What are integration widgets?

Integration widgets are custom built elements that help you empower your users by bringing additional functionality to your digital workplace. They’re a great way to surface functionality that would otherwise require users to navigate to locations outside of a digital workplace. Integration widgets from the Marketplace are often built by third parties, partners and sometimes even customers.

Where do they come from?

It starts with our Product team

In many cases, integration widgets are built to solve a specific need that is shared by many customers. We built the integration widget framework to provide customers with a way to extend what functionality is available within their digital workplace. Quite often, the requirements are gathered and refined by Igloo’s Product team. Once we have determined how the widget should function, we engage one of our amazing partners to develop the widget with, or for us. It all starts with the Product team.

It solves a problem

There are also cases where a customer or partner has developed a solution to a problem and then wants to make it available to others. Igloo will work with the partner to validate the problem, solution and the approach. This helps ensure that the Marketplace houses the ‘cream of the crop’ of integrations for our customers to use.

The development process

When a partner or a customer begins developing an integration widget for the Marketplace, they work with our Developer Relations team to engage our Product Managers. This ensures that the integration is a good fit for the Igloo platform. We want to make sure that the widget will follow proper user experience guidelines. Our Product team will make sure that the integration widget’s design and functionality iscomplete and solves the desired problem effectively.

Once the scope of the integration is properly defined, development (in other words, the fun) can begin. The development team will work closely with our Developer Relations team. We’ll ensure that the integration widget follows best practices and utilizes the Igloo APIs in the most efficient and appropriate manner.

Developer Relations request access to the development repositories as early as possible. This not only helps us answer the deepest technical questions quickly, but we can also raise any API related issues early in the development process.  

How do they end up in the Marketplace?

When development is complete, and the integration widget is ready for the Marketplace, we take another deep look. We conduct a functionality and technical review of the widget prior to listing it in the Marketplace. Depending on the widget, this review may also include our Engineering team.

Every integration widget in the Marketplace is reviewed, and every integration widget is high-quality.

Once the code and functionality review is complete, we work with them to finalize their go-to-market strategy and list the integration widget in the Marketplace.

Does every widget end up in the marketplace?

No! You may have a specific need, or you may want to build an integration widget that is very specialized to your workflow. You’re welcome to build your integration widget for your own use. Not every integration widget created needs to live in the marketplace. We have had many wonderful customers build integration widgets solely for their own environment.

The purpose of this approval process is to ensure that each and every integration widget in our Marketplace is amazing. If you would like to build a widget for the Marketplace – or even if you’re building a widget for your own organization’s use – please reach out to us!