 

Since pagination retrieves data in smaller subsets, it reduces the amount of memory, processing power, and bandwidth required on both the server and the client side. This efficient resource utilization can lead to cost savings and improved scalability.

3. Enhanced User Experience

Paginated APIs provide a better user experience by delivering data in manageable portions. Users can navigate through the data incrementally, accessing specific pages or requesting more data as needed. This approach enables smoother interactions, faster rendering of results, and easier navigation through large datasets.

4. Efficient Data Transfer

With pagination, only the necessary data is transferred over the network, reducing the amount of data transferred and improving network efficiency.

5. Scalability and Flexibility

Pagination allows APIs to handle large datasets without overwhelming system resources. It provides a scalable solution for working with ever-growing data volumes and enables efficient data retrieval across different use cases and devices.

6. Error Handling

With pagination, error handling becomes more manageable. If an error occurs during data retrieval, only the affected page needs to be reloaded or processed, rather than reloading the entire dataset. This helps isolate and address errors more effectively, ensuring smoother error recovery and system stability.

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Common examples of paginated APIs 

Some of the most common, practical examples of API pagination are: 

• Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram often employ paginated APIs to retrieve posts, comments, or user profiles. 
• Online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy utilize paginated APIs to retrieve product listings, search results, or user reviews.
• Banking or payment service providers often provide paginated APIs for retrieving transaction history, account statements, or customer data.
• Job search platforms like Indeed or LinkedIn Jobs offer paginated APIs for retrieving job listings based on various criteria such as location, industry, or keywords.

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API pagination techniques

There are several common API pagination techniques that developers employ to implement efficient data retrieval. Here are a few useful ones you must know:

1. Offset and limit pagination
2. Cursor-based pagination
3. Page-based pagination
4. Time-based pagination
5. Keyset pagination

Read: Common API Pagination Techniques to learn more about each technique

Best practices for API pagination

When implementing API pagination in Python, there are several best practices to follow. For example,  

1. Use a common naming convention for pagination parameters

Adopt a consistent naming convention for pagination parameters, such as "offset" and "limit" or "page" and "size." This makes it easier for API consumers to understand and use your pagination system.

2. Always include pagination metadata in API responses

Provide metadata in the API responses to convey additional information about the pagination. 

This can include the total number of records, the current page, the number of pages, and links to the next and previous pages. This metadata helps API consumers navigate through the paginated data more effectively.

For example, here’s how the response of a paginated API should look like -

        
{
 "data": [
   {
     "id": 1,
     "title": "Post 1",
     "content": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.",
     "category": "Technology"
   },
   {
     "id": 2,
     "title": "Post 2",
     "content": "Praesent fermentum orci in ipsum.",
     "category": "Sports"
   },
   {
     "id": 3,
     "title": "Post 3",
     "content": "Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus.",
     "category": "Fashion"
   }
 ],
 "pagination": {
   "total_records": 100,
   "current_page": 1,
   "total_pages": 10,
   "next_page": 2,
   "prev_page": null
 }
}
        
    

3. Determine an appropriate page size

Select an optimal page size that balances the amount of data returned per page. 

A smaller page size reduces the response payload and improves performance, while a larger page size reduces the number of requests required.

Determining an appropriate page size for a paginated API involves considering various factors, such as the nature of the data, performance considerations, and user experience. 

Here are some guidelines to help you determine the optimal page size.

Read: How to determine the appropriate page size for a paginated API 

4. Implement sorting and filtering options

Provide sorting and filtering parameters to allow API consumers to specify the order and subset of data they require. This enhances flexibility and enables users to retrieve targeted results efficiently. Here's an example of how you can implement sorting and filtering options in a paginated API using Python:

        
# Dummy data
products = [
    {"id": 1, "name": "Product A", "price": 10.0, "category": "Electronics"},
    {"id": 2, "name": "Product B", "price": 20.0, "category": "Clothing"},
    {"id": 3, "name": "Product C", "price": 15.0, "category": "Electronics"},
    {"id": 4, "name": "Product D", "price": 5.0, "category": "Clothing"},
    # Add more products as needed
]


@app.route('/products', methods=['GET'])
def get_products():
    # Pagination parameters
    page = int(request.args.get('page', 1))
    per_page = int(request.args.get('per_page', 10))


    # Sorting options
    sort_by = request.args.get('sort_by', 'id')
    sort_order = request.args.get('sort_order', 'asc')


    # Filtering options
    category = request.args.get('category')
    min_price = float(request.args.get('min_price', 0))
    max_price = float(request.args.get('max_price', float('inf')))


    # Apply filters
    filtered_products = filter(lambda p: p['price'] >= min_price and p['price'] <= max_price, products)
    if category:
        filtered_products = filter(lambda p: p['category'] == category, filtered_products)


    # Apply sorting
    sorted_products = sorted(filtered_products, key=lambda p: p[sort_by], reverse=sort_order.lower() == 'desc')


    # Paginate the results
    start_index = (page - 1) * per_page
    end_index = start_index + per_page
    paginated_products = sorted_products[start_index:end_index]


    return jsonify(paginated_products)

        
    

5. Preserve pagination stability

Ensure that the pagination remains stable and consistent between requests. Newly added or deleted records should not affect the order or positioning of existing records during pagination. This ensures that users can navigate through the data without encountering unexpected changes.

Read: 5 ways to preserve API pagination stability

6. Handle edge cases and error conditions

Account for edge cases such as reaching the end of the dataset, handling invalid or out-of-range page requests, and gracefully handling errors. 

Provide informative error messages and proper HTTP status codes to guide API consumers in handling pagination-related issues.

Read: 7 ways to handle common errors and invalid requests in API pagination

7. Consider caching strategies

Implement caching mechanisms to store paginated data or metadata that does not frequently change. 

Caching can help improve performance by reducing the load on the server and reducing the response time for subsequent requests.

Here are some caching strategies you can consider: 

1. Page level caching

Cache the entire paginated response for each page. This means caching the data along with the pagination metadata. This strategy is suitable when the data is relatively static and doesn't change frequently.

2. Result set caching

Cache the result set of a specific query or combination of query parameters. This is useful when the same query parameters are frequently used, and the result set remains relatively stable for a certain period. You can cache the result set and serve it directly for subsequent requests with the same parameters.

3. Time-based caching

Set an expiration time for the cache based on the expected freshness of the data. For example, cache the paginated response for a certain duration, such as 5 minutes or 1 hour. Subsequent requests within the cache duration can be served directly from the cache without hitting the server.

4. Conditional caching

Use conditional caching mechanisms like HTTP ETag or Last-Modified headers. The server can respond with a 304 Not Modified status if the client's cached version is still valid. This reduces bandwidth consumption and improves response time when the data has not changed.

5. Reverse proxy caching

Implement a reverse proxy server like Nginx or Varnish in front of your API server to handle caching. 

Reverse proxies can cache the API responses and serve them directly without forwarding the request to the backend API server. 

This offloads the caching responsibility from the application server and improves performance.

Simplify API pagination 

In conclusion, implementing effective API pagination is essential for providing efficient and user-friendly access to large datasets. But it isn’t easy, especially when you are dealing with a large number of API integrations.

Using a unified API solution like Knit ensures that your API pagination requirements is handled without you requiring to do anything anything other than embedding Knit’s UI component on your end. 

Once you have integrated with Knit for a specific software category such as HRIS, ATS or CRM, it automatically connects you with all the APIs within that category and ensures that you are ready to sync data with your desired app. 

In this process, Knit also fully takes care of API authorization, authentication, pagination, rate limiting and day-to-day maintenance of the integrations so that you can focus on what’s truly important to you i.e. building your core product.

By incorporating these best practices into the design and implementation of paginated APIs, Knit creates highly performant, scalable, and user-friendly interfaces for accessing large datasets. This further helps you to empower your end users to efficiently navigate and retrieve the data they need, ultimately enhancing the overall API experience.

Sign up for free trial today or talk to our sales team

If you are looking to unlock 40+ HRIS and ATS integrations with a single API key, check out Knit API. If not, keep reading

‍

Note: This is a part of our series on API Pagination where we solve common developer queries in detail with common examples and code snippets. Please read the full guide here where we discuss page size, error handling, pagination stability, caching strategies and more.

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Ensure that the pagination remains stable and consistent between requests. Newly added or deleted records should not affect the order or positioning of existing records during pagination. This ensures that users can navigate through the data without encountering unexpected changes.

5 ways for pagination stability

To ensure that API pagination remains stable and consistent between requests, follow these guidelines:

1. Use a stable sorting mechanism

If you're implementing sorting in your pagination, ensure that the sorting mechanism remains stable. 

This means that when multiple records have the same value for the sorting field, their relative order should not change between requests. 

For example, if you sort by the "date" field, make sure that records with the same date always appear in the same order.

2. Avoid changing data order

Avoid making any changes to the order or positioning of records during pagination, unless explicitly requested by the API consumer. 

If new records are added or existing records are modified, they should not disrupt the pagination order or cause existing records to shift unexpectedly.

3. Use unique and immutable identifiers

It's good practice to use unique and immutable identifiers for the records being paginated. T

This ensures that even if the data changes, the identifiers remain constant, allowing consistent pagination. It can be a primary key or a unique identifier associated with each record.

4. Handle record deletions gracefully

If a record is deleted between paginated requests, it should not affect the pagination order or cause missing records. 

Ensure that the deletion of a record does not leave a gap in the pagination sequence.

For example, if record X is deleted, subsequent requests should not suddenly skip to record Y without any explanation.

5. Use deterministic pagination techniques

Employ pagination techniques that offer deterministic results. Techniques like cursor-based pagination or keyset pagination, where the pagination is based on specific attributes like timestamps or unique identifiers, provide stability and consistency between requests.

Also Read: 5 caching strategies to improve API pagination performance

HRIS or Human Resources Information Systems have become commonplace for organizations to simplify the way they manage and use employee information. For most organizations, information stored and updated in the HRIS becomes the backbone for provisioning other applications and systems in use. HRIS enables companies to seamlessly onboard employees, set them up for success and even manage their payroll and other functions to create an exemplary employee experience.

However, integration of HRIS APIs with other applications under use is essential to facilitate workflow automation. Essentially, HRIS API integration can help businesses connect diverse applications with the HRIS to ensure seamless flow of information between the connected applications. HRIS API integrations can either be internal or customer-facing. In internal HRIS integrations, businesses connect their HRIS with other applications they use, like ATS, Payroll, etc. to automate the flow of information between the same. On the other hand, with customer-facing HRIS integrations, businesses can connect their application or product with the end customer’s HR applications for data exchange. 

This article seeks to serve as a comprehensive repository on HRIS API integration, covering the benefits, best practices, challenges and how to address them, use cases, data models, troubleshooting and security risks, among others. 

Benefits of HRIS API integration

Here are some of the top reasons why businesses need HRIS API integration, highlighting the benefits they bring along:

• Higher employee productivity: HRIS API integration ensures that all data exchange between HRIS and other applications is automated and doesn’t require any human intervention. This considerably reduces the time and effort spent on manually updating all platforms with HR related data. This ensures that employees are able to focus more on value add tasks, leading to increased productivity and an improved employee experience.

• Reduced errors: Manual data entry is prone to errors. For instance, if during payroll updation, the compensation of an employee is entered incorrectly and differently from HRIS data, the employee will receive incorrect compensation, leading to regulatory/ financial discrepancies and employee displeasure. 

• End customer satisfaction: This is specifically for customer-facing HRIS integrations. By facilitating integration with your end customer’s HRIS applications and your product, you can foster automated data sync between the applications, eliminating the need for the customer to manually give you access to the data needed. This considerably augments customer experience and satisfaction.

• Expanded customer base: The ability to offer integrations with associated applications like payroll, attendance, etc. is something that most HR professionals seek. Therefore, when an application offers integrations with a wide range of HRIS, the total addressable market or TAM, significantly increases, augmenting the overall reach and potential customers. 

HRIS API Data Models Explained

The different HRIS tools you use are bound to come with different data models or fields which will capture data for exchange between applications. It is important for HR professionals and those building and managing these integrations to understand these data models, especially to ensure normalization and transformation of data when it moves from one application to another. 

Employees/ Employee Profiles

This includes details of all employees whether full time or contractual, including first and last name, contact details, date of birth, email ID, etc. At the same time, it covers other details on demographics and employment history including status, start date, marital status, gender, etc. In case of a former employee, this field also captures termination date. 

Employee Contact Details

This includes personal details of the employee, including personal phone number, address, etc. which can be used to contact employees beyond work contact information. 

Employee Profile Picture

Employee profile picture object or data model captures the profile picture of the employees that can be used across employee records and purposes. 

Employment Type

The next data model in discussion focuses on the type or the nature of employment. An organization can hire full time employees, contractual workers, gig workers, volunteers, etc. This distinction in employment type helps differentiate between payroll specifications, taxation rules, benefits, etc. 

Location

Location object or data model refers to the geographical area for the employee. Here, both the work location as well as the residential or native/ home location of the employee is captured. This field captures address, country, zip code, etc. 

Leave Request

Leave request data model focuses on capturing all the time off or leave of absence entries made by the employee. It includes detailing the nature of leave, time period, status, reason, etc.

Leave Balance

Each employee, based on their nature of employment, is entitled to certain time off in a year. The leave balance object helps organizations keep a track of the remaining balance of leave of absence left with the employee. With this, organizations can ensure accurate payroll, benefits and compensation. 

Attendance 

This data model captures the attendance of employees, including fields like time in, time out, number of working hours, shift timing, status, break time, etc. 

Organizational Structure

Each organization has a hierarchical structure or layers which depict an employee’s position in the whole scheme of things. The organizational structure object helps understand an employee’s designation, department, manager (s), direct reportees, etc. 

Bank Details

This data model focuses on capturing the bank details of the employee, along with other financial details like a linked account for transfer of salary and other benefits that the employee is entitled to. In addition, it captures routing information like Swift Code, IFSC Code, Branch Code, etc. 

Dependents

Dependents object focuses on the family members of an employee or individuals who the employee has confirmed as dependents for purposes of insurance, family details, etc. This also includes details of employees’ dependents including their date of birth, relation to the employee, among others. 

KYC

This includes the background verification and other details about an employee with some identification proof and KYC (know your customer) documents. This is essential for companies to ensure their employees are well meaning citizens of the country meeting all compliances to work in that location. It captures details like Aadhar Number, PAN Number or unique identification number for the KYC document. 

Compensation

This data model captures all details related to compensation for an employee, including total compensation/ cost to company, compensation split, salary in hand, etc. It also includes details on fixed compensation, variable pay as well as stock options. Compensation object also captures the frequency of salary payment, pay period, etc. 

HRIS API Integration Best Practices for Developers

To help you leverage the benefits of HRIS API integrations, here are a few best practices that developers and teams that are managing integrations can adopt:

Prioritize which HRIS integrations are needed for efficient resource allocation

This is extremely important if you are building integrations in-house or wish to connect with HRIS APIs in a 1:1 model. Building each HRIS integration or connecting with each HR application in-house can take four weeks on an average, with an associated cost of ~$10K. Therefore, it is essential to prioritize which HRIS integrations are pivotal for the short term versus which ones can be pushed to a later period. If developers focus all their energy in building all HRIS integrations at once, it may lead to delays in other product features. 

Understand the HRIS API before integrating with it

Developers should spend sufficient time in researching and understanding each individual HRIS API they are integrating with, especially in a 1:1 case. For instance, REST vs SOAP APIs have different protocols and thus, must be navigated in different ways. Similarly, the API data model, URL and the way the HRIS API receives and sends data will be distinct across each application. Developers must understand the different URLs and API endpoints for staging and live environments, identify how the HRIS API reports errors and how to respond to them, the supported data formats (JSON/ XML), etc.  

Stay up to date with API versioning

As HRIS vendors add new features, functionalities and update the applications, the APIs keep changing. Thus, as a best practice, developers must support API versioning to ensure that any changes can be updated without impacting the integration workflow and compatibility. To ensure conducive API versioning, developers must regularly update to the latest version of the API to prevent any disruption when the old version is removed. Furthermore, developers should eliminate the reliance on or usage of deprecated features, endpoints or parameters and facilitate the use of fallbacks or system alter notifications for unprecedented changes. 

Set appropriate rate limits and review them regularly

When building and managing integrations in-house, developers must be conscious and cautious about rate limiting. Overstepping the rate limit can prevent API access, leading to integration workflow disruption. To facilitate this, developers should collaboratively work with the API provider to set realistic rate limits based on the actual usage. At the same time, it is important to constantly review rate limits against the usage and preemptively upgrade the same in case of anticipated exhaustion. Also, developers should consider scenarios and brainstorm with those who use the integration processes the maximum to identify ways to optimize API usage.

Document HR integration process for each HRIS

Documenting the integration process for each HRIS is extremely important. It ensures there is a clear record of everything about that integration in case a developer leaves the organization, fostering integration continuity and seamless error handling. Furthermore, it enhances the long-term maintainability of the HRIS API integration. A comprehensive document generally captures the needs and objectives of the integration, authentication methods, rate limits, API types and protocols, testing environments, safety net in case the API is discontinued, common troubleshooting errors and handling procedures, etc. At the same time this documentation should be stored in a centralized repository which is easily accessible. 

Test HRIS integrations across different scenarios

HRIS integration is only complete once it is tested across different settings and they continue to deliver consistent performance. Testing is also an ongoing process, because everytime there is an update in the API of the third-party application, testing is needed, and so is the case whenever there is an update in one’s own application. To facilitate robust testing, automation is the key. Additionally, developers can set up test pipelines and focus on monitoring and logging of issues. It is also important to check for backward compatibility, evaluate error handling implementation and boundary values and keep the tests updated. 

Guides to popular HRIS APIs

Each HRIS API in the market will have distinct documentation highlighting its endpoints, authentication methods, etc. To make HRIS API integration for developers simpler, we have created a repository of different HR application directories, detailing how to navigate integrations with them:

• Workday API Integration Guide
• ADP API Integration Guide
• greytHR API Guide
• Zoho People API Guide
• Ceridian Dayforce API Directory
• Oracle HCM API Directory
• Gusto API Directory
• Zenefits API Directory
• Freshteam API Directory
• Keka API Directory
• Greenhouse API Directory
• Darwinbox API Directory
• SuccessFactors API Directory
• Namely API Directory

Common HRIS API Integration Challenges 

While there are several benefits of HRIS API integration, the process is fraught with obstacles and challenges, including:

Diversity of HRIS API providers

Today, there are 1000s of HR applications in the market which organizations use. This leads to a huge diversity of HRIS API providers. Within the HRIS category, the API endpoints, type of API (REST vs SOAP), data models, syntax, authentication measures and standards, etc. can vary significantly. This poses a significant challenge for developers who have to individually study and understand each HRIS API before integration. At the same time, the diversity also contributes to making the integration process time consuming and resource intensive.

