Integration Build with API Access & Power Automate?

Jessica White

Hi everyone,

Wondering if any of you have had any success building your own integration from a third party software to RE NXT. The third party software offers an integration build out for a hefty price, or allows you to purchase access to their API for you to build or have someone else build it for you. Looking at the SOW they sent, it looks I could connect their API to Power Automate, and then build the workflow from the third party software to NXT. Any experience with this? Any potential issues I'm not thinking of?

Thanks!

Alex Wong

@Jessica White
It really depends on your experience, expertise, and price.

For example, I am very comfortable building integration using 3rd praty API and RE NXT SKY API, and have done quite a few aalready, provided that the price make sense. In all the situation I did the work myself, the 3rd party API is free to use. However, there is ONE instance I did not: Concur.

The price of the Concur API was hefty, which is a monthly cost. The price of having Concur's partner build the integration with FE is just slightly higher and we won't need to pay the Concur API fee, as it is covered by the Concur partner. So in this case, our plan is to move forward with using the partner.

Glen Hutson

Hey @Jessica White,

Power Automate is great for automating business processes and moving data between systems. However, when talking about using it for integration depends on your definition of “Integration” and what you're integrating.

When talking about integrating with RENXT Constituent records where constituents may be created or updated, there are a number of considerations, among them are duplications and data transformation.

There are hooks in the API that allow you to search for constituents before creating new ones, but you'll have to work into your Power Automate flow those processes and making sure you're searching on all the relevant pieces. However, if there is a “common ID” between the two that you can leverage, that will certainly help make things easier.

There is also data transformation. For example, if the 3rd party uses “Street” and your policy is to use “St.", then you'll have to work into the Power Automate flow that conversion.

Not knowing what your specific scenario is, these specific cases may not be relevant, but it gives you the idea of the types of items to consider. Once you start factoring in all the hours needed to set it up and maintain it, you may find using an established integration (either directly from the 3rd party or using an integration partner) may end up being more economical.

None of this is to say you can't do it, but you'd need to ensure you're factoring in all the pieces.

Jessica White

@Alex Wong
Thank you, Alex! I found out today there is a free tier of their API access. I am going to start testing some initial flows with that and see what I can do. Free vs $10k+ gives me motivation to make it happen!

Jessica White

@Glen Hutson
Thank you so much for all of these considerations, Glen! I am going to give it a shot keeping in mind this helpful information.