A: A connection is created when your customer authorizes their 3rd-party account with your application through Unified.to. Your customer may have 1 or more connections with 1 or more 3rd-party vendors.
Q: What is an integration vendor?
A: An integration [vendor] is a 3rd-party software company where your customers' data resides. Examples would be Salesforce (CRM) or BambooHR (HRIS).
Q: What is an integration category?
A: A category of APIs, data-models and webhooks around one type of integration vendor. An example would be the CRM category with integration vendors such as Salesforce and objects such as Contact, Opportunity, Companies.
Q: What is an API request?
A: An API request is when Unified connects to an integration vendor for your customers' connection. This can occur when your application calls the Unified.to API to request data, or when Unified.to's webhook polling calls the integration vendor or when the integration vendor sends us a webhook.
Q: What is a webhook? What is the difference between a native and a mimicked polled webhook?
A: A webhook happens when a 3rd-party application sends us data that we have requested previously. You subscribe to a webhook and give a URL to send any updated data to. Some 3rd-party vendors have webhooks, but most do not, so Unified.to can mimick webhook behaviour by polling (every x minutes) and then sending a webhook back to your application. Webhooks are attached to specific customer connections. 1 webhook is equal to one API request.
Q: What are OAUTH2 credentials?
A: OAUTH2 is used by some 3rd-party integration vendors to authorize access to the customer's data. It requires that the application requesting access first register with that vendor so that the authorization page presented to the customer states who is asking and what data they are requesting access to. Unified.to has its own OAUTH2 credentials to some of the supported integration vendors, but for production systems, you should use your own OAUTH2 credentials so that your branding is shown to your customer.