Lack of public APIs and robust documentation

The next challenge comes from the fact that not all HRIS APIs are publicly available. This means that these gated APIs require organizations to get into partnership agreements with them in order to access API key, documentation and other resources. Furthermore, the process of partnering is not always straightforward either. It ranges from background and security checks to lengthy negotiations, and at times come at a premium cost associated. At the same time, even when APIs are public, their documentation is often poor, incomplete and difficult to understand, adding another layer of complexity to building and maintaining HRIS API integrations. 

Difficulty in testing across environments

As mentioned in one of the sections above, testing is an integral part of HRIS API integration. However, it poses a significant challenge for many developers. On the one hand, not every API provider offers testing environments to build against, pushing developers to use real customer data. On the other hand, even if the testing environment is available, running integrations against the same, requires thorough understanding and a steep learning curve for SaaS product developers. Overall, testing becomes a major roadblock, slowing down the process of building and maintaining integrations. 

Maintaining data quality and standardization

When it comes to HRIS API integration, there are several data related challenges that developers face across the way. To begin with, different HR providers are likely to share the same information in different formats, fields and names. Furthermore, data may also not come in a simple format, forcing developers to collect and calculate the data to decipher some values out of it. Data quality adds another layer of challenges. SInce standardizing and transforming data into a unified format is difficult, ensuring its accuracy, timeliness, and consistency is a big obstacle for developers.  

Scaling HRIS integrations

Scaling HRIS API integrations can be a daunting task, especially when integrations have to be built 1:1, in-house. Since building each integration requires developers to understand the API documentation, decipher data complexities, create custom codes and manage authentication, the process is difficult to scale. While building a couple of integrations for internal use might be feasible, scaling customer-facing integrations leads to a high level of inefficient resource use and developer fatigue. 

Post integration maintenance

Keeping up with third-party APIs and integration maintenance is another challenge that developers face. To begin with as the API versions update and change, HRIS API integration must reflect those changes to ensure usability and compatibility. However API documentation seldom reflects these changes, making it a cumbersome task for developers to keep pace with the changes. And, the inability to update API versioning can lead to broken integrations, endpoints and consistency issues. Furthermore, monitoring and logging, necessary to monitor the health of integrations can be a big challenge, with an additional resource allocation towards checking logs and addressing errors promptly. Managing rate limiting and throttling are some of the other post integration maintenance challenges that developers tend to face. 

Building Your First HRIS Integration with Knit: Step-by-Step Guide

Building Your First E-Signature Integration with Knit

Knit provides a unified HRIS API that streamlines the integration of HRIS solutions. Instead of connecting directly with multiple HRIS APIs, Knit allows you to connect with top providers like Workday, Successfactors, BambooHr, and many others through a single integration.

Learn more about the benefits of using a unified API.

Getting started with Knit is simple. In just 5 steps, you can embed multiple HRIS integrations into your APP.

Steps Overview:

1. Create a Knit Account: Sign up for Knit to get started with their unified API. You will be taken through a getting started flow.
2. Select Category: Select HRIS from the list of available option on the Knit dashboard
3. Register Webhook: Since one of the use cases of HRIS integrations is to sync data at frequent intervals, Knit supports scheduled data syncs for this category. Knit operates on a push based sync model, i.e. it reads data from the source system and pushes it to you over a webhook, so you don’t have to maintain a polling infrastructure at your end. In this step, Knit expects you to tell us the webhook over which it needs to push the source data.
4. Set up Knit UI to start integrating with APPs: In this step you get your API key and integrate with the HRIS APP of your choice from the frontend.
5. Fetch data and make API calls: That’s it! It’s time to start syncing data and making API calls and take advantage of Knit unified APIs and its data models. 

For detailed integration steps with the unified HRIS APIt, visit:

• Getting started with Knit

Security Considerations for HRIS API Integrations

Security happens to be one of the main tenets of HRIS API integration, determining its success and effectiveness. As HRIS API integration facilitates transmission, exchange and storage of sensitive employee data and related information, security is of utmost importance. 

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HRIS API endpoints are highly vulnerable to unauthorized access attempts. The lack of robust security protocols, these vulnerabilities can be exploited and attackers can gain access to sensitive HR information. On the one hand, this can lead to data breaches and public exposure of confidential employee data. On the other hand, it can disrupt the existing systems and create havoc. Here are the top security considerations and best practices to keep in mind for HRIS API integration. 

Broken authentication tokens and unauthorized access

Authentication is the first step to ensure HRIS API security. It seeks to verify or validate the identity of a user who is trying to gain access to an API, and ensures that the one requesting the access is who they claim to be. The top authentication protocols include:

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• OAuth: It is commonly used to grant third-party applications limited access to user data from other services without exposing user credentials with the third party. It uses access tokens, which are temporary and short lived. 
• Bearer tokens: They are stateless, time-bound access tokens which are simple for one time use, but need to be protected as anyone with access to them can access the API. 
• API keys: Facilitating server-to-server communication, these long-lived secret keys are ideal for trusted parties or internal use. 
• JSON Web Tokens: A token-based authentication method with a self-contained nature, facilitates scalable and secure access. 
• Basic Auth: Involves sending a username and password in the API request header in the form of Base64-encoded credentials.

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Most authentication methods rely on API tokens. However, when they are not securely generated, stored, or transmitted, they become vulnerable to attacks. Broken authentication can grant access to attackers, which can cause session hijacking, giving the attackers complete control over the API session. Hence, securing API tokens and authentication protocols is imperative. Practices like limiting the lifespan of your tokens/API keys, via time-based or event-based expiration as well as securing credentials in secret vault services can. 

Data exposure during transmission

As mentioned, HRIS API integration involves transmission and exchange of sensitive and confidential employee information. However, if the data is not encrypted during transmission it is vulnerable to attacker interception. This can happen when APIs use insecure protocols (HTTP instead of HTTPS), data is transmitted as plain text without encryption, there is insufficient data masking and validation. 

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To facilitate secure data transmission, it is important to use HTTPS, which uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encrypt data and can only be decrypted when it reaches the intended recipient. 

Input validation failure

Input validation failures can increase the incidence of injection attacks in HRIS API integrations. These attacks, primarily SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), manipulate input data or untrusted data is injected into the database queries. This enables attackers to execute unauthorized database operations, potentially accessing or modifying sensitive information.

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Practices like input validation, output encoding, and the principle of least privilege, can help safeguard against injection vulnerabilities. Similarly, for database queries, using parameterized statements instead of injecting user inputs directly into SQL queries, can help mitigate the threat. 

Denial of service attacks and rate limiting

HRIS APIs are extremely vulnerable to denial of service (DoS) attacks where attackers flood your systems with excessive requests which it is not able to process, leading to disruption and temporarily restricts its functionality. Human errors, misconfigurations or even compromised third party applications can lead to this particular security challenge. 

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Rate limiting and throttling are effective measures that help prevent the incidence of DoS attacks, protecting APIs against excessive or abusive use and facilitating equitable request distribution between customers. While rate limiting restricts the number of requests or API calls that can be made in a specified time period, throttling slows down the processing of requests, instead of restricting them. Together, these act as robust measures to prevent excessive use attacks by perpetrators, and even protects against brute-force attacks. 

Third party security risks and ongoing threats

Third party security concerns i.e. how secure or vulnerable the third-party applications which you are integrating with, have a direct impact on the security posture of your HRIS API integration. Furthermore, threats and vulnerabilities come in without any prompt, making them unwanted guests. 

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To address the security concerns of third-party applications, it is important to thoroughly review the credibility and security posture of the software you integrate with. Furthermore, be cautious of the level of access you grant, sticking to the minimum requirement. It is equally important to monitor security updates and patch management along with a prepared contingency plan to mitigate the risk of security breaches and downtime in case the third-party application suffers a breach. 

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Furthermore, API monitoring and logging are critical security considerations for HRIS API integration. While monitoring involves continuous tracking of API traffic, logging entails maintaining detailed historical records of all API interactions. Together they are invaluable for troubleshooting, debugging, fostering trigger alerts in case security thresholds have been breached. In addition, regular security audits and penetration testing are extremely important. While security audits ensure the review of an API's design, architecture, and implementation to identify security weaknesses, misconfigurations, and best practice violations, penetration testing simulates cyberattacks to identify vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and potential entry points that malicious actors could exploit. These practices help mitigate ongoing security threats and facilitate API trustworthiness. 

Security with Knit’s HRIS API

When dealing with a large number of HRIS API integrations, security considerations and challenges increase exponentially. In such a situation, a unified API like Knit can help address all concerns effectively. Knit’s HRIS API ensures safe and high quality data access by:

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• Complying with industry best practices and security standards with SOC2, GDPR and ISO27001 certifications. 
• Monitoring Knit's infrastructure continuously with the finest intrusion detection systems. 
• Being the only unified API in the market that does not store any of your end user’s data in its servers.
• Encrypting all data doubly, when in transit and when at rest.
• Facilitating an additional layer of application security for encrypting PII and user credentials.
• Using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to monitor and manage all integrations and keep track of every API request, call or data sync. 

HRIS API Use Cases: Real-World Examples

Here’s a quick snapshot of how HRIS integration can be used across different scenarios.

HRIS integration for ATS tools

ATS or applicant tracking system can leverage HRIS integration to ensure that all important and relevant details about new employees, including name, contact information, demographic and educational backgrounds, etc. are automatically updated into the customer’s preferred HRIS tool without the need to manually entering data, which can lead to inaccuracies and is operationally taxing. ATS tools leverage the write HRIS API and provide data to the HR tools in use.   

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Examples: Greenhouse Software, Workable, BambooHR, Lever, Zoho

HRIS integration for payroll software

Payroll software plays an integral role in any company’s HR processes. It focuses on ensuring that everything related to payroll and compensation for employees is accurate and up to date. HRIS integration with payroll software enables the latter to get automated and real time access to employee data including time off, work schedule, shifts undertaken, payments made on behalf of the company, etc. 

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At the same time, it gets access to employee data on bank details, tax slabs, etc. Together, this enables the payroll software to deliver accurate payslips to its customers, regarding the latter’s employees. With automated integration, data sync can be prone to errors, which can lead to faulty compensation disbursal and many compliance challenges. HRIS integration, when done right, can alert the payroll software with any new addition to the employee database in real time to ensure setting up of their payroll immediately. At the same time, once payslips are made and salaries are disbursed, payroll software can leverage HRIS integration to write back this data into the HR software for records. 

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‍Examples: Gusto, RUN Powered by ADP, Paylocity, Rippling

HRIS integration for employee onboarding/ offboarding software

Employee onboarding software uses HRIS integration to ensure a smooth onboarding process, free of administrative challenges. Onboarding tools leverage the read HRIS APIs to get access to all the data for new employees to set up their accounts across different platforms, set up payroll, get access to bank details, benefits, etc.

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With HRIS integrations, employee onboarding software can provide their clients with automated onboarding support without the need to manually retrieve data for each new joiner to set up their systems and accounts. Furthermore, HRIS integration also ensures that when an employee leaves an organization, the update is automatically communicated to the onboarding software to push deprovisioning of the systems, and services. This also ensures that access to any tools, files, or any other confidential access is terminated. Manually deprovisioning access can lead to some manual errors, and even cause delays in exit formalities. 

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Examples: Deel, Savvy, Sappling

Ease of communication and announcements

With the right HRIS integration, HR teams can integrate all relevant data and send out communication and key announcements in a centralized manner. HRIS integrations ensure that the announcements reach all employees on the correct contact information without the need for HR teams to individually communicate the needful. 

HRIS integration for LMS tools

LMS tools leverage both the read and write HRIS APIs. On the one hand, they read or get access to all relevant employee data including roles, organizational structure, skills demand, competencies, etc. from the HRIS tool being used. Based on this data, they curate personalized learning and training modules for employees for effective upskilling. Once the training is administered, the LMS tools again leverage HRIS integrations to write data back into the HRIS platform with the status of the training, including whether or not the employee has completed the same, how did they perform, updating new certifications, etc. Such integration ensures that all learning modules align well with employee data and profiles, as well as all training are captured to enhance the employee’s portfolio. 

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Example: TalentLMS, 360Learning, Docebo, Google Classroom

HRIS integration for workforce management and scheduling tools 

Similar to LMS, workforce management and scheduling tools utilize both read and write HRIS APIs. The consolidated data and employee profile, detailing their competencies and training undertaken can help workforce management tools suggest the best delegation of work for companies, leading to resource optimization. On the other hand, scheduling tools can feed data automatically with HRIS integration into HR tools about the number of hours employees have worked, their time off, free bandwidth for allocation, shift schedules etc. HRIS integration can help easily sync employee work schedules and roster data to get a clear picture of each employee’s schedule and contribution. 

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Examples: QuickBooks Time, When I Work

HRIS integration for benefits administration tools

HRIS integration for benefits administration tools ensures that employees are provided with the benefits accurately, customized to their contribution and set parameters in the organization. Benefits administration tools can automatically connect with the employee data and records of their customers to understand the benefits they are eligible for based on the organizational structure, employment type, etc. They can read employee data to determine the benefits that employees are entitled to. Furthermore, based on employee data, they feed relevant information back into the HR software, which can further be leveraged by payroll software used by the customers to ensure accurate payslip creation. 

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‍Examples: TriNet Zenefits, Rippling, PeopleKeep, Ceridian Dayforce

HRIS integration for workforce planning tools

Workforce planning tools essentially help companies identify the gap in their talent pipeline to create strategic recruitment plans. They help understand the current capabilities to determine future hiring needs. HRIS integration with such tools can help automatically sync the current employee data, with a focus on organizational structure, key competencies, training offered, etc. Such insights can help workforce planning tools accurately manage talent demands for any organization. At the same time, real time sync with data from HR tools ensures that workforce planning can be updated in real time. 

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HRIS API Integration Error Handling

There are several reasons why HRIS API integrations fail, highlighting that there can be a variety of errors. Invariably, teams need to be equipped to efficiently handle any integration errors, ensuring error resolution in a timely manner, with minimal downtime. Here are a few points to facilitate effective HRIS API integration error handling. 

Understand the types of errors

Start with understanding the types of errors or response codes that come in return of an API call. Some of the common error codes include:

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• 404 Not Found: The requested resource doesn’t exist or isn’t available
• 429 Too Many Requests: API call request rate limit has been reached or exceeded
• 401 Unauthorized: Lack of authorization or privileges to access the particular resource
• 500 Internal Server Error: Issue found at the server’s end

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While these are some, there are other error codes which are common in nature and, thus, proactive resolution should be available. 

Configure the monitoring system to incorporate all error details

All errors are generally captured in the monitoring system the business uses for tracking issues. For effective HRIS API error handling, it is imperative that the monitoring system be configured in such a way that it not only captures the error code but also any other relevant details that may be displayed along with it. These can include a longer descriptive message detailing the error, a timestamp, suggestion to address the error, etc. Capturing these can help developers with troubleshooting the challenge and resolve the issues faster. 

Use exponential back-offs to increase API call intervals

This error handling technique is specifically beneficial for rate limit errors or whenever you exceed your request quota. Exponential backoffs allow users to retry specific API calls at an increasing interval to retrieve any missed information. The request may be retrieved in the subsequent window. This is helpful as it gives the system time to recover and reduces the number of failed requests due to rate limits and even saves the costs associated with these unnecessary API calls. 

Test, document and review error handling process

It is very important to test the error handling processes by running sandbox experiments and simulated environment testing. Ideally, all potential errors should be tested for, to ensure maximum efficiency. However, in case of time and resource constraints, the common errors mentioned above, including HTTP status code errors, like 404 Not Found, 401 Unauthorized, and 503 Service Unavailable, must be tested for. 

In addition to robust testing, every step of the error handling process must be documented. Documentation ensures that even in case of engineering turnover, your HRIS API integrations are not left to be poorly maintained with new teams unable to handle errors or taking longer than needed. At the same time, having comprehensive error handling documentation can make any knowledge transfer to new developers faster. Ensure that the documentation not only lists the common errors, but also details each step to address the issues with case studies and provides a contingency plan for immediate business continuity. 

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Furthermore, reviewing and refining the error handling process is imperative. As APIs undergo changes, it is normal for initial error handling processes to fail and not perform as expected. Therefore, error handling processes must be consistently reviewed and upgraded to ensure relevance and performance. 

API error handling with Knit

Knit’s HRIS API simplifies the error handling process to a great extent. As a unified API, it helps businesses automatically detect and resolve HRIS API integration issues or provide the customer-facing teams with quick resolutions. Businesses do not have to allocate resources and time to identify issues and then figure out remedial steps. For instance, Knit’s retry and delay mechanisms take care of any API errors arising due to rate limits. 

TL:DR

It is evident that HRIS API integration is no longer a good to have, but an imperative for businesses to manage all employee related operations. Be it integrating HRIS and other applications internally or offering customer facing integrations, there are several benefits that HRIS API integration brings along, ranging from reduced human error to greater productivity, customer satisfaction, etc. When it comes to offering customer-facing integrations, ATS, payroll, employee onboarding/ offboarding, LMS tools are a few among the many providers that see value with real world use cases. 

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However, HRIS API integration is fraught with challenges due to the diversity of HR providers and the different protocols, syntax, authentication models, etc. they use. Scalining integrations, testing across different environments, security considerations, data normalization, all create multidimensional challenges for businesses. Invariably, businesses are now going the unified API way to build and manage their HRIS API integration. Knit’s unified HRIS API ensures:

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• One unified API to connect with all HRIS tools you need
• Single unified data model for seamless data normalization and exchange
• Compliance to the highest security standards like SOC2, GDPR, ISO27001, HIPAA
• Option to authenticate the way you want, including, OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication
• 100% webhooks architecture that send out notification whenever updated data is available
• Guaranteed scalability and delivery of HR data irrespective of data load
• High level of security as Knit doesn’t store a copy of your data
• Option to read and write data from any app from any HRIS category
• Option to limit data sync and API calls to only what you need
• Double encryption when in transit and when at rest with addition PII layer
• Detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to easily monitor HRIS integrations
• Custom fields to manage any non-standard HRIS data

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Knit’s HRIS API ensures a high ROI for companies with a single type of authentication, pagination, rate limiting, and automated issue detection making the HRIS API integration process simple.

