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Before any technical details can be discussed, there needs be agreement on what level of functionality will be provided in the integration between InTouch and your system via the Connector. This is extremely important as it has large implications on what the technical requirements will be.
The main questions that need answering are
- Is the integration going be a two way synchronization, or one way? i.e. will you be receiving data, sending data, or both. The most common and simple integration is usually one-way where users created in InTouch are automatically created in your system.
- What data is going to be included?
- Prospects (a.k.a. leads)
- Or Members
- Or both
- If doing prospects, is any additional data included
- Staff Owner of Lead
- Lead Source of Lead
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When a new client is launched on the Connector, it is more than likely that they have been using one or more of the systems being integrated for awhile. This means that each system may already have staff in it. This presents a problem for integrations that will support assigning a staff owner to a prospect or a member. The question is, how do we synchronize the staff list so that the staff in system A are mapped to the staff in system B? Note that the Connector does not attempt to create staff in any remote system. It only tries to associate existing staff records with each. The reason for this is the complexity, overhead, and restrictions surrounding staff. For example, in most system the process of creating staff is not simple and requires setting attributes that the Connector knows nothing about (for example, roles or permissions).
The Connector attempts to associate existing staff records as follows:
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