Key Terminology
Integration Hub
The Pandium Integration Hub serves as the central administrative dashboard for your account. Manage various aspects, from integrations and tenants to partners and settings for other features—all from one place.
In-App Marketplace
The In-App Marketplace is a white-labeled, highly customizable solution to showcase all of your integrations directly to end users. Designed to be displayed in an iframe within a web app that sits behind your company's login.
Explore the In-App Marketplace here.
Public Gallery
Pandium's Public Gallery is a highly customizable marketplace with advanced options, including lead generation forms, improved SEO, and additional white-labeling features. Build a comprehensive directory of your technology partners and seamlessly embed it on your marketing site.
Learn more about the Public Gallery here.
Integration
Conceptually, an integration is a packaged-up application that syncs data between two or more systems. Whether its called applications or scripts, they can operate one-way or bi-directionally, scheduled or triggered differently. Integrations can also extend to one-to-many scenarios, i.e. if a customer is syncing multiple 3rd party accounts syncing to one of your accounts or vice versa.
With Pandium, think of the integration object as the platform's “parent” record for any application. At its core, it includes the essential content for listing a tile in an end user-facing marketplace. More often than not, it is a combination of all of the components needed to functionally sync data between systems powered by Pandium.
We currently support 2 types of Integrations:
Internal Integrations:
These are functional apps which sync data between systems. The code that performs the syncs (ETL), determines end-user settings (Pandium.yaml) and all associated data are housed on the Pandium cloud. Marketing to marketplace content lives within internal integrations.
External Integrations:
allow Pandium customers to highlight integrations or other listings which do not sync data on the Pandium platform. External integrations have marketing content and copy and marketplace activity is tracked by the platform, but there is no ETL running on Pandium. Customers may use external integrations to highlight legacy integrations, “coming soon” or beta (unpublished) apps or types of services that would not be powered by Pandium, like channel partners or agencies.
Integration Detail
To access detailed integration information, navigate to the Integration Hub and proceed to the integration detail page through the Integrations sidebar resource.
For specific details related to integrations, you can also use the Pandium API.
Connector
A connector serves as an integral component within an integration, allowing Pandium to securely provide the required encrypted secrets or tokens to the specific integration and tenant combination. Pandium's connectors are designed to accommodate the authentication requirements of partner systems, whether that involves an OAuth protocol, a simple API key, or a custom and proprietary method.
In contrast to many integration platforms, Pandium’s connectors focus solely on authorization, authentication, and receiving webhooks. It's important to note that Pandium's connectors refrain from interacting with external APIs beyond these essential functions. As such, there is no “Pandium version” or “wrapper” around third-party APIs.
Connector Secrets
When an integration script runs on the platform, it dynamically accepts the necessary secrets as environment variables at runtime. These secrets are encrypted at rest and in transit, and cannot be exported.
For a given integration, connectors can be set on a per-tenant basis or globally. This global configuration is particularly useful when one facet of the integration remains static, such as utilizing a uniform SFTP or cloud storage bucket for all customer accounts. Opting for a global connector implies that authentication into the system is required only once. Subsequently, all created tenants will share the same set of global secrets, eliminating the need for redundant authentication.
Pandium connections can be diverse - we don't need to connect to a public API to work. Whether it's through public or private APIs (leveraging a direct AWS/GCP/Azure connection), SFTP, Storage Buckets, or even direct database connections, Pandium adapts seamlessly, provided the necessary access is available.
Tenant
A tenant is an individual instance of an installed integration. At its core, it represents a distinctive collection of API keys or authentication tokens, coupled with the requisite configuration options essential for the seamless execution of a synchronization process. In most cases, tenants exhibit a one-to-one relationship with an account within your application that installs a specific integration.
Multiple Tenants
There are instances where an end user, during the installation of an integration, may necessitate multiple tenants. This scenario arises when the end user possesses a single API key (or authentication token) for one system and multiple API keys (or authentication tokens) for other systems.
Example: You as a merchant have a NetSuite account, and each of your partners uses their account within NetSuite, each with their own unique credentials and permissions.
Run
A run is both the execution of a script by Pandium, including its associated secrets and configurations, and the corresponding record of that synchronization for a specific tenant. Runs have associated logs, configured by the engineering user of the Pandium platform. These runs remain visible to both Pandium administrators and customers for a duration of up to 30 days. For extended historical insights, users can contact support for potential access beyond this timeframe.
Runs can be triggered via the Integration Hub, Marketplace, webhooks or the Pandium API.
Release
A release is a version of the code that performs the ETL on Pandium in combination with the PANDIUM.yaml. New releases are automatically generated when the Source Control Integration detects changes in the specified repository, and they can also be manually initiated through the Integration Hub.
Releases offer the flexibility of being designated as default for all new installations. Tenants can be updated to new releases in bulk or individually. Releases may be tagged with identifying information to assist with version control.
Release Channels
Release channels can be set specifically for integrations and tenants. The default release will be the version of the integration that customers automatically be provisioned upon installing the integration from your marketplace. There must be a default release selected for your customers to install an integration. To make a selection, one or more release versions must be built through Source Control.
There are three separate options for default release behavior:
Static Default: Installed tenants use the currently set default integration release. The release remains unchanged on the tenant unless manually reset within the administrator platform.
Dynamic Default: Installed tenants are created using the currently set default integration release. If there is a change in the integration’s default release changes, the installed tenants will change their release(s) to match on the next sync.
Latest: Tenants will always use the most recently-built release available for the integration.This ensures that tenants always operate with the latest release.
Source Control
Pandium simplifies the management of Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes of your integrations through a feature known as Source Control. In the Pandium Integration Hub, you'll find a dedicated Source Control tab in the Settings sidebar resource where you can oversee and manage this process.
While Source Control is automatically deployed to your account, a setup process is necessary before beginning integration development. We currently support four different version control systems: Azure, Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab.
Source Control looks for the URL paths in your repository, as indicated in your integration configuration, and generates a new release based on changes in the code base.
Setting up this feature is key to hosting and managing integration on Pandium and should be the first step completed before embarking on integration development. As integrations are created, you'll be able to build releases for them on that integration detail page, or directly from the Source Control page in the future.
To learn more about setting up Source Control, check out the article here.
PANDIUM.yaml
For internal integrations with source code hosted in a remote repository, the PANDIUM.yaml is a file that should be included in the root level of the relevant directory. This file furnishes Pandium with essential information necessary to build and execute your integration script on our platform. Additionally, it defines the configuration options and user interface (UI) through the configs section, allowing your customers to input vital information crucial for the integration run.
Learn more specifics about the PANDIUM.yaml here.
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