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Top 5 Alternatives to tryfinch

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TL:DR:

Finch is a leading unified API player, particularly popular for its connectors in the employment systems space, enabling SaaS companies to build 1: many integrations with applications specific to employment operations. This translates to the ease for customers to easily leverage Finch’s unified connector to integrate with multiple applications in HRIS and payroll categories in one go. Invariably, owing to Finch, companies find connecting with their preferred employment applications (HRIS and payroll) seamless, cost-effective, time-efficient, and overall an optimized process. While Finch has the most exhaustive coverage for employment systems, it's not without its downsides - most prominent being the fact that a majority of the connectors offered are what Finch calls “assisted” integrations. Assisted essentially means a human-in-the-loop integration where a person has admin access to your user's data and is manually downloading and uploading the data as and when needed.

Pros and cons of Finch

Why chose Finch (Pros)

● Ability to scale HRIS and payroll integrations quickly

● In-depth data standardization and write-back capabilities

● Simplified onboarding experience within a few steps

However, some of the challenges include(Cons):

● Most integrations are human-assisted instead of being true API integrations

● Integrations only available for employment systems

● Limited flexibility for frontend auth component

● Requires users to take the onus for integration management

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Pricing: Starts at $35/connection per month for read only apis; Write APIs for employees, payroll and deductions are available on their scale plan for which you’d have to get in touch with their sales team.

Now let's look at a few alternatives you can consider alongside finch for scaling your integrations

Finch alternative #1: Knit

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Knit is a leading alternative to Finch, providing unified APIs across many integration categories, allowing companies to use a single connector to integrate with multiple applications. Here’s a list of features that make Knit a credible alternative to Finch to help you ship and scale your integration journey with its 1:many integration connector:

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Pricing: Starts at $2400 Annually

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Here’s when you should choose Knit over Finch:

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● Wide horizontal and deep vertical coverage: Knit not only provides a deep vertical coverage within the application categories it supports, like Finch, however, it also supports a wider horizontal coverage of applications, higher than that of Finch. In addition to applications within the employment systems category, Knit also supports a unified API for ATS, CRM, e-Signature, Accounting, Communication and more. This means that users can leverage Knit to connect with a wider ecosystem of SaaS applications.

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● Events-driven webhook architecture for data sync: Knit has built a 100% events-driven webhook architecture, which ensures data sync in real time. This cannot be accomplished using data sync approaches that require a polling infrastructure. Knit ensures that as soon as data updates happen, they are dispatched to the organization’s data servers, without the need to pull data periodically. In addition, Knit ensures guaranteed scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load, offering a 99.99% SLA. Thus, it ensures security, scale and resilience for event driven stream processing, with near real time data delivery.

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● Data security: Knit is the only unified API provider in the market today that doesn’t store any copy of the customer data at its end. This has been accomplished by ensuring that all data requests that come are pass through in nature, and are not stored in Knit’s servers. This extends security and privacy to the next level, since no data is stored in Knit’s servers, the data is not vulnerable to unauthorized access to any third party. This makes convincing customers about the security potential of the application easier and faster.

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● Custom data models: While Knit provides a unified and standardized model for building and managing integrations, it comes with various customization capabilities as well. First, it supports custom data models. This ensures that users are able to map custom data fields, which may not be supported by unified data models. Users can access and map all data fields and manage them directly from the dashboard without writing a single line of code. These DIY dashboards for non-standard data fields can easily be managed by frontline CX teams and don’t require engineering expertise.  

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● Sync when needed: Knit allows users to limit data sync and API calls as per the need. Users can set filters to sync only targeted data which is needed, instead of syncing all updated data, saving network and storage costs. At the same time, they can control the sync frequency to start, pause or stop sync as per the need.

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● Ongoing integration management: Knit’s integration dashboard provides comprehensive capabilities. In addition to offering RCA and resolution, Knit plays a proactive role in identifying and fixing integration issues before a customer can report it. Knit ensures complete visibility into the integration activity, including the ability to identify which records were synced, ability to rerun syncs etc.

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As an alternative to Finch, Knit ensures:

● No-Human in the loop integrations

● No need for maintaining any additional polling infrastructure

● Real time data sync, irrespective of data load, with guaranteed scalability and delivery

● Complete visibility into integration activity and proactive issue identification and resolution

● No storage of customer data on Knit’s servers

● Custom data models, sync frequency, and auth component for greater flexibility

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Finch alternative #2: Merge

Another leading contender in the Finch alternative for API integration is Merge. One of the key reasons customers choose Merge over Finch is the diversity of integration categories it supports.

Pricing: Starts at $7800/ year and goes up to $55K

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Why you should consider Merge to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Higher number of unified API categories; Merge supports 7 unified API categories, whereas Finch only offers integrations for employment systems

● Supports API-based integrations and doesn’t focus only on assisted integrations (as is the case for Finch), as the latter can compromise customer’s PII data

● Facilitates data sync at a higher frequency as compared to Finch; Merge ensures daily if not hourly syncs, whereas Finch can take as much as 2 weeks for data sync

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However, you may want to consider the following gaps before choosing Merge:

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● Requires a polling infrastructure that the user needs to manage for data syncs

● Limited flexibility in case of auth component to customize customer frontend to make it similar to the overall application experience

● Webhooks based data sync doesn’t guarantee scale and data delivery

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Finch alternative #3: Workato

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Workato is considered another alternative to Finch, albeit in the traditional and embedded iPaaS category.

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Pricing: Pricing is available on request based on workspace requirement; Demo and free trial available

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Why you should consider Workato to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Supports 1200+ pre-built connectors, across CRM, HRIS, ticketing and machine learning models, facilitating companies to scale integrations extremely fast and in a resource efficient manner

● Helps build internal integrations, API endpoints and workflow applications, in addition to customer-facing integrations; co-pilot can help build workflow automation better

● Facilitates building interactive workflow automations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, with its customizable platform bot, Workbot

However, there are some points you should consider before going with Workato:

● Lacks an intuitive or robust tool to help identify, diagnose and resolve issues with customer-facing integrations themselves i.e., error tracing and remediation is difficult

● Doesn’t offer sandboxing for building and testing integrations

● Limited ability to handle large, complex enterprise integrations

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Finch alternative #4: Paragon

Paragon is another embedded iPaaS that companies have been using to power their integrations as an alternative to Finch.

Pricing: Pricing is available on request based on workspace requirement;

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Why you should consider Paragon to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Significant reduction in production time and resources required for building integrations, leading to faster time to market

● Fully managed authentication, set under full sets of penetration and testing to secure customers’ data and credentials; managed on-premise deployment to support strictest security requirements

● Provides a fully white-labeled and native-modal UI, in-app integration catalog and headless SDK to support custom UI

However, a few points need to be paid attention to, before making a final choice for Paragon:

● Requires technical knowledge and engineering involvement to custom-code solutions or custom logic to catch and debug errors

● Requires building one integration at a time, and requires engineering to build each integration, reducing the pace of integration, hindering scalability

● Limited UI/UI customization capabilities

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Finch alternative #5: Tray.io

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Tray.io provides integration and automation capabilities, in addition to being an embedded iPaaS to support API integration.

Pricing: Supports unlimited workflows and usage-based pricing across different tiers starting from 3 workspaces; pricing is based on the plan, usage and add-ons

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Why you should consider Tary.io to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Supports multiple pre-built integrations and automation templates for different use cases

● Helps build and manage API endpoints and support internal integration use cases in addition to product integrations

● Provides Merlin AI which is an autonomous agent to build automations via chat interface, without the need to write code

However, Tray.io has a few limitations that users need to be aware of:

● Difficult to scale at speed as it requires building one integration at a time and even requires technical expertise

● Data normalization capabilities are rather limited, with additional resources needed for data mapping and transformation

● Limited backend visibility with no access to third-party sandboxes

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TL:DR

We have talked about the different providers through which companies can build and ship API integrations, including, unified API, embedded iPaaS, etc. These are all credible alternatives to Finch with diverse strengths, suitable for different use cases. Undoubtedly, the number of integrations supported within employment systems by Finch is quite large, there are other gaps which these alternatives seek to bridge:

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● Knit: Providing unified apis for different categories, supporting both read and write use cases. A great alternative which doesn’t require a polling infrastructure for data sync (as it has a 100% webhooks based architecture), and also supports in-depth integration management with the ability to rerun syncs and track when records were synced.

● Merge: Provides a greater coverage for different integration categories and supports data sync at a higher frequency than Finch, but still requires maintaining a polling infrastructure and limited auth customization.

● Workato: Supports a rich catalog of pre-built connectors and can also be used for building and maintaining internal integrations. However, it lacks intuitive error tracing and remediation.

● Paragon: Fully managed authentication and fully white labeled UI, but requires technical knowledge and engineering involvement to write custom codes.

● Tray.io: Supports multiple pre-built integrations and automation templates and even helps in building and managing API endpoints. But, requires building one integration at a time with limited data normalization capabilities.

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Thus, consider the following while choosing a Finch alternative for your SaaS integrations:

● Support for both read and write use-cases

● Security both in terms of data storage and access to data to team members

● Pricing framework, i.e., if it supports usage-based, API call-based, user based, etc.

● Features needed and the speed and scope to scale (1:many and number of integrations supported)

Depending on your requirements, you can choose an alternative which offers a greater number of API categories, higher security measurements, data sync (almost in real time) and normalization, but with customization capabilities.

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As hiring needs for organizations become more complex, assessing candidates in a holistic and comprehensive manner is more critical than ever. Fortunately, multiple assessment software have surfaced in the recent past, enabling organizations to carry out assessments in the most effective and efficient manner. Leveraging technology, gamification and other advances, such tools are able to help organizations ensure that a candidate is a perfect fit for the role, skills, company culture and all other parameters. 

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However, to make the best use of assessment software, it is important to integrate data and information from them across other platforms being used for operational efficiency and faster turnaround in recruitment and onboarding. Here, assessment API integration plays a major role. 

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When organizations integrate data from the assessment API with other applications, including ATS, HRIS, interview scheduling, etc., they are able to optimize their recruitment workflow with a high degree of automation. 

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In this article, we will discuss the different aspects of assessment API, its integration use cases, key data models and the different ways in which you can accomplish seamless integration. 

Assessment API Data Models

To ensure that you understand the different assessment APIs well, it is important to comprehend the data models or fields that are commonly used. One of the major reasons that the knowledge of data models is imperative is to facilitate data transformation and normalization during data sync. Here are the common data models for assessment APIs:

Candidate name

This data model focuses on the name of the candidate to whom a particular assessment will be administered and all records pertaining to the candidate will be stored. It can also be associated with a unique candidate ID to prevent any confusion in case of duplication of names. 

Candidate profile

The next data model captures the profile of the candidate. From an assessment software perspective, the focus is on a candidate’s professional profile, prior work experience, qualifications, certifications, competencies, etc. Such details help in determining the right assessments for each candidate based on their experience and the role for which they are being assessed.  

Candidate contact information

This data field keeps the details or contact information for all candidates, including phone number, email address, etc. The contact information ensures that the candidate’s can be easily informed about their assessment schedule, any changes in the schedule, results, status, etc. it facilitates smooth communication between the assessment software and the candidate. 

Candidate profile picture

Most assessment software capture candidate pictures to ensure authenticity during assessments or training. Candidate profile pictures in assessment software databases help the latter to prevent proxy attendance during interviews or assessments and address any potential foul play. 

Job type

The next data model captures the nature of employment or the type of job. Today, in addition to full-time employees, organizations are increasingly hiring consultants, gig workers and even contractual employees. The assessment requirements for each one of them can be varied. Thus, the assessment software has a data model to capture the job type to ensure appropriate assessments. 

Job information

Assessment API captures job information or job details as an important data model. Put simply, this model has all details about the role being assessed for, the requirements, skills, competencies, and other aspects which need to be assessed. As a data model or field, job information contains all aspects of the job that need to be matched when candidates are assessed. 

Job department and managers

Next in line is the data model which focuses on the job department and managers. This particular field captures the department for which the candidate has applied for and the hiring managers. The details of hiring managers are important because the results of the assessment tests have to be sent to them. 

Assessment stages

Most assessment software have a few stages that a candidate undergoes. It can start from a normal personality test and go on to psychometric evaluations, coding tests, to personal interviews. As a data model, assessment stages help hiring managers understand where the candidates stand in the hiring pipeline and how close or far they are from closing a particular role at hand. 

Assessment list

The next data model captures all the types of assessments that are available as a part of the assessment software. This field has a repository of different assessments that can be administered. 

Scorecard

Once the assessment is administered, an important data model is the scorecard. This captures how the candidate performed for a particular assessment. The scorecard format or type can be different and unique for each assessment type. In some, it can be an absolute and objective score, while some others might give a more subjective outcome, determining the suitability of the candidate for the role. 

Assessment result

The assessment result as a data model captures the final verdict for the candidate. More often than not, hiring managers can update the result as selected, rejected or any other based on the scorecard and other evaluations undertaken, post which the data can be integrated into the next workflow software. 

Assessment attachment

This data field or data model captures any attachments that come along with a particular assessment test. Some tests might require candidates to submit their assessments as an attachment or external document. This field contains all such attachments which can be consulted during final hiring decisions. 

Assessment status

The assessment status data model captures the status of the assessment test for a particular candidate. It captures if the test has been provided to the candidate, whether or not they have completed the same, etc. 

Top Assessment Applications

Now that there is a clear understanding of the different assessment software data models, let’s quickly look at some of the top assessment applications available in the market today, which can be integrated with different software like ATS, HRIS, LMS, etc. 

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Assessment API Integration: Top Use Cases

Assessment software is a part of the larger ecosystem of software that companies today use to manage their people's operations. Invariably, there are several other tools and software in the market today, which when integrated with assessment APIs can lead to operational efficiency and smooth HR and related processes. There are several categories of tools out there which either feed data into assessment APIs (write APIs) or get access to data from assessment APIs (read APIs). Integration ensures that such data syncs are automated and do not require any manual interview, which can be prone to errors, time consuming and operationally taxing. Here are some of the top use cases for assessment API integration across different software. 

Assessment API integration for ATS tools

Assessment API integration is very critical for ATS or applicant tracking systems. ATS tools and platforms have all the required information about candidates, including their name, profile, pictures, contact information, etc. Assessment API integration with ATS tools ensures that the assessment read API can get access to all these details automatically without any manual intervention. At the same time, integration also facilitates real-time information updation in assessment tools, which can set up assessments for new applicants almost immediately. This leads to faster turnaround. Furthermore, the assessment write APIs can feed information back to the ATS tools with the assessment results and scorecards to help update the candidate’s status in the recruitment flow. 

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Examples: Greenhouse Software, Workable, BambooHR, Lever, Zoho

Assessment API integration for candidate screening tools

Candidate screening tools help organizations determine whether or not a candidate is ideal or right for the role in question. Integration with assessment software ensures that data about a candidate’s performance in an assessment test is automatically synced for screening managers to assess the skills, competencies and abilities of the candidate and its relevance to the open position. Furthermore, assessment API integration with candidate screening tools ensures that the latter have real time access to candidate assessment results for immediate hiring decision making, based on evidence backed data for smart hiring. 

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Examples: 

Assessment API integration for HRIS tools

Assessment API integration with HRIS tools is a no brainer. Once a candidate clears the assessments and is offered a job at an organization, it is essential to capture the results from the assessments in the HRIS platform. Here, the assessment write APIs play an important role. They help HR teams get access to all the relevant information about an employee based on different personality, psychometric, behavioral, cognitive tests to help them capture employee records which are robust and comprehensive. Automated integration of data from assessment tools to HRIS platforms ensures that no human error or bias crawls in when assessment data is being entered into HRIS portals. Furthermore, since many parts of an assessment test can be sensitive, such integration ensures that data exchange is confidential and on a need to know basis only. 

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Examples: BambooHR, Namely, SAP SuccessFactors, Gusto

Assessment API integration for interview scheduling tools

Most companies today leverage interview scheduling tools to automate their entire interview processes, including blocking calendars, managing schedules, etc. For interview scheduling tools, integration with assessment APIs is important to ensure that all interviews with candidates can be scheduled effectively, keeping in my mind both interviewer and interviewee schedules. Interview scheduling tools can leverage assessment read APIs to understand the assessment availability and dates to schedule the interview. Furthermore, once the interview is scheduled, assessment write APIs can help provide updates on whether or not the candidate attended the interview, status, next steps to help interview scheduling tools effectively conduct interactions with candidates as needed. 

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Examples: Calendly, Sense, GliderAI, YouCanBookMe, Paradox

Assessment API integration for LMS tools 

While most assessment software have use cases in the pre-employment stages, their utility can also transcend into post employment phases as well. The LMS tools can easily leverage assessment read APIs to understand the type of assessment tests available which can be used for internal training purposes. Furthermore, candidate performance in pre-employment assessment tests can be used as a baseline to define the types of training required and areas for upskilling. Overall, this integration can help identify the learning needs for the organization and clarify the assessments available for further investigation. At the same time, once the assessments are administered, the assessment write API can automatically sync the relevant data and results for post employment assessment on whether or not employees participated in the assessments, results, gaps, etc. to the LMS tools for better decision making on employee training and development. 

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Example: TalentLMS, 360Learning, Docebo, Google Classroom 

Assessment API integration for talent management tools

Talent management and workforce planning tools are integral when it comes to succession planning for any organization. Assessments conducted, both pre and post employment can greatly help in determining the talent needs for any organization. Talent management tools can leverage assessment read APIs to understand how their existing or potential talent is performing along areas critical to the organization. Any gaps in the talent or consistent poor performance in a particular area of assessment can then be identified to adopt corrective measures. Assessment API integration can help talent management tools effectively understand the talent profile in their organization, which can further help in better succession planning and talent analytics. 

