Signal Connector Integration with Advanced Webhooks Guide

Source: https://platform-support.certain.com/hc/en-us/articles/10901963994519-Signal-Connector-Integration-with-Advanced-Webhooks-Guide

Published:

Keywords: Signal Connector, Advanced Webhooks, Mappings, Retry Queue

Document ID: https://platform-support.certain.com/hc/en-us/articles/10901963994519-Signal-Connector-Integration-with-Advanced-Webhooks-Guide#split1

This document is a guide to using Certain Signal Connector to integrate with other applications by using Advanced Webhooks. This includes the use of nested JSON as well as everything available in the standard Webhooks integration module.

If you are using that standard module, please see the separate guide to integrations using standard webhooks.

(Signal Connector also integrates with Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce—see separate guides.)

Certain Signal Connector for Advanced Webhooks is not included with Certain Platform by default. If you’re interested in adding this or any other Signal Connector integration to your instance of Certain, please email help@certain.com, including your account name and the Signal Connector integration(s) you’re interested in.

What is Signal Connector? How does it work?

Certain Signal Connector processes data from your events in real time, passing it from Certain Platform to your target third-party application, which could be any app with webhook integration, such as Slack or Google Forms.

This real-time integration empowers sales and marketing teams to take intelligent, prompt action on the right event data.

Almost everything is set up at the account level. Signal Connector processes information from the events in your account.

Event-level information is based on the custom tags you attach to data such as Registration Statuses, as explained in this guide.

Important: Signal Connector processes outbound information. Signal Connector processes information from Certain and sends it to your target application.

Prerequisites

Data-Flow Considerations

Do you capture data in registration questions that will be synced to the third-party app to which you are integrating?

If so, you’ll need to apply tags to those questions. See "Applying Tags".

Do you have different data mappings based on registration status or attendee type?

If so, you’ll need to apply tags to those items. See "Applying Tags".

Credentials in Target Application

For you to set up a Connection in Signal Connector (see "Setting up a Connection"), the administrator of your target third-party application will need to provide you with the information described under ‘Adding a Connection’.

For example, if your chosen Authentication Method there is OAuth2 then they’ll need to create an OAuth2 app in that system. They’ll need to provide you with Endpoint, Client Id, and Client Secret.

Overview of Setup Steps

On Certain Platform: 1. Add tags in the account 2. Apply those tags

In Certain Signal Connector: 3. Add a Connection 4. Configure a Flow

Setting up Tags

What Are Tags?

Tags are a way of identifying event-level data using labels you set at the account level.

You can apply those tags to generic items in events, especially custom registration statuses and custom registration properties for use in Certain Signal Connector.

(Tags can be used for other purposes as well, but this guide doesn’t cover that.)

For example, your events may have several custom registration statuses in addition to the standard ones. You can apply the same Tags to more than one status. You can also choose to give each one its own Tag.

When you set up a Flow in Certain Signal Connector to send data to your target application when an attendee’s Registration Status changes, you specify the tags applicable to those statuses, not the statuses themselves.

That means the flow can apply to any event in your account.

Setting Tags Up for an Account

1. As an Administrator, go to Account Settings > Management > Tags. 2. Enter a Name and a Label for the tag. 3. Select the Object(s) to which the tag can apply. For example, ‘Registration Statuses’ and/or ‘Custom Registration Properties’. 4. Click Add. 5. Repeat as required for as many tags as you need. 6. Important: Add enough tags to apply to all of the following that you will use in flows (see 'Flow Data Source'): a. Registration Statuses b. Custom Registration Properties 7. Also add enough tags to apply to all of the following that you will use in filters for flows (see "Flow Filters"): a. Attendee Types b. Events

Applying Tags in an Account

In each event from which you want information to flow through Certain Signal Connector, apply tags to the relevant information. The relevant information includes Registration Statuses and Registration Custom Properties.

(You can also tag Attendee Types and Events, so you can filter registration records by attendee type or event. See Filters.)

Default Registration Statuses

These apply to all events. An Administrator applies the tags at the account level.

1. Go to Account Settings > Management > Registration Statuses. 2. Select one or more Tags for each status.

Important: Even if you don’t use any standard registration statuses, best practice is to set up tags for all of them. It’s essential to tag at least the ‘New’ status (which Certain uses “behind the scenes” when first processing each registration).

If you do use standard reg statuses, it’s essential that you tag them all. Tagging enables the use of those statuses in the Flows you configure in Signal Connector. See 'Configuring a Flow'.

