Why it matters
An integration is an ongoing contract between two changing products. Auth, mapping, sync state and error recovery deserve as much attention as the first successful API call.
An integration is an ongoing relationship with another system. Authentication, changed schemas, retries and customer troubleshooting become part of your product.
Decisions to make
- Choose push, pull or bidirectional sync for the use case.
- Define identity and field mapping across systems.
- Set a visible policy for partial failures and replay.
- Choose a narrow first workflow instead of claiming a broad integration.
- Define who owns credentials and how they are rotated.
Build checklist
- Store connection state and token rotation safely.
- Make sync operations idempotent.
- Give admins a way to see the last successful sync and repair errors.
- Expose connection health and the last successful sync.
- Test pagination, rate limiting and partial failure.
Common mistakes
- Claiming support for a platform after proving only a happy-path connection.
- Assuming a successful OAuth connection means data is syncing.
- Saving third-party credentials without a revocation path.
Tools & references
4 starting points to compare or study. Check fit, maintenance, terms and current capabilities before choosing one.