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Examples: ClearCompany, Deel, ActivTrak

Unified Assessment API Integration: All You Need to Know

There are several ways companies can achieve assessment API integration to suit their use cases. Right from building integrations in-house for each assessment tool to practices like workflow automation tools, there are several ways to integrate. However, as the number of customers and integration needs increase exponentially, going for a unified assessment API for integration is the best move. Here are a few instances when choosing a unified API for assessment software integration makes sense. Use unified assessment API when you:

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• Wish to integrate with multiple assessment software based on your customer needs and developing point to point integration with each one is not viable
• Have a large customer base and their integration requests for new assessment software is increasing
• Need to deliver integrations in a short span of time and you lack dedicated engineering bandwidth in-house
• Want to achieve assessment API integration at a lower cost with faster time to market
• Don’t want to take the burden of ongoing maintenance and management of each integration
• Want to skip the effort that goes into reading through API documentation for each integration
• Want to normalize data across assessment platforms and ensure that this transformation process is 10X faster than you internal processes
• Want to ensure complete security, especially due to the nature of sensitive information in question
• Seek real-time sync and exchange of data for immediate action or the flexibility to customize syncs as per your needs
• Want to skip the process of learning about different authentication keys, rate limits, etc. for different APIs

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Now that you know a unified assessment API is the best and the most effective for you to build integrations with assessment software, go through the following questions to choose the best unified assessment API for your organization. 

What are the data models?

The ideal unified API normalizes and syncs data into a unified data model and facilitates data transformation 10x faster. While most fields are common and a unified model works, choose a unified assessment API which also gives you the flexibility to add some custom data models which may not align with the standard data models available. 

What are the rate limits?

Each unified API will offer rate limits, which is the number of API requests or data sync requests you can make in a given period of time. Having an optimum rate limit is extremely important. Having a very high rate limit, in which many requests can be made can lead to potential DDoS attacks and other vulnerabilities. Whereas, having a very low rate limit, where only a handful API requests can be made, might lead to inefficiencies and data inaccuracies. Therefore, gauge the rate limits offered to check if they align with your needs or if they can be customized for you. 

How secure is the integration process?

Next, any unified assessment API you choose should be high on security. On the one hand, check for compliance with all certifications and global standards. On the other hand, look out for comprehensive data encryption, which involves encrypting data at rest and in transit. When looking at security, do check the level of authentication and authorization available.  

What kind of post integration support is available?

Building integrations is followed by the operationally and technically draining tasks of managing integrations. Integration maintenance and management can take anywhere between 5-10 hours of your engineering bandwidth. Therefore, choose a unified assessment API provider which provides you with maintenance support. You should be able to manage the health of all your integrations with a robust track of all API calls, requests, etc. 

What is the sync frequency?

As data sync is the most important part of assessment API integration, check the sync frequency offered by the unified API. While real-time sync, powered by a webhook architecture which ensures real-time data transfer, without any polling infrastructure is ideal. It is equally important to have something which can be customized and allows you to set the sync frequency as per your needs. 

How easy is it to scale?

The key purpose of a unified assessment API is to scale as fast as possible and ensure all customer assessment tools are integrated with. Therefore, you must check the breadth of assessment API integrations being offered. At the same time, explore how open and forthcoming the unified API provider is to custom integrations for you if needed. This also needs to be weighted against the time taken for each new integration and any cost associated with the same. 

Can it take a high data load?

Finally, as you add more assessment API integrations and the number of customers using the same increase, the data load for sync will experience an exponential rise. Thus, your unified assessment API must facilitate guaranteed scalability with quality sync, irrespective of the data load. Without the same, there are chances of data corruption. 

Knit: Unified Assessment API

As a leading unified assessment API, Knit has the right tick mark for all the considerations mentioned above and much more. Here’s why you should consider Knit for your assessment API integration needs:

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• Unified data model which normalizes data with option to customize some fields
• Double encryption of data with encryption for PII and user credentials
• Compliance with  SOC2, GDPR, ISO27001
• No storage of a copy of any data that passes through Knit
• Webhook architecture for real time data sync irrespective of data load
• Option to customize sync frequency whenever needed
• Availability of OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication
• Bi-directional data sync to read and write from any assessment software
• Detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page for integration management

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Book a demo today to learn about the other ways in which Knit can be your ideal unified assessment API partner, how it works and anything else you need to know!

Wrapping up: TL:DR

Integrating with assessment APIs can help different companies and platforms unlock value to better streamline their operations. Assessment API integration can facilitate bi-directional sync of data between assessment tools and other applications. While there are several ways to achieve such integration, a unified API is one of the top contenders as it facilitates data normalization, high levels of security, guaranteed scalability, seamless maintenance and management and real time data syncs. 

Organizations today adopt and deploy various applications, to make their work simpler, more efficient and enhance overall productivity. However, in most cases, the process of connecting with these applications is complex, time consuming and an ineffective use of the engineering team. Fortunately, over the years, different approaches or platforms have seen a rise, enabling companies to integrate applications for their internal use or to create customer facing interfaces. 

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In this article, we will discuss the different options available for companies to integrate with SaaS applications. We will detail the diverse approaches for different needs and use cases, along with a comparative analysis between the different platforms within each approach to help you make an informed choice. 

Types of SaaS integrations

As mentioned above, particularly, there are two types of SaaS integrations that most organizations use or need. Here’s a quick understanding of both:

Internal use integrations

Internal use integrations are generally created between two applications that a company uses or between internal systems to facilitate seamless and data flow. Consider that a company uses BambooHR as its HRMS systems and stores all its HR data there, while using ADPRun to manage all of its payroll functions. An internal integration will help connect these two applications to facilitate information flow and data exchange between them. 

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For instance, with integration, any new employee that is onboarded in BambooHR will be automatically reflected in ADPRun with all relevant details to process compensation at the end of the pay period. Similarly, any employees who leave will be automatically deleted, ensuring that the data across platforms being used internally is consistent and up to date. 

Customer facing integrations

On the other hand, customer-facing integrations are intrinsically created between your product and the applications used by your customer to facilitate seamless data exchange for maximum efficiency in operations. It ensures that all data updated in your customer’s application is synced with your product with high reliability and speed. 

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Let’s say that you offer candidate communication services for your customers. Using customer-facing integrations, you can easily connect with the ATS application that your customer uses to ensure that whenever there is any movement in the application status for any candidate, you promptly communicate to the candidate on the next steps. This will not only ensure regular flow of communication with the candidate, but will also eliminate any missed opportunities with real time data sync. 

Best SaaS integration platforms for different use cases

With differences in purposes and use cases, the best approach and platforms for different integrations also varies. Put simply, most internal integrations require automation of workflow and data exchange, while customer facing ones need more sophisticated functionalities. Even with the same purpose, the needs of developers and organizations can be varied, creating the need for diverse platforms which suit varying requirements. In the following section, we will discuss the three major kinds of integration platforms, including workflow automation tools, embedded iPaaS and unified APIs with specific examples within each. 

Internal integrations: Workflow automation tools/ iPaaS 

Essentially, internal integration tools are expected to streamline the workflow and data exchange between internally used applications for an organization to improve efficiency, accuracy and process optimization. Workflow automation tools or iPaaS are the best SaaS integration platforms to support this purpose. They come with easy to use drag and drop functionalities, along with pre-built connectors and available SDKs to easily power internal integrations. Some of the leaders in the space are:

Workato

An enterprise grade automation platform, Workato facilitates workflow automation and integration, enabling businesses to seamlessly connect different applications for internal use. 

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Benefits of Workato

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• High number of pre-built connectors, making integration with any tool seamless
• Enterprise grade security functionalities, like encryption, role-based access, audit logs for data protection
• No-code/ low code iPaaS experience; option to make own connectors with simple SDKs

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Limitations of Workato 

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• Expensive for organizations with budget constraints
• Limited offline functionality

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Ideal for enterprise-level customers that need to integrate with 1000s of applications with a key focus on security. 

Zapier

An iSaaS (integration software as a service) tool, Zapier allows software users to integrate with applications and automate tasks which are relatively simple, with Zaps. 

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Benefits of Zapier

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• Easily accessible and can be used by non-technical teams to automate simple tasks via Zaps using a no code UI
• Provides 7000+ pre-built connectors and automation templates
• Has recently introduced a co-pilot which allows users to build their own Zaps using natural language

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Limitations of Zapier

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• Runs the risk of introducing security risks into the system
• Relatively simple and may not support complex or highly sophisticated use cases

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Ideal for building simple workflow automations which can be developed and managed by all teams at large, using its vast connector library. 

Mulesoft

Mulesoft is a typical iPaaS solution that facilitates API-led integration, which offers easy to use tools to help organizations automate routine and repetitive tasks.

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Benefits of Mulesoft

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• High focus on integration with Salesforce and Salesforce products, facilitating automation with CRM effectively
• Offers data integration, API management, and analytics with Anytime Platform
• Provides a powerful API gateway for security and policy management

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Limitations of Mulesoft

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• Requires a steep learning curve as it is technically complex
• Higher on the pricing, making it unsuitable for smaller organizations

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Ideal for more complex integration scenarios with enterprise-grade features, especially for integration with Salesforce and allied products. 

Dell Boomi

With experience of powering integrations for multiple decades, Dell Boomi provides tools for iPaaS, API management and master data management. 

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Benefits of Dell Boomi

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• Comes with a simple UI and multiple pre-built connectors for popular applications
• Can help with diverse use cases for different teams
• Adopted by several large enterprises due to their experience in the space

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Limitations of Dell Boomi

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• Requires more technical expertise than some other workflow automation tools
• Support is limited to simpler integrations and may not be able to support complex scenarios

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Ideal for diverse use cases and comes with a high level of credibility owing to the experience garnered over the years. 

SnapLogic

The final name in the workflow automation/ iPaaS list is SnapLogic which comes with a low-code interface, enabling organizations to quickly design and implement application integrations. 

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Benefits of SnapLogic

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• Simple UI and low-code functionality ensures that users from technical and non-technical backgrounds can leverage it
• Comes with a robust catalog of pre-built connectors to integrate fast and effectively
• Offers on-premise, cloud based on hybrid models of integration

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Limitations of SnapLogic

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• May be a bit too expensive for small size organizations with budget constraints
• Scalability and optimal performance might become an issue with high data volume

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Ideal for organizations looking for automation workflow tools that can be used by all team members and supports functionalities, both online and offline. 

Customer facing integrations: Embedded iPaaS & Unified API

While the above mentioned SaaS integration platforms are ideal for building and maintaining integrations for internal use, organizations looking to develop customer facing integrations need to look further. Companies can choose between two competing approaches to build customer facing SaaS integrations, including embedded iPaaS and unified API. We have outlined below the key features of both the approaches, along with the leading SaaS integration platforms for each. 

Embedded iPaaS

An embedded iPaaS can be considered as an iPaaS solution which is embedded within a product, enabling companies to build customer-facing integrations between their product and other applications. This enables end customers to seamlessly exchange data and automate workflows between your application and any third party application they use. Both the companies and the end customers can leverage embedded iPaaS to build integration and automate workflows. Here are the top embedded iPaaS that companies use as SaaS integrations platforms. 

Workato Embedded

In addition to offering an iPaaS solution for internal integrations, Workato embedded offers embedded iPaaS for customer-facing integrations. It is a low-code solution and also offers API management solutions.

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Benefits of Workato Embedded

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• Highly extensive connector library with 1200+ pre-built connectors and built-in workflow actions
• Enterprise grade embedded iPaaS with sophisticated security and compliance standards

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Limitations of Workato Embedded

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• Requires customers to build each customer facing integration separately, making it resource and time intensive
• Lacks a standard data model, making data transformation and normalization complicated
• Cost ineffective for smaller companies and offers limited offline connectivity

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Ideal for large companies that wish to offer a highly robust integration library to their customers to facilitate integration at scale. 

Paragon

Built exclusively for the embedded iPaaS use case, Paragon enables users to ship and scale native integrations.

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Benefits of Paragon

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• Offers effective monitoring features, including event and failure alerts and logs, and enables users to access the full underlying API (developer friendly)
• Facilitates on-premise deployment, especially, for users with highly sensitive data and privacy needs
• Ensures fully managed authentication and user management with the Paragon SDK

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Limitations of Paragon

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• Fewer connectors are readily available, as compared to market average
• Pushes customers to create their own integrations from scratch in certain cases

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Ideal for companies looking for greater monitoring capabilities along with on-premise deployment options in the embedded iPaaS. 

Pandium

Pandium is an embedded iPaaS which also allows users to embed an integration marketplace within their product. 

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Benefits of Pandium

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• The embedded integration marketplace (which can be white-labeled) allows customers and prospects to find all integrations at one place
• Helps companies outsource the development and management of integrations
• Provides key integration analytics

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Limitations of Pandium

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• Limited catalog of connectors as compared to other competitors
• Requires technical expertise to use, blocking engineering bandwidth
• Forces users to build one integration at a time, making the scalability limited

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Ideal for companies that require an integration marketplace which is highly customizable and have limited bandwidth to build and manage integrations in-house. 

Tray Embedded

As an embedded iPaaS solution, Tray Embedded allows companies to embed its iPaaS solution into their product to provide customer-facing integrations. 

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Benefits of Tray Embedded

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• Provides a large number of connectors and also enables customers to request and get a new connector built on extra charges
• Offers an API management solution to to design and manage API endpoints
• Provides Merlin AI, an autonomous agent, powering simple automations via a chat interface

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Limitations of Tray Embedded

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• Limited ability to automatically detect issues and provide remedial solutions, pushing engineering teams to conduct troubleshooting
• Limited monitoring features and implementation processes require a workaround

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Ideal for companies with custom integration requirements and those that want to achieve automation through text. 

Cyclr

Another solution solely limited to the embedded iPaaS space, Cyclr facilitates low-code integration workflows for customer-facing integrations. 

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Benefits of Cyclr

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• Enables companies to use seamlessly design a new workflow with templates, without heavy coding
• Provides connectors for 500+ applications and is growing
• Offers an out of the box embedded marketplace or launch functionality that allows end users to deploy integrations

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Limitations of Cyclr

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• Comes with a steep learning curve 
• Limited built-in workflow actions for each connector, where complex integrations might require additional endpoints, the feasibility for which is limited
• Lack of visibility into the system sending API requests, making monitoring and debugging issues a challenge

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Ideal for companies looking for centralized integration management within a standardized integration ecosystem. 

Unified API

The next approach to powering customer-facing integrations is leveraging a unified API. As an aggregated API, unified API platforms help companies easily integrate with several applications within a category (CRM, ATS, HRIS) using a single connector. Leveraging unified API, companies can seamlessly integrate both vertically and horizontally at scale. 

Merge

As a unified API, Merge enables users to add hundreds of integrations via a single connector, simplifying customer-facing integrations. 

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Benefits of Merge

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• High coverage within the integrations categories; 7+ integration categories currently available
• Integration observability features with fully searchable logs, dashboard and automated issue detection 
• Access to custom objects and fields like field mapping, authenticated passthrough requests

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Limitations of Merge

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• Limited flexibility for frontend auth component and limited customization capabilities
• Requires maintaining a polling infrastructure for managing data syncs
• Webhooks based data sync doesn’t guarantee scale and data delivery

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Ideal to build multiple integrations together with out-of-the-box features for managing integrations.

Finch

A leader in the unified API space for employment systems, Finch helps build 1:many integrations with HRIS and payroll applications. 

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Benefits of Finch

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• One of the highest number of integrations available in the HRIS and Payroll integration categories
• Facilitates standardized data for all employment data across top HRIS and Payroll providers, like Quickbooks, ADP, and Paycom
• Allows users to read and write benefits data, including payroll deductions and contributions programmatically

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Limitations of Finch

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• Limited number of integration categories available
• Offers  “assisted” integrations, requiring a Finch team member or associate to manually sync data on your behalf
• Low data fields support limited data fields available in the source system

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Ideal for companies looking to build integrations with employment systems and high levels of data standardization. 

Apideck

Another option in the unified API category is Apideck, which offers integrations in more categories than the above two mentioned SaaS integration platforms in this space. 

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Benefits of Apideck

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• Higher number of categories (inc. Accounting, CRM, File Storage, HRIS, ATS, Ecommerce, Issue Tracking, POS, SMS) than many other alternatives and is quick to add new integrations
• Popular for its integration marketplace, known as Apideck ecosystem
• Offers best in class onboarding experience and responsive customer support

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Limitations of Apideck

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• Limited number of live integrations within each category
• Limited data sync capabilities; inability to access data beyond its own data fields

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Ideal for companies looking for a wider range of integration categories with an openness to add new integrations to its suite. 

Knit

A unified API, Knit facilitates integrations with multiple categories with a single connector for each category; an exponentially growing category base, richer than other alternatives.

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Benefits of Knit

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• Seamless data normalization and transformation at 10x speed with custom data fields for non-standard data models
• The only SaaS integration platform which doesn’t store a copy of the end customer’s data, ensuring superior privacy and security (as all requests are pass through in nature)
• 100% events-driven webhook architecture, which ensures data sync in real time, without the need to pull data periodically (no polling architecture needed)
• Guaranteed scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load, offering a 99.99% SLA
• Custom data models, sync frequency and auth component for greater flexibility
• Offers RCA and resolution to identify and fix integration issues before a customer can report it
• Ensures complete visibility into the integration activity, including the ability to identify which records were synced, ability to rerun syncs etc. 

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Ideal for companies looking for SaaS integration platforms with wide horizontal and vertical coverage, complete data privacy and don’t wish to maintain a polling infrastructure, while ensuring sync scalability and delivery. 

Best SaaS integration platforms: A comparative analysis

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TL:DR

Clearly SaaS integrations are the building blocks to connect and ensure seamless flow of data between applications. However, the route that organizations decide to take large depends on their use cases. While workflow automation or iPaaS makes sense for internal use integrations, an embedded iPaaS or a unified API approach will serve the purpose of building customer facing integrations. Within each approach, there are several alternatives available to choose from. While making a choice, organizations must consider:

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• The breadth (horizontal coverage/ categories) and depth (integrations within each category) that are available
• Security, authentication and authorization mechanisms
• Integration maintenance and management support
• Visibility into the integration activity along with intuitive issue detection and resolution
• The way data syncs work (events based or do they require an additional polling infrastructure)

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Depending on what you consider to be more valuable for your organization, you can go in for the right approach and the right option from within the 14 best SaaS integration platforms shared above. 

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CRM or customer relationship management platforms are widely used by organizations to store and organize all client and prospect related data. Essentially, it acts as a unified repository capturing all relevant information, status, conversations, etc. giving a complete view into the prospect/ client relationship history with the organization. While CRM in itself brings several benefits to its users, when connected with other applications, it can unlock a range of new possibilities, facilitating automation, efficiency, accuracy and much more. 