Applying Tags in an Event

Custom Registration Statuses

If any of the Flows you configure in Signal Connector will watch or activate for Custom Reg Statuses:

1. In each event, go to Plan > Event Setup > Custom Statuses. 2. Select at least one tag for each status.

Custom Registration Properties

If any of the Flows you configure in Signal Connector will watch or activate for Custom Reg Properties:

1. In each event, go to Plan > Configure. 2. Under Custom Registration Properties, select at least one tag for each custom reg property in the event.

Standard Registration Properties (Automatic)

These tags are set up for you automatically, with names identical to the properties themselves: Complete, Badge Printed, On To Do List, Invoice Generated, and Test.

You only see them in Signal Connector, where you can activate Flows for them. There’s nothing to edit on Certain Platform.

Attendee Types

(Optional– for use with filters – see 'Flow Filters'.)

1. In each event, go to Plan > Event Setup > Attendee Types. 2. Select one or more Tags for each attendee type on which you may wish to filter registrations. See Filters.

Events

(Optional– for use with filters – see 'Flow Filters'.)

1. In each event you may wish to include in a filter (for example to ensure that only registrations for that event are passed to your target application): 2. Go to Plan > Event Setup > Details. 3. Select one or more Tags for the event.

Registration Questions

(Optional– for use with mapping Certain fields to fields in your target application – see 'Mappings')

1. In each event in which you use registration questions to capture data from attendees, and wish to pass those answers to your target application: 2. Go to Plan > Event Setup > Questions. 3. Select just one Tag for each question. Selecting more could result in duplicate data in your target application.

Opening Certain Signal Connector

When Signal Connector is activated for your account, the Account Settings > Implementation menu—available to Administrators—includes an extra option:

Click that link to open Certain Signal Connector in a separate window. Signal Connector runs separately from Certain Platform.

Note: To return from Signal Connector to Certain Platform at any time, click (“duplicate data” text is shown on screen in the screenshot, but the link target is not included in the extracted text.)

Setting up a Connection

What are Connections?

A Connection in Certain Signal Connector specifies how to connect to your target application.

You can have multiple connections, including to other third-party applications. (Marketo, Eloqua and Salesforce are covered in separate guides.)

Each Flow requires a Connection. Multiple flows may use the same Connection.

You can set up a Connection before configuring your first Flow. You also can set up a Connection while configuring a Flow. This guide assumes you’re setting up the Connection first.

Adding a Connection

As an Administrator, you may set up one or more Connections for your account. You need only do so once. After setup, you can use the Connections in the Flows you set up.

1. Go to Account Settings > Implementation > Signal Connector Real-Time Data Integration. 2. Certain Signal Connector opens in a separate window. 3. Click Connections in the left navigation panel. 4. Click Add A Connection in the Connection List page that opens. 5. Enter the details in the Connection Setup screen that opens.

| Basic Authentication | Open / No Auth | API Key / Token | OAuth2 | |---|---|---|---| | • URL • Content Type • Request Method • User Name • Password | • URL • Content Type • Request Method | • API Key / Token | • Grant Type • Client ID • Client Secret • Authorization URL • Access Token URL • Refresh Token URL • Scope • Test Connection URL |

Basic Authentication

Open / No Auth

The lowest level of security.

API Key / Token

OAuth2

All these values must be provided by the administrator of your target application.

6. Click Save & Test. 7. If the test is successful, click Close. If it’s not, check that the values in step 5 are all correct.

Setting Up Flows

What is a “Flow”?

A flow is a configuration to manage the flow of data from Certain to your target application.

You create Flows from the landing page in Signal Connector. See ‘Configuring a Flow’, below.

You may configure several flows for an account. These flows might all use the same Connection (explained above).

You only need to configure a flow once at the account level.

When a flow is complete, it will start picking up data for each event in that account within about a minute.

The minute’s delay happens because Signal Connector runs independently from Certain Platform. If you edit a flow, a slight delay occurs before that change takes effect in the processing of the registrations.

The Flow List

As an Administrator in Certain Platform, go to Account Settings > Implementation > Signal Connector Real-Time Data Integration.

Certain Signal Connector opens in a separate browser window.

The main screen in Signal Connector is the Flow List, which lists all flows.

The Status column shows whether a flow is completely set up.

The Active column shows whether the flow is running.

Click the toggle button to change a flow from Active to Inactive, or vice versa.

Configuring a Flow

Click ADD A FLOW to start setting up a new flow. A screenshot is shown below.

The configuration consists of:

‘Live’ or ‘Test’

The Live toggle switch determines whether your Flow is Live or Test.

A Live Flow will pick up all live registrations in live events. It will ignore test registrations, even in live events.

A Test Flow picks up all test registrations. This includes all registrations in test events. This includes any registrations marked as ‘Test’ in live events.

Best Practice: Set a new flow up as Test—and test it—before setting it to Live.

