Integration & API basic principles

Basic definitions

In order to familiarize yourself with some of the terms used in this article, you should first review the API terminology that is included in the SpotMe glossary (all located in section A of the glossary, under "API").

API versus integration

In this context, an integration (also known as "application integration", "system Integration" or "API integration") is the process of connecting different applications so that they work together.

An example of an integration would be an automated process, where an attendee registers to an event via a registration page hosted on a third-party registration platform, and then:

1. The attendee profile is automatically added to the connected SpotMe workspace.
2. The attendee receives an automated registration confirmation email from the SpotMe workspace to provide them access to the event app.

In order for an integration to achieve this level of automation without any user intervention, it needs to make use of each of the application’s API, in order to get (retrieve) data or to push (send) data.

In the example above, the integration would need to use the third-party API to get the registrant’s data and then use the SpotMe API to push data.

So in summary:

• An integration corresponds to the action of performing automated tasks between two or more applications by using their APIs.
• An API is a component of an application that allows external systems (integrations) to interact with the application in a well-defined way.

Automating a manual process using an integration

Simply put, an integration can make use of the SpotMe API to:

• Import data from a third-party platform into SpotMe
  and/or
• Export data from SpotMe into a third-party platform.

Some common use-cases for building integrations are:

1. Attendee profiles originating from a third-party registration platform/portal that need to be imported into a SpotMe workspace.
2. Agenda and session data needs to be imported from a third-party event management system into a SpotMe workspace.
3. Attendance and engagement stats for a SpotMe live session that need to be exported from the SpotMe workspace into a third-party data warehouse for further processing.

All of these processes can be, and sometimes are, performed manually by a user.

For example, if you were to perform the use-case 1 above manually, the process would be something similar to this:

• Manual process step 1: The event planner logs in (authenticates) to the third-party registration platform and exports the registered attendee records into an Excel spreadsheet.
• Manual process step 2: The event planner then proceeds to adjust the spreadsheet in view of uploading it into the SpotMe workspace (clean up the data, reorganise columns, filter out unwanted data, etc.).
• Manual process step 3: The event planner logs in (authenticates) to Backstage, chooses the correct workspace and bulk imports the users using the prepared file from step 2.

As you can see, performing these multiple manual steps is tedious, time consuming and error-prone. This is why it is usually preferred to either use existing integrations or build new integrations that will automate the process of exchanging data (and functionalities) between systems.

Below you can visually compare the manual approach to the equivalent via an integration:

SpotMe native integration VS customer integration

Finally, when it comes to integrations, it is important to distinguish between SpotMe native integration and customer integrations. These two concepts are well defined in the API terminology, but to summarize:

• For the most part, SpotMe native integrations are the integration modules that you will typically find in the SpotMe Marketplace in Backstage and that are listed here.
  These integrations have been built by SpotMe and will make use of third-party APIs.
• Customer integrations are integrations built by third-party agencies or directly by customers in order to connect their systems to SpotMe. To do this they need to use the SpotMe API.

What about the SpotMe API?

As mentioned above, integrations are used to automate the exchange of data.

The SpotMe API allows you to directly exchange data between third-party applications and SpotMe.

This is possible thanks to a list of API endpoints that SpotMe has developed, where each endpoint allows you to pull or push data to/from SpotMe.

In other words, SpotMe API endpoints are used to allow third-party applications to automatically execute operations in SpotMe that a real user could otherwise manually execute via Backstage, such as “create a new attendee on this workspace” or “get a list of sessions from this workspace”.

With the SpotMe API you will be able to pull or push:

• Users (including their photos).
• Speakers/moderators (including their photos).
• Sessions.
• Session tags & registrations.
• Sponsors (including their assets).
• And many more…

For a high-level list of available API endpoints, please check api.spotme.com.
For a full list of the available API endpoints, please check your workspace API page. More information