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CRM API integration enables organizations to either connect and sync their CRM with other software applications they use, or allows them to connect their product with third party CRM that their end customers use. The overall objective is to foster seamless data exchange and sync between the CRM and other applications. Organizations commonly seek CRM API integration with email marketing platforms, e-commerce platforms, ticketing solutions, etc., however, the real-world use cases are many more. Once integrated, all the connected applications have real-time access to the latest customer information and conversion status, facilitating the sales and engagement process. Overall, it saves a lot of time for sales, marketing, finance, operations and other teams and yields greater productivity and customer experience. 

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The article seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the CRM API integration landscape, illustrating the technical as well as business aspects which can lead to organizational success. With expert insights, it will cover the use cases, benefits, challenges step by step processes and much more that can help organizations accelerate their CRM API integration journey. 

Benefits of CRM API Integration

CRM API integration brings along several benefits, which have a direct impact on businesses. These include:

Centralized customer information & faster GTM

With CRM API integration, businesses are able to accelerate their time to market with a more efficient go-to-market strategy. It ensures that all customer information is available in a centralized manner. When all go-to-market teams, including, sales, marketing, and others are able to share leads and status in real time and effectively, they feel more empowered and are able to thrive. This leads to faster customer acquisition, greater retention and revenue generation. 

Prevents human errors

CRM API integration ensures that all customer related information is updated across all connected platforms in real time. This automated workflow prevents any human errors in capturing the necessary information. For instance, with manual data entry, if the buying potential of a lead is captured incorrectly, due to human error, it can lead to flawed targeted marketing, resulting in diminished customer interest and missed opportunities. CRM API integration ensures that all information that passes through the integrated systems is accurate and error free. 

Streamlined sales productivity

With automated exchange of information, sales and sales support teams are better able to focus on customer acquisition and retention. Since they do not have to spend time updating information across different platforms and have real time access to updated status, they can allocate their time to sales intensive tasks which lead to lead generation and conversion. 

Better customer experience

When businesses offer CRM API integration functionalities to their end customers, they benefit from a superior customer satisfaction and experience quotient. This primarily stems from the fact that when you provide CRM integration, customers consider the product to be more valuable, saving their time and allowing them to close their deals faster. Also, when customers don’t have to manually share information with your product, they find using it more convenient and pleasant, leading to greater customer retention. 

Higher closure rates and market expansion

For customer facing CRM API integration, one of the key benefits is the potential for market expansion and higher closure rates. When customers are evaluating your product against other competitors, the functionalities and add-ons offered are considered. Offering integrations, especially with CRM (a basic system that almost all businesses use), becomes a key differentiating factor. This enables businesses to not only tap into a bigger pool of customers, but also leverage high sales closure, making customers willing to adopt your solution. 

CRM API Data Models Explained

To leverage CRM API to integrate data across software applications that you use or are providing, it is important to understand some of the key concepts, data models or terminologies that are used. Each of these concepts has specific data schemas associated with them which we will discuss in the subsequent section. 

Contacts vs Leads

While many concepts will be different and unique across different CRM that you might come across, there are a few which are generally consistent. Contacts is one such concept. Essentially, Contacts refers to the unique users that you add to a CRM around which you wish to maintain the data or information. Each Contact may be associated with an Account or a company they most closely relate to.  

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While Contacts is the most common concept, many CRM also have the concept of a Lead, which aren’t necessarily associated with any Account. They are generally raw data of people you add, which once qualified are converted to Contacts. 

Custom Objects and Fields

One of the key characteristics of CRM is its potential for customization. Depending on the nature of your business and function, you can add or create custom objects and fields on standard objects to collect the information in a way that makes sense for your business. 

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Within each of the concepts mentioned above, there are CRM API data schemas that ultimately guide the information flow and facilitate integration. While there will be a lot of data beyond this as well, here are some CRM API data schemas that can help you get started with CRM integration. 

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‍As mentioned, the core of any CRM will be Contacts, which are primarily all users or entries you have in your CRM against which you will capture key information or data. Generally, a Contact has data in the form of name, email address, postal address, phone number, unique user ID, etc. In addition, there can be custom fields which can be used to capture additional information relevant to the business. A Contact might be linked to an Account or might be an Opportunity if it is a part of an ongoing sales conversation. 

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‍A related concept for the CRM API mentioned above is Leads. Leads are generally captured early on in the CRM sales process. They are eventually converted to Contacts when they are qualified with more information. A Lead is generally a sole entity and is not associated with any Account or Opportunity. The data schemas for Leads are similar to Contacts, including name, email address, postal address, phone number, unique user ID, etc. 

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‍Next, we have Accounts. Accounts are primarily the companies or organizations that are a part of your CRM. Contacts are often associated with the Accounts. Normally, each Account can have multiple Contacts associated with it, considering the CRM owner might be interacting with or wants to store data of more than one person in a particular Account. The data schemas for Accounts are more macro in nature and include company name, industry, location, website, business address, number of employees, founded in, etc. 

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‍Finally, there are Opportunities, especially in a sales CRM, which help the sales representatives to keep track of the sales funnel and facilitate a smooth conversion process. Any types of subscriptions or purchase processes are captured as Opportunities. Each Opportunity is associated with either an Account or a Contact to get access to the information about the respective stakeholder. The data schema for Opportunities focuses on the size of the deal, name of the sales representative or the person leading the deal, status of the deal, expected revenue, reference, close date, etc. 

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In addition to these data schemas for different concepts, there is a data schema of notes which can be associated with all of these concepts of Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities. Essentially, notes contain updates and latest information on the status of each of the concepts and are important for capturing developments in the relationship. 

CRM API Integration Best Practices for Developers

CRM API integration, while highly beneficial, can be a daunting task for developers to build and maintain. To help address the same, we have created a repository of best practices that developers can adopt to make the process seamless. 

Define CRM API integration goals and priorities

It is important to start with clearly defining the goals you wish to achieve with CRM API integration. Both internal and customer facing CRM API integration can have a variety of goals and use cases. Having clarity on what you wish to achieve with the same can help strategize the development process. Similarly, when building CRM API integration in-house, it is advised not to boil the ocean at once. This means identifying the top CRM APIs you want to integrate with and starting the process. You can gradually add more CRM applications to your repository, but start with the priorities which your employees and customers demand. 

Understand CRM data models and get access to API documentation 

Once your goals and priorities are clear, it is imperative to understand the CRM right from the protocols, data models, syntax, etc. While developers have the technical knowledge to build integrations, the domain specific understanding of the fields, data models, etc. can require a steep learning curve. However, without the same, building and maintaining integrations can be difficult. To facilitate the same, developers must focus on getting access to API documentation. Invariably, building any integration requires its knowledge bank, i.e. the API documentation. 

Test your CRM API integrations rigorously

CRM API integration needs to be tested comprehensively across use cases. Testing ensures that any potential errors or challenges are proactively identified and resolved, facilitating the integration to work as intended. Choosing a network request mocking library for testing can be highly beneficial as they stimulate real world network interactions for robust testing. You can isolate testing scenarios and even test error handling practices, for a 360-degree evaluation. At the same time, testing needs to be done with realistic data to ensure that your system and the error handling mechanisms are able to validate and manage the different types of real data that comes in. 

Implement strong identity and access management

Since each CRM is a huge data bank of customer information and intel, strong identity and access management is critical to comply with data privacy laws and maintain customer confidentiality and trust. Multi factor authentication (MFA), auditing capabilities, centralized access controls all together can help limit the data exchange access to those concerned. 

Manage versioning and backward compatibility

While building and maintaining CRM API integrations, developers need to ensure that they are able to manage versioning and backward compatibility. Invariably, as there are updates to the CRM, the third-party APIs will have newer versions, and the older ones will become deprecated. Semantic versioning, versioning via URL or header, specifying deprecation periods, etc. are a few ways to manage versioning for developers. Furthermore, backward compatibility can help ensure that any changes to third-party API doesn’t disrupt any existing functionalities. This also helps ascertain that any disruption is quickly fixed and is compatible with your systems.

Monitor CRM API integration performance and health

After development and testing, it is vital to constantly monitor the performance and health of the CRM API integration. This involves constantly ensuring that the integration is working the way it should via detailed logs, issue configuration, etc. Monitoring API integration performance and health regularly can help detect issues like slow response rate, high error incidence, data retrieval inconsistencies proactively. In fact, response time, latency, throughput rates, etc. can all be effective KPIs that developers can leverage to ensure high performing integration solutions to users. 

Implement retry patterns

Another best practice for developers working on CRM API integration is the need to implement retry patterns. Due to rate limits and throttling, some API calls may not go through, leading to loss in information exchange. Retry mechanism along with exponential backoffs facilitate automatic retries, but minimize the overload from failed requests. Overall, implementing this can help developers ensure maximum data sync, without increasing rate limits with API providers. 

Popular CRM APIs

Based on the purpose they fulfill and the function they serve, CRM APIs can be divided into a few types. As businesses become more and more niche with specific requirements for each business vertical, CRM APIs have emerged which specifically cater to a particular function or role, leading to segments or categories within the CRM market. 

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Sales CRM API

Primarily used to keep a track of and manage potential customers during the sales process. Focuses on capturing all conversations, requirements and other important information for relationship building and eventual conversion to a customer. 

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Top sales CRM: Salesforce, SAP, Freshsales, Monday Sales, Zoho

Marketing CRM API

Focuses on seamless marketing management across campaigns, communication to ensure that all emails, other communication is sent appropriately. Helps organizations find new leads faster and nurture prospects better. Facilitates capturing and analyzing customer data and design marketing campaigns accordingly, powered by automation as well.

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Top marketing CRM: Mailchimp, Hubspot, Adobe Marketo, Nutshell

Customer Support CRM API

Ensures customer success by tracking and resolving all customer requests and complaints on time. Helps address queries fast and seamlessly by presenting all information at one place along with historical conversations. Adds efficiency to customer success and aids alignment. 

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Top customer support CRM: Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, Zoho, Dynamics 365 for Customer Service

eCommerce CRM API

Facilitates tracking and nurturing of customers following the online sales and transaction process. Helps manage customer information, purchase behavior and other analytics data. Collects all data about customer interaction on your website/ eCommerce platform. 

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Top eCommerce CRM: Pipedrive, Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Capsule 

HR CRM API

Enables HR teams and recruiters to keep track of all data and information related to hiring. Helps capture conversations and relationships with candidates, identify and track open positions. 

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Top HR CRM: DarwinBox, Workday HCM, Zoho

CRM API Use Cases: Real-World Examples

CRM API or CRM integration can help leverage the data and information captured to facilitate better business outcomes. In fact, many leading companies can use CRM API data to power their operations across:

Prospect nurturing

As the CRM API captures all critical information, it has access to details about important dates and events for each potential customer. CRM API integration with gifting and other lead nurturing platforms can help trigger incentives and other reinforcements for customers based on the information stored. For instance, CRM integration with a gifting platform can be trained to automatically send flowers or gift cards to each prospect in a particular segment for their birthday or any other event. Similarly, it can be used to acknowledge existing customers and clients by celebrating their anniversaries with the company, etc. 

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Example: Xoxoday, Sendoso, Alyce, Reachdesk

Lead management

Most sales people have conversations with prospective customers across different platforms, including email, chat, social networking sites, etc. A CRM API can ensure that all conversations from these platforms are captured at one place, aligned with existing contacts or accounts or by creating new accounts and contacts as necessary. 

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Example: LinkedIN, Outlook

Schedule management

CRM API integration with schedule management and calendar software or applications can help organizations seamlessly manage meetings and calendars for prospect meetings and customer interactions. CRM integration with such platforms can help people directly convert their opportunities into meetings. Furthermore, CRM API can record meetings, which can later be routed to different sales owners/ stakeholders for next action. 

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Example: Calendly, Chili piper, Youcanbook.me, Doodle

Customer servicing

Your customer support teams are bound to get queries and complaints from your customers in the form of tickets and other mechanisms. If you integrate your CRM, these tickets and information can be captured against each Contact and even new Contacts can be added to specific Accounts. With CRM API all customer communication based on help desk and ticketing can be managed and streamlined for a better experience. 

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Example: Freshdesk, Jira 

Communication

Since CRM is the sole aggregator of all communication, its integration with different communication channels is integral. This CRM API integration can help companies capture and store all communication and conversations in one place, which can then be used to populate and steer different conversations. At the same time, it can help keep a track of the conversation history across platforms for easier follow ups. 

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Example: WhatsApp, Slack, Teams

eCommerce experiences

CRM integrations or CRM API can highly streamline eCommerce transactions and experience. Integration between CRM and eCommerce platforms can help you track purchases, orders, communication to the customers and capture all customer preferences. Their preferences can then be leveraged to create personalized campaigns, custom communication and other functionalities for a better user experience. 

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Example: Shopify, BigCommerce

Legal and financial paperwork

Generally, conversations with potential customers can lead to successful sales, post which the paperwork and other formalities come into place. CRM API integration with financial and other onboarding tools can ensure that as soon as the status for any Opportunity is changed, the relevant documentation and paperwork process commences. Similarly, CRM can integrate with contract management and creation systems to facilitate the entire compliance part of a sales deal. For instance, any deal closure status change can trigger the sending of a standard contract to the customer via platforms like DocuSign to take care of the formalities and compliances. 

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Example: DocuSign, signNow, HelloSign

Customer engagement

CRM API integration can help you automate a major part of your customer engagement and churn management process. You can regularly gauge the pulse of your customers by connecting your CRM with survey management and other platforms which can be triggered to send surveys to your contacts at regular intervals. Furthermore, with insights from customer health based on tickets/ complaints and queries, such integration can also help you generate propensity scores for each customer for repeat sales and upselling. 

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Example: SurveyMonkey, Vitally

Marketing management

Finally, CRM API can help streamline and add efficiency to the marketing process. It can help capture new leads generated through different campaigns and even record preferences and other data to understand customer preferences. Based on this, it can understand the effectiveness of the campaigns and even assist in personalized communication for better conversion. 

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Example: MailChimp, TypeForm, Facebook

Common CRM API Integration Challenges 

Now that the benefits, use cases and best practices are clear, it is extremely important to understand the challenges that accompany setting up and maintaining CRM API integration. Here is a list of the top challenges that most developers and businesses face. 

Limited CRM expertise

One of the first challenges that most developers face with CRM API integration is lack of or limited CRM expertise. There are several terminologies, data models and technical nuances involved in using a CRM system. When it comes to building CRM API integration, it is important to have a fair understanding of these. However, this generally involves a steep learning curve which can be time intensive, but doesn’t add any value for a developer beyond integration development and building. 

Limited compatibility between systems

The next challenge in CRM API integration arises from the incompatibility in data formats between different systems or applications. CRM APIs use different data formats (JSON, XML) and communication protocols (REST, SOAP, GraphQL). This makes data exchange an extremely complex process as all data across applications needs to be normalized, which is often cumbersome. 

Expanding CRM ecosystem

The CRM ecosystem or the different CRM software are cropping up extensively. This turns into a serious challenge when offering customer-facing CRM API integrations. Each of your customers might be using a different CRM and hence offering integration for each with your product will be critical for business success. However, building one integration in-house can take at least 4 weeks and is slated to cost you ~$10K. Invariably, integration at scale becomes a rather complex challenge in such a case. On the one hand, it can delay your time to market, leading to missed opportunities. On the other hand, it may not even be financially viable to spend a lot on building and maintaining integrations. While this cost and time may be viable for building CRM API integration for internal use, scaling it for customer-facing purposes with the expanding CRM ecosystem is often not feasible. 

Data sync consistency

Consistently ensuring data sync is an extremely critical and much needed aspect of integrations. Invariably, users expect that all data is synced automatically/ whenever an API call is made, without any glitches, in a consistent manner. However, at times, due to high data load or input data, users face sync failures, which leads to inconsistent data retrieval, defeating the entire data sync logic. The inability to ensure data sync consistency leads to a situation where data gaps exist and the information becomes unusable, unless synced again. 

Difficulty in securing CRM partnerships

Building CRM API integration requires access to the API of the chosen CRM application(s). While some APIs may be publicly available and accessible, others can be more tricky to procure. Thus, this entails a process of securing partnerships with CRM vendors to get access to their APIs, API documentation and sandbox functionalities. In some cases, the process of securing CRM partnerships can even include undergoing long agreements which require comprehensive security reviews, negotiation over different clauses and might even require you to pay an annual fee for the access. Thus, getting access to these third party APIs can be extremely time and resource intensive, apart from the investment that goes into building and managing integrations once API documentation is received. 

API documentation challenges

Even after securing the API documentation (available publicly or through partnerships), building CRM API integration can be complicated owing to the specific documentation challenges. First, the documentation at times can be incomplete or may be present in a language that is not known to you. This specifically happens when the application you want to integrate with has origins in geographical locations different than yours. Second, not every API documentation follows the same format and, hence, navigating it becomes difficult. Developers often struggle to find the piece of information they need. Third, in case there have been any updates to the CRM API, the documentation may not reflect those changes. Fourth, it can be extremely challenging to connect with the CRM API provider support teams in case of any queries.  

Exceeding CRM API rate limits

Rate limiting and throttling are generally put in place with CRM APIs to ensure consistent integration performance. However, exceeding the limits can lead to specific challenges. Exceeding rate limits can lead to denial or delay in processing API calls or requests, leading to a poor user experience due to time out, error responses, etc. Furthermore, exceeding the rate limit repeatedly can also attract fines, penalties or restrictions on the CRM API usage. From an end customer standpoint, it can lead to reputational damage. 

Building Your First CRM Integration with Knit: Step-by-Step Guide

Knit provides a unified CRM API that streamlines the integration of CRM solutions. Instead of connecting directly with multiple CRM APIs, Knit allows you to connect with top providers like Freshsales, Salesforce, Monday, Sugar CRM, Zoho CRM and many others through a single integration.

Learn more about the benefits of using a unified API.

Getting started with Knit is simple. In just 5 steps, you can embed multiple CRM integrations into your App.

Steps Overview:

1. Create a Knit Account: Sign up for Knit to get started with their unified API. You will be taken through a getting started flow.
2. Select Category: Select CRM from the list of available option on the Knit dashboard
3. Register Webhook: Since one of the use cases of CRM integrations is to sync data at frequent intervals, Knit supports scheduled data syncs for this category. Knit operates on a push based sync model, i.e. it reads data from the source system and pushes it to you over a webhook, so you don’t have to maintain a polling infrastructure at your end. In this step, Knit expects you to tell us the webhook over which it needs to push the source data.
4. Set up Knit UI to start integrating with APPs: In this step you get your API key and integrate with the CRM APP of your choice from the frontend.
5. Fetch data and make API calls: That’s it! It’s time to start syncing data and making API calls and take advantage of Knit unified APIs and its data models. 

