Introduction

Integrations are powerful tools for improving business processes, increasing efficiency, and adding value to your users. Many organizations build integrations to extend the functionality of their existing software tools into their digital workplace. Since these integrations often become integral to your user’s workflows, it’s important to make sure that they are reliable and accurately meet the needs of your users. To set you up for success, make sure that you can answer the following questions before you start your development project.

Will this integration provide a worthwhile solution for a problem existing within your organization? 

Perform an analysis of prospective user's processes and workflows to learn the pain points and where an integration can help. You should clearly outline the benefits that this integration is meant to achieve and the systems that are going to be involved in the process.

Will this be a relatively maintainable integration, or will it require constant tweaking and care?  

Good integrations should be flexible and easily adaptable. The return on investment of an integration is directly proportional to the time, effort, and resources required to maintain it.

When designing and building an integration, be mindful to create an architecture that requires minimal up-keep, is robust, and adaptable. Pay particular attention to how the tools that you are looking to integrate will connect with each other. If possible, take advantage of existing methods instead of building an entirely new connection method. Similarly, don't recreate or totally revamp the user interface of an existing system that people are familiar with. Keep the user in mind when designing an interface and build out the functionalities of both systems (including interface) into an elegant and effective integration.   

Will this integration scale (up/down) as required when business requirements change?  

Scalability issues can arise from:

• Addition of more users in systems 
• Addition of newer tools and workflows due to business requirements
• Change in business processes

When evaluating scalability, ensure through rigorous testing that the depreciation/upgrade of features will not result in failure or that a robust system is in place to handle these issues effectively (discussed in the next section).

What security, compliance, and recovery systems should be considered?

Improper design and execution of integrations can lead to data loss or corruption of critical customer data. In the event of a failure, a system of handling failures efficiently and implementing solutions must be ready and robust so that consequences are mitigated effectively.

How easy is it to evolve the integration?

Upgrades and enhancements to these integrations are important and necessary. You should be prepared to manage changes whether they are API related or driven by user feedback. When designing your integration, ensure that systems are both backwards and forwards compatibility.

What resources are available for the development of this integration?

Building integrations requires time and resources. If these are things that you are in short supply of, Igloo has various partners that we can refer you to. These partners have the experience and resources to support the development and upkeep of any integration that you may decide to build.  

Conclusion

Creating an integration involves the understanding of the architecture of systems (tools, workflows, and organizational needs), their features and flaws, and then leveraging this information to integrate successfully. A successful and robust integration allows you to combine the features of your other tools into your digital workplace to solve your business problems.  

Next steps

If you’re ready to start building your integration, follow these steps to get started:

1. Sign-up for the Igloo Developer Program
2. Take a look at our API Reference documentation