Flow Data Source

Next, specify the Source of data for the flow (optionally applying Filters).

The Source of a Flow is what the Flow will watch for in your data in Certain. The Source also determines when the Flow will activate, based on that data.

For example, the Flow might watch for any change to a Registration Status. The Flow might activate if an attendee’s status has changed to a status tagged as ‘Registered’.

Available sources

You set a flow to watch for any one of the following:

Note: You can always save an incomplete Flow and complete it at a later date.

As soon as a Flow is complete, it will start picking up data after the usual minute’s delay.

Activate for …

Choose what the flow should activate by selecting one or more tags in each appropriate object’s dropdown list.

As shown in the screenshot, you can activate for tags applied to Registration Statuses and/or Registration Properties.

Other options may be added depending on what the Flow is watching for:

The tags available for selection are those set up for that object.

For example, the tags for Registration Statuses include Registration Status tags, which you can apply to:

Flow Filters

You can filter the data going into a flow by selecting fields in any of these three filter types:

The flow will only include a registration if it meets the rule(s) specified in the filter.

Note: For custom fields, you can only select “enumerated” questions. These are questions that have pre-configured answers. These questions are of types Select, Multi-select, Checkbox, or Radio.

Flow Destination

Select Advanced Webhooks from the integrations set up by Certain for your account. (You may have this and others to choose from.)

Setting up a Destination

1. Give the Destination a Name of your choice, 2. Select the Connection to use.

Note: You can instead click New Connection to add a connection. The process to set one up is the same as described on page 'Setting up a Connection'.

3. Select Advanced Webhook as the Action for this connection. 4. Select or add the mappings to use, as described next,

Mappings

Select or set up a set of mappings.

You can have two:

The setup process is the same for each.

A mapping specifies how each target field in your third-party application matches a source field in Certain.

Select a mapping from the drop-down list.

If nobody has set any mappings up yet, or you need something other than one of the existing mappings, click New Mapping to add one. The Mapping Setup screen opens:

1. Mapping Name

Give the mapping a name of your choice.

Best Practice: For multiple mappings used for different flows, use names self-explanatory. For example, ‘Lead Mapping’ and ‘Form Mapping’.

2. Select Root Element Type

In the great majority of cases, leave this set to the default value, Object.

Select Array of Objects only if your JSON payload begins with a square bracket:

3. Hint

The easiest way to start setting up an Advanced Webhooks destination is to obtain a sample JSON from the source.

Paste that into the text box. Signal Connector will “parse out the structure you’ll need to support it”. This means Signal Connector works out what the source fields are and saves you having to type them in yourself.

(If you’d prefer to enter them manually instead, click ‘Let me set them up myself’ and proceed to step 10.b.

Caution: Only do this if you are completely comfortable with JSON syntax, as explained on [https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_json_syntax.asp, for example.)

4. ‘Parsed Structure’ Option

Continue here if you’re going the route of pasting in a sample JSON and letting Signal Connector parse it to determine the data structure.

Otherwise, skip ahead to step 10.

5. Obtain a sample JSON payload

Obtain a sample JSON payload from your target application. This includes the target fields that you will map to Certain fields in step 10.c.

6. Paste that into the Sample JSON from Destination text box

7. Click Parse JSON

8. Signal Connector determines the target fields

Signal Connector determines the target fields in that JSON and displays them on screen as if you had entered them yourself.

9. Proceed to step 10.c

Proceed to step 10.c below to map those fields to source fields in Certain Platform.

10. ‘Manual Setup’ Option (and mapping parsed fields)

For each of the target fields in your target application:

If you chose to let Signal Connector parse a JSON (per steps 3 to 9), skip the next step and go straight to step 10c. The list of target fields will be prepopulated for you.

Otherwise, if you chose not to let Signal Connector parse a pasted JSON to determine the data structure, so you clicked ‘Let me set them up myself’ in step 3:

a. Parsed JSON b. Manual Setup selection steps: i. Enter the name of the target field and click Add. ii. Select the data type for that field in the adjacent drop-down list of JSON data types: String, Number, Boolean, Object, Array of Strings, Array of Numbers, Array of Objects, or Array of Booleans.

Caution: The type must map the type of data in the JSON payload.

c. Click to select the “source” field in Certain that matches that target field.

For example: if the target field is ‘Title” in your target application, the source field might be ‘Position’. This means the value of the Position field in Certain will populate the Title field in your target application.

The Certain fields you can choose from as the source of the data going into the target fields in your target application will include some of the following, depending on what your flow will activate for.

(If, for example, it will activate for Event Statuses, then you can only map event fields.)