For detailed integration steps with the unified CRM API, visit:

• Getting started with Knit

Knit's CRM API vs. Direct Connector APIs: A Comparison

Facilitating CRM API integration across different applications can be routed through different ways. Developers can either build CRM API integrations in-house via direct connector APIs or they can use integration tools, like iPaaS, embedded iPaaS and unified APIs like Knit’s CRM API. In the following section, we will offer a comparative analysis of accomplishing CRM API integration using two ways i.e. direct connect API vs Knit’s CRM API. 

Learning curve for development

Direct connector API: Direct connector APIs require a steep learning curve for developers as they need to understand the API documentation for each CRM they wish to integrate with. However, this new knowledge doesn’t necessarily yield any major value add for developers. 

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Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s CRM API requires developers to learn the technical and operational nuances of connecting with only one unified API, significantly reducing the effort and time that goes into upskilling. 

Multiple protocols and data models

Direct connector API: Since each API can have different communication protocols (REST, SOAR, GraphQL, etc.) and data syntax (e.g. customer_id vs cust_id), developers have to invest a lot of time in understanding the same and implementing this knowledge individually for each CRM integration. 

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Knit’s CRM API: When connecting with Knit’s CRM API, developers don’t have to worry about multiple protocols or data models. Knit takes care of all communication protocols and transforms the data into a unified data model across all CRM applications. 

Authentication and authorization landscape

Direct connector API: Different CRM APIs follow different authentication methods ranging from OAuth, API key, TLS encryption, etc. Direct connector integration requires developers to learn about each authentication methodology.

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Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s unified API relieves developers of the need to learn multiple authentication protocols as it takes care of authentication with each individual API, while developers only need to get acquainted with one authentication methodology. 

Access to multiple CRM APIs

Direct connector API: When connecting directly with third party API for CRM integration, developers need to build point-to-point integration individually for each application. It is a 1:1 process and can be extremely long. 

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Knit’s CRM API: With Knit’s CRM API, developers can get access to a wide range of CRM APIs with a single API connector. They no longer have to build integrations with each CRM application they use/ their end customers use. Rather, Knit’s unified CRM API takes care of connecting with all CRM applications at once. 

Data sync and rate limiting

Direct connector API: Developers often struggle with data sync consistency, especially in the face of rate limiting when they leverage direct connector APIs. Also, they need to keep pace with different rate limits and error handling for different CRM applications, causing unnecessary operational work to their schedule. At the same time, exceeding rate limits can lead to downtime and data sync errors. 

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Knit’s CRM API: Knit ensures 100% data sync consistency and guaranteed scalability irrespective of data load. At the same time, its retry and delay mechanisms ensure that no information exchange is missed. It spaces out the API calls to prevent hitting the rate limit. In case a rate limit is hit, Knit automatically and immediately responds to the error code, preventing it from becoming a challenge for developers. This way Knit ensures that data sync is not affected even during bulk transfer due to rate limits

Unified data normalization

Direct connector API: When using direct connector APIs, developers need to normalize data across applications as each one follows its own syntax, making exchange a challenge without transformation and normalization. Without normalization, data sync is likely to fail or may be achieved only partially. 

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Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s CRM API ensures automatic data normalization. It maps different data schemas from different CRM applications into a single, unified data model and syncs the normalized data in real-time.

Custom field mapping

Direct connector API: Accessing or using any non-standard data requires developers to code or build in custom logic, which requires additional coding. 

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Knit’s CRM API: Knit’s CRM API facilitates seamless access to any non-standard data you need, but is not included in the common data model for that category with Knit’s Custom Fields option. Developers don’t have to write even a single line of code to access custom CRM data models. 

Time and resource allocation

Direct connector API: Building 1:1 integration with direct connector APIs is extremely time and resource intensive. On the one hand, building each integration can take 4 weeks on an average which can lead to delays in the core product roadmap and even increase the time to market. On the other hand, spending ~$10K on each integration can be highly expensive for businesses that wish to connect with multiple CRM applications.

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Knit’s CRM API: As a unified API, Knit’s CRM API gives developers access to all CRM applications in a single go, in a fraction of the cost and time. It ensures that developers are able to focus their time and energy on core product functionalities, while the peripheral integration is taken care of. Furthermore, quick and cost-effective CRM API integration also facilitates faster GTM and market expansion for businesses. 

Security Considerations for CRM API Integrations

Security is considered to be one of the primary areas of concern when it comes to CRM API integration. Since CRM contains customer information and insights, ensuring its security and privacy is of utmost importance. Not only is this security needed from a compliance and regulation standpoint, but is also required to maintain credibility and end customer trust. Here are some security considerations and best practices that businesses should keep in mind when it comes to CRM API integrations. 

Credential and token management

Authentication credentials or access tokens are the backbone preventing unauthorized access. However, ensuring robust key management practices, secure storage mechanisms, and regular credential rotation is critical. Without appropriate credential and token management, businesses are vulnerable to unauthorized CRM access. Furthermore, it is equally important to regularly update API keys, tokens or credentials to prevent potential breaches. Token expiration policies can be extremely useful when it comes to securing CRM API integration. 

Managing granular permission rules

CRM APIs must have granular control over permissions and access rights, clearly defining who can access what, for different roles and users. However, businesses often face challenges when they have to ensure a balancing act of facilitating privacy while maintaining fine-grained control. Defining and enforcing access policies are extremely critical in this case. These can help illustrate access rules, and prevent unauthorized access. 

Data security and storage

This comes in specifically when you use integration tools to facilitate your CRM API integration. Most integration tools store a copy of the customer data, which not only leads to data security considerations, but also leads to additional costs in terms of storage. Thus, businesses should look out for solutions (like Knit) where data sync requests are pass through in nature. Such a platform doesn’t store a copy of the customer data, ensuring guaranteed data protection and safety. 

Strong identity and access management

Implementing robust identity and access management protocols is extremely important. Comprehensive IAM policies and practices facilitate comprehensive user management, centralized access control, and auditing capabilities. These ensure that the identity of the user is verified at every step to prevent any form of malfunctioning access. Furthermore, all data should be transmitted over secure channels with robust encryption practices. 

Security with Knit’s CRM API

When dealing with a large number of CRM API integrations, security considerations and challenges increase exponentially. In such a situation, a unified API like Knit can help address all concerns effectively. Knit’s CRM API ensures safe and high quality data access by:

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• Complying with industry best practices and security standards with SOC2, GDPR and ISO27001 certifications. 
• Monitoring Knit's infrastructure continuously with the finest intrusion detection systems. 
• Being the only unified API in the market that does not store any of your end user’s data in its servers.
• Encrypting all data doubly, when in transit and when at rest.
• Facilitating an additional layer of application security for encrypting PII and user credentials.
• Using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to monitor and manage all integrations and keep track of every API request, call or data sync. 

Troubleshooting CRM API Integration Errors

Errors and exceptions in CRM API integration can occur and it is important for businesses to be prepared with troubleshooting best practices and redressal protocols for quick response and minimal downtime. More often than not, errors are generated due to server-side concerns, incorrect request parameters, network connectivity issues, or even authentication and authorization issues. It is extremely important for businesses to be familiar with different types of errors (404, 401, 400) and have a clear understanding and knowledge of how to prevent and handle them. To ensure robust troubleshooting in case of CRM API integration errors, it is important to:

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• Ensure complete familiarity with the API documentation to have a clear understanding of the potential error codes, behavior and error messages for each CRM API. This knowledge will help promptly identify the error and provide redressal steps to the concerned teams. 

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• Capture all information that accompanies the error code or message. This will help get a better and complete understanding of the exact error and identify the best troubleshooting or error handling mechanism. 

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• Facilitate robust error tracking and monitoring. Ensure that each error is monitored with a detailed log to identify any patterns, recurring issues and challenges. This can help proactively address concerns. 

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• Implement an auto retry mechanism for transient errors. Complement this with exponential backoff to automate retry while minimizing the API impact and reducing the failed attempts. 

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• Focus on mechanisms and processes to handle rate limiting and throttling. While adhering to the limits is integral, in case they are exceeded, have a backup plan handy. You can consider implementing circuit breaking patterns to address rate limiting and throttling errors. 

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• Go beyond building transactional relationships with API providers. This refers to having open channels of communication that can be leveraged to address any errors that may occur which you may not recognize. Work closely with them and relevant stakeholders to address CRM API errors. 

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• Document common errors and handling techniques, focusing not only on how to remedy the error, but also covering the repercussions and altered behavior to help those dealing with the error in the future a clear understanding. 

TL:DR

CRM API integration, both for internal use or as a customer-facing offering, has become a business enabler and imperative. By providing centralized access to all customer-related information across applications, CRM API integration is extremely important to impact the entire sales lifecycle for any company. Prospect nurturing, lead management, marketing automation, schedule management, ticketing, communication, legal and financial paperwork are just a few real-world use cases where CRM API integration has been facilitating business outcomes. 

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However, building and managing CRM API integrations can be a complex process. Right from the expanding CRM ecosystem to complexities in accessing and understanding CRM API documentation to challenges of incompatibility, data sync consistency as well as rate limiting and throttling, there are several obstacles that developers face when it comes to CRM API integration. Invariably, most of these challenges are faced when developers build integrations in-house using direct connect APIs. Fortunately, with integration tools like embedded iPaaS, unified API, workflow automation, etc., organizations can outsource the building and management of their CRM API integration. Thus, Knit’s CRM API has become highly sought after by developers as it has a lean learning curve, offers access to multiple CRM APIs at once, provides better security infrastructure and much more. Here are some of the top reasons why businesses are going after Knit’s CRM API:

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• A single CRM API connector to connect with leading CRM applications in one go
• Compliance with leading security and regulatory protocols, e.g. SOC2, GDPR, ISO27001, HIPAA
• Double data encryption, i.e. in transit and when the data is at rest, along with an additional security layer for PII and credential management
• Bi-direction data sync with the option to read and write data from any app from any CRM applications
• Real time data sync with guaranteed scalability, irrespective of the data load or volume, with the additional functionality to limit data sync and API calls whenever needed, that too by CX teams
• 100% webhooks architecture that send out notification whenever updated data is available, removing the need for maintenance of an additional polling infrastructure
• Detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to easily monitor and manage CRM integrations, facilitating integration health and performance
• Option to add custom data fields, beyond unified data models to access and read/ write non-standard CRM data
• The only unified API that does not store any of your end user data on its servers (due to its webhook based architecture)
• Option to fully customize the front-end auth component including text, T&Cs, color, font and logo on the intro screen

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Knit’s CRM API integration is a definite first choice for most businesses looking to integrate with CRM applications. In addition to the factors mentioned above, Knit relieves its users from the worry of understanding and managing different communication protocols, data models and authentication techniques, allowing developers and engineering teams to focus on core product functionalities. By leveraging Knit’s capabilities, businesses can significantly accelerate their market capture at a faster pace, directly impacting their bottom line. 

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SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications make up 70% of total company software use and by 2025, 85% of the business applications will be SaaS based. Furthermore, the average number of SaaS applications used by a company reached as high as 370+ in 2023. Naturally, the investments in SaaS application procurement and deployment is on an exponential rise. However, to maximize their return on investment in SaaS applications, businesses are focusing cloud software integration to facilitate seamless exchange of data. While initially, the focus was on end users driving integrations, in the current scenario, the onus has largely shifted, where SaaS providers are expected to offer integrations for scalable adoption. 

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Essentially, in SaaS integrations, SaaS applications are connected with one another via their API (application programming interface) i.e. API integration to facilitate data exchange, build workflows and automate repetitive tasks. As the number of SaaS applications used by a company grows, integrations become more of a necessity than just a competitive advantage. In fact, the SaaS integration market is projected to grow from $4.4 billion in 2020 to $11.4 billion by 2025, clearly illustrating the growing importance of integrations in today’s market landscape. 

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While seamless data exchange between applications to ensure different apps are able to work together efficiently is a clear rationale behind SaaS integrations, other factors play a pivotal role in the SaaS integration rise movement. A boost in efficiency and accuracy due to reduced manual data entry, data-driven decision making and even a better employee experience are some key business benefits of SaaS integrations. 

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However, building and managing SaaS integrations poses significant challenges for businesses. Right from compatibility and data normalization challenges between different applications to security and privacy risks, especially when it comes to exchange of sensitive and confidential data. Furthermore, lack of robust API documentation and the overall increasing demand for integrations ends up making software connectivity a nightmare for developers. 

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Invariably, the increasing need for SaaS integrations coupled with the challenges companies face in building and maintaining them has given rise to the adoption of third party SaaS integration platforms. 

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In this article, we will give a detailed overview of the SaaS integration landscape, focusing on:

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• What are SaaS integrations
• Business case for SaaS integrations along with use cases
• Challenges in building and maintaining SaaS integrations
• Different strategies to power SaaS integrations and the best practices
• Future of cloud software integration 

Decoding SaaS integrations 

SaaS integrations follow the process of connecting a SaaS application to either another SaaS application or some in-premise software. The underlying objective is to enable flow of data from one application or software to the other, while automating workflows across the different platforms in use leveraging the API. In simple terms, the API facilitates communication between two applications, enabling them to request and send data and information to one another, fostering data integration. Generally, SaaS integrations are either: 

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• Internal integrations, where companies connect applications they use internally with one another to ensure smooth operations. For instance, when companies connect their HRMS platform with Payroll software to ensure all employee data regarding leaves, new hires, is synced with the payroll system to facilitate accurate compensation disbursement. 

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• Customer facing integrations, where companies offer integrations between their SaaS product and other SaaS applications that a customer might use to facilitate greater adoption and enhance customer delight. For instance, an ATS platform integrating with the customer’s HRMS platform to ensure details of all new hires are updated automatically once the candidate is onboarded 

SaaS integrations essentially serve the purpose of facilitating data flow between two applications. Whether it is for internal or external use, businesses need to narrow down on the approach or type of integration process they will follow. Depending on the needs and scope, businesses can adopt one of the following types of integrations:

• Native integrations: These integrations are built directly between two applications, and the onus generally lies on one or both of the applications to build and maintain these integrations. Thus, native integrations require in-house resources and engineering bandwidth to build, manage and sustain data integration. Native integrations prevent the additional coordination with any third party vendor and gives businesses complete control over their integration process. However, they can be difficult to scale, considering they need to be built and maintained 1:1. At the same time, it may lead to resource inefficiency for your engineering resources.  
• Third party integrations: Unlike native integrations, third party integrations rely on external or third party platforms also known as integration platforms to help businesses build and manage SaaS integrations, leveraging APIs. Like native integrations, they can be used for internal and customer-facing requirements. As largely an outsourced process, third party integrations facilitate easier scalability, saves developer bandwidth and accelerates the time to market (especially for customer-facing integrations). On the flip side, these integration platforms give businesses limited visibility into integration performance and come with the risk of relying on a 3rd party vendor.  
• Custom integrations: Lastly, there are custom integrations, which are essentially tailored to the needs and requirements of a single customer. They are not necessarily an approach to building and managing integrations, but a specific type which are exclusive to a client and not meant for deployment at a mass scale. 

Whether you go for native integration or third party integrations, the route is generally via APIs or application programming interface. An API is specifically a single or a collection of endpoints for an application, with each endpoint enabling users to access data or functionality for that application. It enables applications to talk to each other by extracting and sharing data between them. Research shows that 90% of developers use API and they play a significant role in SaaS integration. APIs facilitate data integration by enabling software interoperability between different applications. Additionally, most APIs come with robust documentation which allows developers to build integrations with the applications they use for data exchange, workflow automation, while ensuring authentication and encryption. 

The business benefits of SaaS integrations

There are several reasons businesses invest in SaaS integrations, here are the top few:

Benefits of internal SaaS integrations 

By integrating SaaS applications used internally, businesses can:

Boost efficiency, productivity and accuracy

SaaS integrations effectively eliminate or significantly reduce data silos between different teams and departments, facilitating the seamless flow of relevant information and enhancing workplace efficiency. By automating data entry, these integrations not only save valuable human time but also minimize errors that could lead to financial and reputational damage. For example, manual data entry errors—such as incorrect compensation values when transferring information from HRMS to payroll—can result in overpaying or underpaying employees. Consequently, SaaS integrations improve accuracy and productivity, allowing teams to concentrate on value-added work.

Get effective customer insights

When businesses integrate various applications that interact with their customers, they gain a more comprehensive understanding of customer expectations. For instance, integrating CRM and marketing platforms can provide insights into customer personas, preferences, and behaviors, enabling businesses to create more targeted campaigns. If a customer responds to a particular type of campaign, sales representatives can use this information to tailor their pitches and reach out to the customer during their engagement with the campaign. However, this level of insight is only achievable when these SaaS applications communicate with each other in real time, thereby illustrating the need for SaaS integrations. 

Automate repetitive tasks

SaaS integrations enable businesses to automate various routine and repetitive tasks, ensuring they are completed efficiently and without human intervention or delay. For example, when a customer's status changes in the marketing automation platform, it is automatically updated in the CRM, alerting sales representatives to activate the customer. Similarly, integrating CRM with ERP systems can automate invoice generation, ensuring accuracy and consistency each month. This automation via SaaS integrations leads to higher reliability and precision in execution of repetitive tasks. 

Improve employee experience

SaaS integrations for internal applications greatly enhance the employee experience in several ways. First, they significantly reduce employees' dependence on one another for information, streamlining workflows and improving efficiency. Second, by automating data entry tasks, employees can focus on more engaging and intellectually stimulating activities that align with their interests. Overall, these integrations lead to higher employee engagement and satisfaction.  

Benefits of customer-facing SaaS integrations

Building customer facing SaaS integrations also has specific benefits to SaaS providers, enabling them to:

Expand market reach

SaaS integrations provide companies with a clear competitive edge over providers that lack this functionality. When a SaaS provider offers more integrations compared to its competitors, customers are more likely to choose their service. This capability also opens up new markets and customer segments that require integrations with their core products.

Retain more customers

Integrations play a crucial role in customer retention for SaaS businesses. When customers can easily use your application alongside their other tools, they experience greater business benefits, leading to higher satisfaction and reduced churn. Additionally, once customers start using your integrations, they are less likely to switch to competitors or develop native integrations, resulting in increased customer stickiness.

Receive more customer insights

Offering integration support with other applications provides access to valuable insights about customers and their preferences. This data helps you better understand your customers and personalize your engagement strategies, ultimately delivering a smoother and more tailored user experience.

Unlock upselling/ new revenue opportunities

Offering customer-facing integrations can also open up new opportunities for upselling and additional revenue generation. While some integration can be given as free, others can be offered for a premium or at a small cost, enabling you to monetize SaaS integrations. You can eventually explore which features customers engage with more, to add them as core functionalities for your product as well. Furthermore, if you have integrations with applications that need in-app purchases or payments that you can route through your app, creating another revenue opportunity. Facilitating sales for any integrated application/ software, makes you eligible for commissions.

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Related: Importance of SaaS Integration: Why Do You Need Them?

Popular SaaS Integration Use Cases

While we have discussed the overall business benefits of SaaS integrations, let us have a quick look at some specific use cases. This section will focus on how integrating one type of applications with the other results in business impact. 

Sync HRMS and payroll data for accurate compensation

Data integration between HRMS and payroll applications is beneficial when it comes to employee compensation. This ensures that as soon as any employee is onboarded on HRMS, their compensation and related details are automatically added to the payroll system. At the same time, relevant information needed for creating the payroll like attendance, paid/ unpaid leave, bonus, etc. captured in HRMS is directly updated on the payroll system. 

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Such integration between HRMS and payroll ensures every employee is compensated as per the due, without any delays or inaccuracies. At the same time, once the pay run is over, the details of compensation disbursed are updated in HRMS to maintain all employee records in one place. 

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Related: Everything you need to know about HRIS API Integration

Add employee information from ATS to onboarding systems

Onboarding systems generally require all critical employee information to ensure smooth induction. Connecting the ATS and onboarding system can ensure that all relevant employee information (like email address, phone number, physical address, etc.) is transferred to the onboarding system in real time. 

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This ensures that as soon as a selected candidate signs the offer letter and becomes an employee, he/she receives all the onboarding documents. In addition, any other onboarding incentives or gifts are also delivered in a timely manner. Once the integration is established, every time a candidate is marked as hired in ATS, the details are automatically sent to the onboarding system and a new profile is created in real time.  

Sync lead data between marketing platforms and CRM

A classic SaaS integration use case is connecting marketing automation platforms with the CRM. Generally, both the sales and marketing team work towards nurturing leads for closure. Connecting marketing automation platforms like Hubspot/ Mailchimp with CRM (sales) like Salesforce can ensure that whenever a new lead is created post engagement with some campaign, the same is reflected in the CRM for sales reps to nurture and pursue the same for closure. SImilarly, if there is any change in the status of the lead at any end, updating the status in the other platform helps personalize the messaging as per the lead’s new position in the sales funnel. 

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Therefore, integrating these SaaS applications ensures that any change or addition in either platform is immediately reflected in the other to ensure real time action and faster sales closure. 

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Related: CRM API integration: All you need to know

Connect CRM and contract management system for customer onboarding

Next, connecting CRM to contract management systems and the storage applications used by an organization ensures seamless customer onboarding and documentation. Whenever a prospect’s status is changed to customer in CRM, integration with the contract management system can ensure that a standard contract and paperwork is automatically disbursed.

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Similarly, when any customer documents are uploaded in the CRM, an integration with file storage applications (like DropBox) can ensure that a repository of all files are created in the latter. While the CRM might have restricted access, the file storage system can be centralized providing necessary access to files to all those who need it. A bi-directional sync can also help ensure that all files and related changes are reflected in both the CRM and file storage system. 

Sync HRMS and payroll data for benefits administration

Many companies now use benefits administration software to manage the benefits, incentives, etc. they offer to their employees. Syncing HRMS and payroll data with such benefits software can help streamline the process exponentially. For instance, if the organization recognizes the employees on their work anniversary, data sync from HRMS can help facilitate gift-giving/ recognition. At the same time, whenever any data is updated in HRMS or payroll, integration ensures that it is reflected in the benefits administration platform (promotions, increase in salary, attendance), which may have an impact on the incentives and benefits an employee receives. 

Choosing the Right SaaS Integration Strategy

Once you are convinced that integrations are critical for your business, it is time to decide on how you want to navigate the SaaS integration strategy and process. Irrespective of whether a SaaS provider is leveraging integrations for internal software connectivity or building customer-facing integrations, there are largely two options to choose from i.e. Build vs Buy. 

Building native integrations in-house

As an integration strategy, building integrations requires in-house developers and engineers to develop point-to-point connections with API of software you wish to integrate with. As a 1:1 process, the integrations feel like an extension of your own application, thereby offering a native experience. 

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Building integrations in-house is ideal when you:

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• Only have a few applications to integrate with (internally or customer facing)
• Wish to retain end to end control of the integration 
• Need to customize multiple functionalities
• Have to build integrations which are very simple, with publicly available APIs
• Have integrations that impact your core offering, requiring complete code control
• Have relevant domain expertise, developer bandwidth and longer turnaround time

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However, as the need to scale integrations arose, businesses started facing challenges. In fact, research shows that:

• 70% of digital transformation projects fail due to lack of integration quality
• 45% digital leaders believe poor integration is the second main barrier to the effective application of digital technology
• $250,000 to $500,000 is the average cost to a business due to poor integrations 

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These obstacles can be largely attributed to a series of factors, including:

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• Speed of scalability: Any integration can take between 2 weeks to even three months to build. Since building integrations in-house is a 1:1 affair, the feasibility comes under pressure when developers need to build 100s of integrations together. The speed of building integrations is seldom able to keep pace with the volume of demand for new integrations, making scalability a challenge. 

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• High cost of integration development: Taking into account the time and effort of developers, quality analysts and product managers involved in building integrations, the average cost of one integration stands at ~$10K. While this is the direct cost, loss of productivity from the core offering adds intangible expenses to the process. 

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• Limited API access and poor documentation: SaaS integrations require access to APIs of applications to connect with. However, APIs for all applications may not be available free of cost. Even for those where APIs are available, frequently, the API documentation is poorly written, difficult to understand and largely inadequate. This further increases the time developers have to spend on building integrations (sometimes the integrations don’t get built at all, despite all efforts).

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• Maintenance and management: In case an integration malfunctions, the process of identifying the issue, determining the course of remediation and actually performing those actions is often complex and time consuming. This can lead to inconveniences and a poor experience for internal users or end customers. 

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• Steep learning curve: Building integrations in-house often requires domain expertise for each integration you are working on. This is required when creating data models for normalization, mapping, etc. Without this knowledge, which often comes with a steep learning curve, building integrations can be difficult.   

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• Resource constraints: As mentioned, building and maintaining integrations in-house requires significant allocation of developer resources. And, this is not even a one-time requirement. The demand for integrations is largely never ending and, hence, businesses need consistent resource allocation for integrations, which can be a challenge as often the resources are limited and even if available, developers do not enjoy working on integrations, often leading to poor experience and work dissatisfaction. 

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• Data normalization, authentication and authorization: In-house integrations put the onus of managing data normalization as well as authentication on SaaS providers. On the one hand, data normalization becomes daunting as applications within the same category (e.g. HRMS) have different data models and syntax for the same field. On the other hand, each application might have a distinct authentication route, requiring developers to maintain different access tokens and manage their authentication. 

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Related: Build vs Buy: The Best Approach to SaaS Integrations

Buying or outsourcing to third party integration platforms

As the need for SaaS integrations grew at an exponential pace, SaaS providers found building and managing integrations in-house complex and overwhelming. Thus the strategy of buying or outsourcing integrations to third party integration platforms gained momentum. Put simply, integration platforms have pre-built connectors with SaaS applications which they offer to SaaS providers, for both internal integrations, as well as to create customer facing integrations. 

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Buying or outsourcing integrations is ideal when you:

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• Want to build multiple integrations in a short span of time
• Have limited engineering bandwidth and core product priorities/ want your developers to focus on your core product
• Want to optimize resource and monetary spend on integrations
• Have limited domain expertise to add different categories of integrations
• Don’t want to carry the burden of managing and maintaining integrations 
• Wish to outsource the tedious tasks of data normalization, authentication and authorization
• Don’t have access to well developed API documentation

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Overall, building integrations in-house can be cost intensive and complicated and ideal for a small number of simple integrations, whereas, buying or outsourcing integrations is resource-lite and a scalable model. 

Top SaaS integration platforms to buy integrations

Within the buying or outsourcing model of integrations, there are several types of SaaS integrations you can choose from, depending on your requirements and scope. 

Integration platforms for internal integrations

iPaas (integration platform as a service) or workflow automation is an ideal choice when looking for integration platforms for internal software connectivity. They come with pre-built connectors that you can directly use to integrate two or more applications within your software suite. Additionally, also offer SDKs which allow SaaS providers to custom develop any integrations or functionalities, if needed. 

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One of the biggest benefits of iPaaS is that they offer low-code or no-code solutions to build automated workflows between the applications in use. This enables diverse teams to leverage the tool, without the need to engage developers at every step. Such a solution reduces the reliance on manual data export and import or the dependence on in-house engineering team to build API integrations. Team members don’t really need to understand how APIs work to leverage iPaaS for integrations. 

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iPaaS enables SaaS providers to:

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• Accelerate the pace of integration development for internal use
• Empower their non-technical team members to build and manage integrations
• Reduce the dependency on engineering teams and democratizing access 
• Leverage the drag and drop integration functionalities, allowing them to visualize how the integration works 

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Some of the top players in the iPaaS market today are:

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• Workato: Provides enterprise grade workflow automation with a high number of pre-built connectors, however, is considered expensive for smaller organizations and comes with limited offline functionality. 

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• Zapier: Comes with 7000+ pre-built connectors and its no-code UI allows non technical teams to automate tasks, however, the use cases are rather simple and may not be able to support very complex integrations. 

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• Mulesoft: Ideal for integration with Salesforce and Salesforce products along with API management, but requires more technical expertise than other players in the market. 

Integration platforms for customer-facing integrations

While for a long time, internal integrations were the norm, where end customers built integrations for the applications they used, gradually, the customer sentiment changed. Increasingly, now customers expect SaaS providers to offer integrations which are embedded within their product, shifting the onus on the latter for building and managing integrations. As the number of applications that customers use showed an increase, managing the entire process in-house became daunting. At the same time, complexity of integrations also increased, where customers wanted more functionalities, than simple workflow automation. Hence, SaaS providers were expected to offer out of the box integrations which are customer facing. 

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Essentially, embedded or customer facing integrations enable SaaS providers to easily connect their software with other applications that their customers are using. For instance, an ATS provider may provide embedded integrations to connect with the HRMS used by the customer. This integration will help the ATS provider to automatically update all relevant information to the customer’s HRMS as soon as a candidate is onboarded for all HR processes to be conducted. With embedded integrations, SaaS providers can:

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• Automate the data flow between their application and the other tools used by the end customer
• Quickly connect with different customer applications, leading to exemplary customer experience
• Build integrations with customer applications without the need to write heavy codes for each integration
• Provide an almost native integration and cohesive brand experience

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Within the embedded integration space, there are two routes that SaaS providers can explore, including:

Embedded iPaaS

As the name suggests, this is an embedded version of the iPaaS solution. While iPaaS is meant for internal integrations, this tool is embedded within the SaaS provider’s application, facilitating workflow automation with customer’s other applications. Embedded iPaaS allows SaaS providers to either implement integrations for their customers or enable customers to implement the integrations they want within the SaaS product offered. A combination of both these alternatives can also be leveraged. 

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Embedded iPaaS offers a varied set of pre-built connectors that SaaS providers can use to build integrations and embed them within your product. It allows you to manage authentication, normalization, etc. for your end users. While embedded iPaaS providers offer a wide range of out of the box connectors, some also allow developers to custom build connectors in case their use case is not covered. At the same time, an embedded iPaaS is built on a serverless architecture, which allows developers to focus entirely on integration logic, without diverting attention to infrastructure management. Some embedded iPaaS solutions include:

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• Workato embedded: Comes with a pre-built integration library of 1200+ connectors, along with enterprise grade security and compliance, but lacks a standard data model.

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• Paragone: Provides complete access to underlying API, with robust monitoring features and supports on-premise deployment, but comes with a limited number of pre-built connectors. 

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• Pandium: Offers an embedded integration marketplace, allowing customers to find all integrations together, but with a limited catalog of connectors. 

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• Tray embedded: Provides a large number of connectors, with the option to add more connectors on request along with API management functionality, but offers limited capability to automatically detect and remedy integration issues. 

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While an embedded iPaaS definitely easies the process of building and managing customer facing integrations, it generally requires a high level of technical expertise to use and master. Furthermore, within embedded iPaaS, integrations need to be built on a 1:1 model, i.e. one integration at a time and gives limited visibility into the integration performance. Also, not all embedded iPaaS tools offer complete white-labeling, disrupting a consistent and uniform user experience. 

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Related: 14 Best SaaS Integration Platforms

Unified API

Addressing some of the challenges of embedded iPaaS for building and managing customer-facing integrations, unified APIs have come to the forefront. A unified API can be considered as an aggregator of APIs that enables developers to integrate with multiple applications within a category by a single time effort. Essentially, it accelerates the integration process by moving from a 1:1 to 1:many approach. Here are some of the reasons why businesses are moving towards unified APIs from embedded iPaaS:

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• Gives an opportunity to SaaS providers to offer both depth (integrations within a category) and width (more number of categories) at an accelerated pace with a universal API which can connect all APIs within that category.

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• Provides a centralized dashboard to monitor the health of all integrations from a single pane of glass, ensuring that most integration issues are detected automatically with the functionality to initiate remedial action. 

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• Superior customer experience, enabling end customers to leverage integrations seamlessly without the need for excessive technical intervention and expertise. 

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• Relieves engineering bandwidth as developers only have to understand documentation and connect with a single API for one category, ensuring resource optimization, while facilitating rapid deployment.

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• Facilitates bulk data transfer, data sync in multiple rows with smart rate limit management.

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• Some unified APIs like Knit also support a unified data model to facilitate high speed data normalization, but also have room for custom data models for fields that remain outside the standard ones. 

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Related: Whitepaper: The Unified API Approach to Building Product Integrations

Some of the top unified API providers include:

• Knit: Ensures robust horizontal and vertical coverage in integrations and uses a webhooks based architecture, ensuring real time data sync without the need to maintain any infrastructure. Guarantees scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load, offering a 99.99% SLA. It is the only unified API which doesn’t store a copy of customer data as all the requests are pass through in nature. 
• Finch: Provides one of the highest number of integrations in the HRMS and payroll space with standardized data for all employment data, however, the categories supported are limited and maintains assisted integrations, which requires an external involvement for data sync.
• Merge: Offers integration in 7+ SaaS categories with fully searchable logs, dashboard and automated issue detection, however, it requires businesses to maintain a polling infrastructure and its webhook based data sync doesn’t guarantee scale and data delivery.

As the market sentiment is driving greater adoption of unified APIs for integration building and management, businesses often face the question of how they can choose the best unified API platform for their needs. Here is a quick break down of the factors you should consider while finalizing the unified API partner you wish to go with:

• API and application coverage: On the one hand, you need to check the horizontal and vertical coverage of integration and categories supported by the unified API. Choose a unified API which offers integration not only with applications you want to connect with right now, but also those you can anticipate coming as a need from customers in the future. On the other hand, you must evaluate how many API endpoints the unified API covers. It is important that your unified API covers REST, SOAP, GraphQL, to facilitate maximum coverage. 
• Security and authentication: Understand the authentication and encryption used by the unified API. Preferably choose a partner which not only complies with all industry standards, but also facilitates encryption in transit as well as at rest. Factors like least privilege, etc. should also be considered. Finally, consider platforms which do not store a copy of the customer data for maximum privacy. 
• Data sync model: Check whether the unified API requires you to maintain an additional polling infrastructure or relies on a webhook based architecture. The latter one is preferable as it facilitates real time sync. But, even in the case of the latter, check the scalability and delivery guarantee with increasing data load, opting for platforms that offer 99.99% SLA. 
• Integration maintenance: You also need to ensure that the unified API provides you with detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page and supports you to keep track of every API calls, data syncs and requests. 

Related: What Should You Look For in A Unified API Platform?

Best Practices for Successful SaaS Integrations

Here are some of the best practices to keep in mind to unlock SaaS integration success:

Start with a Clear Goal and Integration Priorities

When you decide to add integrations, you need to have clarity on the purpose and the objectives that you seek to achieve. Do you want to automate internal workflows to save your team from unnecessary data entry work and ensure accuracy, or do you want to offer customer facing integrations for better product appeal or is it a combination of the two, or some other goal entirely. Having a clear goal will help you better understand which approach or integration strategy to go with. 

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At the same time, you need to prioritize and differentiate between integrations that are a must have, good to have, may be needed in the future, not relevant. Simply because you are getting an integration as a part of a package may not necessarily be the reason to go for it. Each integration is likely to serve a different purpose with varying degree of impact on the time savings, customer acquisition, retention, etc. Therefore, it is important to understand the value that each integration will bring to the table vis-a-vis the resources or inputs needed to achieve the same. Prioritize integrations which facilitate a high return on investment and are business critical in the beginning. 

Choose the Ideal Approach

Once you have a clear goal and integration priorities set, choosing the ideal integration approach will be a cakewalk. For instance:

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• If you only have to build a one-off integration and wish to retain complete control, build the integration in-house.
• If you want to build a suite of integrations to facilitate software connectivity between the applications you use internally, go for an iPaaS solution. 

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• If you want pre-built connectors to offer customer-facing integrations, but have the time and resources to build them 1:1, embedded iPaaS is a good option. 

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• If you want to scale customer facing integrations quickly and connect with a single API to integrate with almost all applications within a category, choose a unified API. 

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Your choice of the right integration approach will largely depend on the (illustrative):

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• Number of integrations you wish to build
• Primary goal or type of integration needed
• Time you have before you want to deploy the integrations
• Complexity and available API support for each integration
• Availability of in-house resources and expertise to build and manage integrations

Prioritize Security and Authentication

Since integration is primarily built on the foundation of data exchange, it is extremely important to prioritize security, privacy via robust authentication and authorization. On the one hand, it is extremely important to ensure compliance with the standard norms and guidelines like SOC2, GDPR, and ISO27001 when it comes to data privacy. 

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However, to ensure SaaS integration success, SaaS providers need to go a step beyond to ensure encryption of data, both in transit and at rest. In addition, securing all PII and user credentials should also be secured in an additional application security layer.  Furthermore, if you choose to go with a third-party integration platform, delve deep into their rate limiting practices, assess authentication and authorization protocols, and review incident response plans. Also, check how they access or use the data that flows through them (ideally, the integration platform should not store a copy of customer data). 