Note: Unlike a standard Webhooks integration (see separate guide), an Advanced Webhooks integration can include arrays. This means the Certain source fields you can select from include lists such as Registration Question List, as listed above. Note: You can concatenate multiple source fields for the same target field. You can also type fixed text.

For example: for target field ‘Title’ you could choose source fields ‘Position’ and ‘Organization’, separated by two spaces and “@”:

d. To make a target field a required field, select the checkbox next to it.

e. To delete a source field, click the x after its label.

11. Transformations

In the second column you can select a transformation option for each field.

The default of no selection means the data will be sent to your target application unchanged.

The options are:

Note: You can select more than one transformation for a field.

For example, you could change it to Proper Case and trim it.

12. Continue adding more target/source field pairs

Continue adding more target/source field pairs as necessary.

If you’ve selected a mapping then two other buttons are enabled, with self-explanatory labels:

13. Save the mapping

Example Mapping from Pasted JSON

If you chose the ‘Parsed Structure’ option in Step 4, the next three pages illustrate the three steps involved: 1. An example JSON you might paste in for Signal Connector to parse. 2. A screenshot showing how Signal Connector parsed that JSON. 3. A screenshot showing those source fields mapped to target in CertainExample JSON.

The screenshot below shows how Signal Connector would parse this JSON.

Parsed JSON

An example JSON is shown on screen.

The screenshot below shows how Signal Connector would parse this JSON.

Parsed JSON with each target field mapped to a source field in Certain

See the screenshot below for an example of how you might map these fields.

Metrics Dashboard

To see the statistics available in Signal Connector, click Metrics in the left navigation panel when looking at flows.

The choices in the new navigation panel you then see for Metrics depend on the flows and their targets.

The first one will be Insights, as illustrated and described below.

Other links may include, for example, Webhook Posts. These work in the same way as Account Insights.

Account Insights

Select whether you want to see Live Flows or Test Flows.

Select the period for which you want to see the data. For example, for the last 15 minutes, 1 hour or 4 hours, or a number of days.

There are three tabs:

Summary tab

This is the default tab on the Insights page.

The figures shown depend on the flows and actions.

For some figures, you can click the number to drill down further. For example, click Unique Registrations to see the registrations processed by any flows in your selected time frame.

You can filter or search for records when you’ve drilled down. For example, filter on an Event Code to see only the registrations in that event.

The figures listed below are shown.

Remember these are for the whole account: all events and registrations, and for all flows in your account. These may include flows that are not Webhooks integrations. Some figures shown may therefore not be applicable to webhooks.

For each of these, you can click the number to drill down to details.

Drilling down into failures provides a high-level view for troubleshooting.

For example, you can see why an action has failed.

If you can address the cause, you can expedite the fix in Signal Connector by going back to Flows and clicking Retry in the left navigation panel. See Retry Queue.

Troubleshooting tab

The second tab on the Insights page shows information you may find useful for troubleshooting.

For example, if some registrations are not processed because a Registration Status isn’t tagged, this gives you the chance to rectify that so that the registrations can be processed on the next retry.

The numbers shown are as follows. Click a number to drill down to see details of the actual records.

Activity Feed tab

The third tab on the Insights page lists the registrations processed, noting success or failure, Registration Code, Event, Flow, etc.

This is a rolling history, by date.

This is another way to access lower-level data you could see by drilling down in the Summary or Troubleshooting tabs.

The Retry Queue

When an action fails it usually joins the “Retry Queue”, where it takes its turn to run again.

Failures that can’t be resolved, such as missing mandatory fields, are exceptions. These failures do not join the queue.

An action can be retried up to three times. After three retries, the action does not rejoin the queue.

To see the Retry Queue, click Retry in the left navigation panel on the Flows page.

Causes of failure include ones under your control as a planner, such as a registration with a status that hasn’t been tagged.

Causes of failure also include technical ones such as a connection being down.

Where you can resolve the cause of a failure, such as tagging a registration or setting a flow back to being active, you only need to do that. The action should succeed when retried.

For other failures that don’t resolve themselves, you probably need to contact your administrator or ask Certain for help.

The interval between retries depends on the severity of the reason. The more serious the reason, the sooner the retry.

Filtering the Queue

You can filter the records shown in the Retry Queue using these three filters:

Submitting to the Queue

When you click an item in the Retry Queue, you see its full details.

If that knowledge is enough for you to solve the problem, you can click Submit to Retry Queue. This adds the item straight to the front of the queue.

Replaying a Flow

If you change an aspect of a flow while it has been running for some time, such as changing its filters, you may want to replay that flow for the same registrations as before, as if the changes had been made earlier.

This is not something that you can do directly.

You can ask Certain to arrange it for you.

You may be able to specify a date range. You may also be able to specify an event.