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Related: API Security 101: Best Practices, How-to Guides, Checklist, FAQs

Test Thoroughly

A seamless integration experience is what defines success. Any major issue or bug can lead to reputational and monetary damages, both for internal and customer-facing integrations. In fact, in the latter, it can initiate customer churn and make new customer acquisition extremely difficult. Therefore, thorough and robust testing is critical. In fact, API testing, especially in a simulated environment, can help proactively detect and determine remediation actions for potential problems. You should test for:

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• Scalability of data to ensure that your integration is able to guarantee scalability and data delivery irrespective of the data load, consistently. 

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• Volume of requests, facilitating integration and data exchange smoothly when processing a high number of requests.

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• Version and backward compatibility to ensure compliance with different versions of the third party API as well as ascertaining that any modifications in the third party API do not disrupt any other ongoing functionality. 

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• Error handling to get a real world experience of how if an error occurs, it will be identified and remediated and whether or not it meets the expectations set, i.e. the ability to handle errors without the system crashing.

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• Security, compliance, authorization and encryption to ensure all security protocols are implemented effectively and will prevent any security breach from happening. 

Document the Process

Irrespective of whether you build or buy integrations, ensure that each step of the process is documented effectively. At the same time, ensure engaging more than one developer in the integration process to expand the knowledge base within the team. These two practices will ensure that even in a situation of employee turnover, there is no gap or challenge. Additionally, in case there is a resource gap, this practice will help ensure even a new developer is able to pick up the integration development or management tasks. 

Monitor and Maintain

Lastly, it is extremely important to monitor the health of your integrations via detailed logs, issues, etc. on a regular basis. This can help you determine any potential threat proactively to address the same. Furthermore, it is important to reevaluate integration goals and priorities at regular intervals and the expectations and requirements might change, which are likely to demand a change in the approach and other factors as well. 

The Future of SaaS Integrations: Trends Shaping the Landscape

The landscape of SaaS integrations has undergone a complete transformation since inception. While initially designed for internal simple use cases, SaaS providers today require complex customer-facing integrations. And, this is just the beginning. Technological disruptions and changing market sentiments will constantly redefine SaaS integrations. Some of the trends for the foreseeable future of SaaS integrations include:

AI-Powered Integrations

Automation and AI will make integrations smarter. While till now integrations have been automating workflows and data exchange between applications, the rise of Generative AI is likely to unleash smarter, faster and more efficient integration processes. Currently, integration deployment still requires developer intervention and can take up to a few days to deploy. However, with AI, integrations may enter an auto-pilot phase automating the entire integration process, accelerating it exponentially. At the same time, with increased adoption of NLP in integrations, the process is likely to become more intuitive. 

Focus on Vertical SaaS Integrations

The near future (and in some cases, the near past) is likely to see a focus on industry-specific integrations. While each application has a specific domain, we will increasingly witness integration solutions which are specifically tailored for an industry, taking into account the data requirements, syntax and models, and sync frequency that the industry needs. In fact, integration providers may even offer out of the box industry specific solutions. 

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For instance, when it comes to customer facing integrations, a CRM provider working exclusively with the healthcare industry might be offered with vertical coverage of integration with billing, inventory, etc. applications, while those working with the manufacturing industry might have different needs.  

Increased Focus on Security and Compliance

A trend that is likely to continue all over to the future will be a focus on security and compliance. While security is already a predominant factor impacting integration decisions, however, as data privacy regulations become more stringent and attacks become more sophisticated, the focus on zero-trust architecture, the option to completely eliminate the need to store data copies, etc. will gain more momentum. 

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The future is likely to make integrations more accessible for a higher number of SaaS providers, enabling it to play a pivotal role in business growth, especially by leveraging AI, industry specialization and heightened security. 

TL:DR

The SaaS integration landscape will continue to evolve and disrupt software interoperability, enhancing the utility and connectivity between different applications for SaaS providers and their end customers. By facilitating seamless data exchange and workflow automation, SaaS integrations lead to increased productivity, reduced human errors, better employee and customer experience, and overall, positively impact the bottom line for any business. 

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While the need for integrations is well accepted, SaaS providers often find themselves confused between the best way to achieve their integration goals. Some prefer maintaining complete control and build and manage all integrations in-house. However, this process lacks the scope for scale. Thus, many are now moving towards leveraging third party integration platforms, including iPaaS, embedded iPaaS and unified API. Each of these alternatives is suited for different requirements (internal vs customer-facing integrations) and requires varying degrees of developer resources to accomplish the integration process. 

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For those looking to scale customer facing integrations quickly, unified APIs have come up as a credible solution. With a single API for all integrations within a category, the time to market with unified APIs is exceptionally quick and some of the top solutions ensure that SaaS providers don’t have to maintain any polling infrastructure for data sync, while ascertaining the highest security standards. 

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Overall, it is important for SaaS providers to prioritize their integration requirements and focus on security, testing, documentation and monitoring consistently to ensure a seamless integration experience. As technology and market disruption impact the SaaS space, AI and automation are likely to streamline integrations further, leading to higher efficiency, productivity and business outcomes.

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QuickBooks is an easy-to-use accounting software that helps small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances. It offers tools for invoicing, tracking expenses, handling payroll, and preparing taxes, all in one place. 

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With QuickBooks Online APIs, whether you’re launching a new business or have been running one for years, managing your finances becomes easier and more efficient. 

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Key highlights of QuickBooks Online APIs:

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1. Easy Data Access: Helps to connect and access your financial data like transactions, invoices, and reports easily with other apps.

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2. Automation: Let’s you automate tasks like invoicing and expense tracking to save time and reduce errors.

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3. Custom Integration: You can easily integrate QuickBooks with other tools and create custom solutions to fit your business needs.

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4. Real-Time Sync: It helps you keep your data up-to-date across platforms with real-time synchronization.

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5. Strong Security: It helps you protect your financial data with secure authentication and authorization.

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6. Scalable: As your business grows, QuickBooks APIs can handle more transactions and complexity.

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7. Developer-Friendly: Clear documentation and support make it easier for developers to work with the APIs.

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8. Global Support: Works with different currencies, tax systems, and languages, making it great for businesses around the world.

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While we have covered the Quickbooks Online API in depth earlier, in this article, we'll provide an overview of the QuickBooks Online API endpoints.

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QuickBooks Online API Endpoints

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While there are several QuickBooks Online API endpoints, here are the most commonly used ones:

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1. Customer Endpoint (/customer)some text
   • /customer/{customer_id}/balance: Retrieve the current balance of a specific customer.
   • /customer/{customer_id}/creditmemo: Manage credit memos associated with a customer.
   • /customer/{customer_id}/estimate: Handle estimates or quotes for a customer.
2. Invoice Endpoint (/invoice)some text
   • /invoice/{invoice_id}/send: Send an invoice to a customer via email.
   • /invoice/{invoice_id}/payment: Retrieve payment details associated with a specific invoice.
   • /invoice/{invoice_id}/refundreceipt: Create or manage refund receipts for a specific invoice.
3. Payment Endpoint (/payment)some text
   • /payment/{payment_id}/apply: Apply a payment to specific invoices or other transactions.
   • /payment/{payment_id}/unapplied: Retrieve payments that have not yet been applied to invoices.
4. Sales Receipt Endpoint (/salesreceipt)some text
   • /salesreceipt/{salesreceipt_id}/email: Send a sales receipt to a customer via email.
   • /salesreceipt/{salesreceipt_id}/payment: Retrieve payment details related to a sales receipt.
5. Bill Endpoint (/bill)some text
   • /bill/{bill_id}/payment: Manage payments made against a specific bill.
   • /bill/{bill_id}/attachment: Attach documents, such as receipts, to a bill.
6. Vendor Endpoint (/vendor)some text
   • /vendor/{vendor_id}/purchaseorder: Manage purchase orders associated with a vendor.
   • /vendor/{vendor_id}/bill: Retrieve bills linked to a specific vendor.
7. Expense Endpoint (/purchase)some text
   • /purchase/{purchase_id}/receipt: Attach and manage receipts related to a specific purchase.
   • /purchase/{purchase_id}/payment: Manage payments made for specific purchases.
8. Account Endpoint (/account)some text
   • /account/{account_id}/balance: Retrieve the current balance for a specific account.
   • /account/{account_id}/transaction: List transactions associated with a specific account.
9. Item Endpoint (/item)some text
   • /item/{item_id}/inventory: Manage inventory levels for a specific item.
   • /item/{item_id}/sales: Track sales associated with a particular item.
10. Journal Entry Endpoint (/journalentry)some text
    • /journalentry/{journalentry_id}/line: Manage individual line items within a journal entry.
    • /journalentry/{journalentry_id}/reversal: Reverse a journal entry if needed.
11. Employee Endpoint (/employee)some text
    • /employee/{employee_id}/payroll: Manage payroll details and history for a specific employee.
    • /employee/{employee_id}/timeactivity: Retrieve time activities logged by a particular employee.
12. Time Activity Endpoint (/timeactivity)some text
    • /timeactivity/{timeactivity_id}/approve: Approve time entries submitted by employees or contractors.
    • /timeactivity/{timeactivity_id}/project: Associate time activities with specific projects or jobs.
13. Company Info Endpoint (/companyinfo)some text
    • /companyinfo/preferences: Retrieve or update company-level preferences, such as tax settings or currency.
    • /companyinfo/financialyear: Get details about the company's financial year, including start and end dates.

These endpoints offer more granular control and functionality, allowing developers to build more customized and detailed integrations with QuickBooks.

Here’s a detailed reference to all the QuickBooks Online APIs.

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QuickBooks Online APIs FAQs

Here are the frequently asked questions about QuickBooks Online APIs to help you get started:

1. How to integrate QuickBooks into a PHP codebase? Answer
2. Tracking Shopify Refunds as Payments in QuickBooks Online Answer
3. How to add custom tax to invoice? Answer
4. Is it possible to use intuit quickbooks online API without creating an app Answer
5. How do I link payments to invoices using the API Explorer? Answer

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Get started with QuickBooks Online API

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QuickBooks Online API access is available only for enterprise and developer tier accounts. If you're looking to integrate with various HRMS or recruitment APIs easily, consider using Knit. Knit offers a single API for connecting with all major HR integrations.

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To sign up for free, click here. To check the pricing, see our pricing page.

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Adobe Sign, introduced in 2006 as part of Adobe's comprehensive suite of document management solutions, has transformed the way businesses handle electronic signatures and document workflows. 

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With Adobe Sign APIs, developers can access powerful tools that enable seamless integration of e-signature capabilities into their applications, providing a secure and efficient way to manage digital transactions.

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Key highlights of Adobe Sign APIs are as follows:

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1. Comprehensive Document Management: It automates the entire document lifecycle, from creation and distribution to signing and archiving.

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2. Real-time Tracking and Notifications: It helps to monitor the status of documents in real time, receiving instant updates on signatory actions.

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3. Robust Security and Compliance: It ensures that all electronic signatures are legally binding and compliant with industry standards such as GDPR, eIDAS, and HIPAA.

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4. Seamless Integration: It is easy to integrate with popular platforms like Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, and other CRM and ERP systems, enhancing productivity and collaboration.

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5. Customizable Workflows: It helps to tailor the signing process to fit specific business needs, incorporating custom branding and user experiences.

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In this article, we'll provide an overview of the Adobe Sign API endpoints.

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Adobe Sign API Endpoints

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While there are several Adobe Sign API endpoints, here are the most commonly used ones in the latest version:

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Transient Documents

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These endpoints are used to upload a document, get its document ID, and get the requested views for that document.

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• POST /transientDocuments
• POST /transientDocuments/{transientDocumentId}/views

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Agreements

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These are used to create, send, and manage agreements and documents for e-signature.

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• POST /agreements
• POST /agreements/{agreementId}/members/participantSets/{participantSetId}/delegatedParticipantSets
• POST /agreements/{agreementId}/members/share
• POST /agreements/{agreementId}/reminders
• GET /agreements
• GET /agreements/{agreementId}
• GET /agreements/{agreementId}/auditTrail
• GET /agreements/{agreementId}/documents
• GET /agreements/{agreementId}/reminders
• GET /agreements/{agreementId}/members
• GET /agreements/{agreementId}/members/participantSets/{participantSetId}
• GET /agreements/{agreementId}/shares
• PUT /agreements/{agreementId}/me/visibility
• PUT /agreements/{agreementId}/members/participantSets/{participantSetId}
• DELETE /agreements/{agreementId}/documents
• DELETE /agreements/{agreementId}/shares

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Users

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These are used to manage user accounts, permissions, and roles within the Adobe Sign system.

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• POST /users
• POST /users/{userId}/views
• GET /users
• GET /users/{userId}
• GET /users/{userId}/events
• PUT /users/{userId}
• PUT /users/{userId}/locale
• PUT /users/{userId}/state

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Library Documents

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These help to create and manage template documents that can be reused for multiple agreements.

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• POST /libraryDocumentsCreates
• POST /libraryDocuments/{libraryDocumentId}/views
• GET /libraryDocuments
• GET /libraryDocuments/{libraryDocumentId}
• GET /libraryDocuments/{libraryDocumentId}/auditTrail
• GET /libraryDocuments/{libraryDocumentId}/events
• GET /libraryDocuments/{libraryDocumentId}/members
• PUT /libraryDocuments/{libraryDocumentId}

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Search

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This API helps to retrieve, search, filter, and sort agreements for the user.

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• POST /search

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Workflows 

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These APIs help to automate and manage multi-step signing processes and workflows.

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• GET /workflows
• GET /workflows/{workflowId}

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MessageTemplates

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These APIs help to retrieve a list of message templates applicable to the current user.

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• GET /messageTemplates

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MegaSigns

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These APIs help to send a single document to multiple recipients for individual signatures.

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• POST /megaSigns
• POST /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/members/share
• POST /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/reminders
• POST /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/views
• GET /megaSigns
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/agreements
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/documents
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/documents/imageUrls
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/documents/{documentId}
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/events
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/members
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/reminders
• GET /megaSigns/{megaSignId}/reminders/{reminderId}
• PUT /megaSigns/{megaSignId}

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Webhooks

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These APIs help to create and manage webhooks.

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• POST /webhooks
• GET /webhooks
• GET /webhooks/{webhookId}
• PUT /webhooks/{webhookId}
• PUT /webhooks/{webhookId}/state
• DELETE /webhooks/{webhookId}

Here’s a detailed reference to all the Adobe Sign APIs.

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Adobe Sign API FAQs

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Here are the frequently asked questions about Adobe Sign APIs to help you get started:

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1. How to customize Signature fields in Document using adobe sign API? Answer
2. How to create a widget with pre-filling details? Answer
3. Adobe Sign access token invalid_request Answer
4. Attached pdf in the email is base64 encoded and does not show the actual PDF Answer
5. Adobe Sign API password protection not working Answer

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Get started with Adobe Sign API

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Adobe Sign API access is reserved exclusively for enterprise and developer tier accounts. However, if you want to integrate with multiple HRMS or Recruitment APIs quickly, you can get started with Knit, one API for all top HR integrations.

To sign up for free, click here. To check the pricing, see our pricing page.

Find more FAQs here.

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Founded in 2005, Workday is a leading provider of financial, HR and planning software. It facilitates financial management, human capital management and analytics management for companies, students/ educational institutions and government agencies. They provide solutions across analytics and reporting, payroll, workforce management, spend management, talent management, professional services automation. 

For a detailed guied on Workday API integrations, read our in-depth guide to the Workday API. Below you will find a comprehensive directory of Workday API endpoints.

Workday API endpoints

While there are several Workday API endpoints, some of the top ones include:

Absence management

• GET /balances/{ID}
• GET /workers/{ID}/eligibleAbsenceTypes
• GET /workers/{ID}/leavesOfAbsence/{subresourceID}
• POST /workers/{ID}/requestTimeOff
• GET /workers/{ID}/validTimeOffDates
• GET /values/leave/status/
• GET /values/timeOff/status/

Compensation

• GET /scorecardResults
• GET /scorecards/{ID}
• POST /workers/{ID}/requestOneTimePayment

Payroll

• GET /jobs/{ID}/payGroup
• GET /payGroupDetails/{ID}
• POST /taxRates
• GET /values/payrollInputsGroup/payComponents/

Performance management

• GET /feedbackBadges/{ID}

Recruitment

• GET /interviews
• GET /interviews/{ID}/feedback
• GET /jobPostings/{ID}
• GET /prospects/{ID}/educations
• POST /prospects/{ID}/experiences
• GET /prospects/{ID}/resumeAttachments
• GET /prospects/{ID}/skills
• GET /values/common/countries/

Time tracking

• POST /timeClockEvents
• GET /timeValidations
• GET /workerTimeBlocks/{ID}
• POST /workers/{ID}/timeReviewEvents

Talent management

• POST /createMentorshipForMe
• POST /createMentorshipForWorker
• POST /mentorships/{ID}/close
• POST /mentorships/{ID}/edit

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Here’s a detailed guide on all Workday API endpoints as a ready reference.

Workday API use cases

• Financial management with accounting and finance, revenue management, grants management, analytics and reporting, audit and internal controls
• Human capital management via payroll and workforce management, talent, help, knowledge, and case management, workforce planning
• Adaptive ERP to automate and streamline plans, budgets, and forecasts and align headcount, sales, and operational plans
• Employee voice to collect and analyze feedback, with insights on employee experience to drives organizational success with AI
• Spend management with sourcing project intake, pipeline management, contract management, supplier onboarding and performance management

Workday API FAQs

Check out the top FAQs for Workday API to help you get started

1. Is a Workday WID a UUID? Answer
2. How to authenticate Workday SOAP API? Answer
3. How to receive real time notifications for my Workday? Answer
4. How to get a Workday worker / employee web profile URL? Answer
5. How to authenticate Spring SOAP to Workday? Answer
6. How to edit worker additional data using Workday API? Answer
7. How to create XSLT process Workday report - XML to JSON output - method="json" <xsl:output method="json" />? Answer
8. How to create a calculated Field in Workday with multiple conditions? Answer

Get started with Workday API

Workday doesn’t offer its pricing publicly and you can get in touch with their team for the same. However, if you are looking to integrate with multiple HRMS or Recruitment APIs in the shortest time, you can get started with Knit, one API for all top HR integrations.

To sign up for free, click here. To check the pricing, see our pricing page

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