Signal Integration with Advanced Webhooks Guide

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Keywords: Signal, Advanced Webhooks, Webhooks, Connections, Flows, Tags, Mappings, Credentials, Flow Data Source, Flow Filters, Flow Destination

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

This document is a guide to using Certain Signal 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 also integrates with Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce – see separate guides.)

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

Contents

What is Signal? How does it work? Certain Signal 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 processes information from the events in your account. For event-level information this is based on the custom tags you attach to data such as Registration Statuses, as explained in this guide. Important: Signal processes outbound information, processing information from Certain and sending it to your target application.

Prerequisites

Data-Flow Considerations

Credentials in Target Application For you to set up a Connection in Signal (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, and provide you with the following: 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 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 then apply those tags to generic items in events, especially custom registration statuses and custom registration properties for use in Certain Signal. (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, or you might choose to give each one its own Tag.

When you set up a Flow in Certain Signal to send data to your target application when an attendee’s Registration Status changes, for example, 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, apply tags to the relevant information: Registration Statuses and Registration Custom Properties. (You can also tag Attendee Types and Events, so that you can filter registration records by attendee type or event: see Filters)

Default Registration Statuses These apply to all events, so an Administrator applies the tags at the account level. 1. Go to Account Settings > Management > Registration Statuses. 2. 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, but 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, so that you can use them in the Flows you configure in Signal: see 'Configuring a Flow'.

Applying Tags in an Event Custom Registration Statuses If any of the Flows you configure in Signal 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 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, where, just like Custom Reg Properties, 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. 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. 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 When Signal is activated for your account, the Account Settings > Implementation menu—available to Administrators—includes an extra option: • Signal Real-Time Data Integration Click that link to open Certain Signal in a separate window; it runs separately from Certain Platform. Note: To return from Signal to Certain Platform at any time, click [the return link].

Setting up a Connection What are Connections? A Connection in Certain Signal specifies how to connect to your target application. You can actually 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, but you also have the option to do so 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 – you can then use them in the Flows you set up. 1. Go to Account Settings > Implementation > Signal Real-Time Data Integration. 2. As noted above, Certain Signal 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. • Target: Use the pre-selected value – Advanced Webhook. • Connection Name: Enter a name of your own choice. This could be just the name of the application with which you are integrating, for example. • Authentication Type: Select the authentication type to be used from the options available. (Your choice determines the other fields displayed for you to complete.) 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 • Is this a primary connection – Leave clear. This check box is displayed for all connections, but is only relevant to Eloqua, Marketo and Salesforce integrations requiring backwards compatibility. 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: see ‘Configuring a Flow’, below. You may configure several flows for an account, which 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 is because Signal runs independently from Certain Platform. So if you edit a flow then the same 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 Real-Time Data Integration. Certain Signal opens in a separate browser window. The main screen in Signal 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 – see screenshot 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: that’s all registrations in test events, plus 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 and when it will activate, based on that data. For example, it might watch for any change to a Registration Status, and 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.

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

Examples:

Notes:

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.

Event fields include standard event fields (e.g., Event Code), custom event fields, and event tags.

Profile fields include standard profile fields (e.g., Position) and custom profile fields.

Attendee Type Tags include tags that can be applied to Attendee Types.

Note: For custom fields, you can only select “enumerated” questions – those that have pre-configured answers; that is, questions that 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: one for the Payload and (if required) one for the Http Header.

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, make the 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: As it says on screen, 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, and Signal will “parse out the structure you’ll need to support it”; that is, it will work out what the source fields are and save you having to type them in yourself.

4. ‘Parsed Structure’ Option

Continue here if you’re going the route of pasting in a sample JSON and letting Signal parse it to determine the data structure. (Otherwise, skip ahead to step 10.)

5. Obtain a sample JSON payload from your target application. This will include 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 will determine the target fields in that JSON and display them on screen as if you had entered them yourself.

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

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

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

a. Parsed JSON

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

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.

Example: if the target field is ‘Title” in your target application, the source field might be ‘Position’, meaning 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: An Advanced Webhooks integration can include arrays, so the source fields can include lists such as Registration Question List, as listed above.

Note: You can concatenate multiple source fields for the same target field, and even 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.

• If a required field is missing, there’ll be a validation error when the flow tries to update your target application. This is not normally fixable, so would not go into the Retry Queue.

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

11. In the second column you can select a transformation option for each field. The default is no transformation. The options are: lower case, Proper Case, UPPER CASE, Trim (This removes extra spaces.)

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 as necessary.

If you’ve selected a mapping then two other buttons are enabled: Edit Mapping and Preview Mapping.

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 to parse.

2. A screenshot showing how Signal parsed that JSON

3. A screenshot showing those source fields mapped to target in Certain

Example JSON and screenshots are provided for illustration.

Metrics Dashboard To see the statistics available in Signal, click Metrics in the left navigation panel when looking at flows. The choices in the new navigation panel depend on the flows and their targets. The first one will be Insights, as illustrated and described below. Other links may include Webhook Posts; all 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, Troubleshooting, and Activity Feed.

Summary tab

This is the default tab on the Insights page, as shown here. The figures shown depend on the flows and actions. For some of them 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, which might include some which are not Webhooks integrations.

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

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

The retry process can be used to fix failures.

Examples: if some registrations are not processed because a Registration Status isn’t tagged, you can rectify that so that the registrations can be processed on the next retry.

The numbers shown include:

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: they don’t join the queue.) An action can be retried up to three times, after which it 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: a registration with a status that hasn’t been tagged, and technical issues such as a connection being down. Resolution steps can include tagging a registration or setting a flow back to active, after which the action may succeed when retried. For other failures, contact your administrator or Certain for help. The interval between retries depends on the severity of the reason.

Filtering the Queue You can filter the records shown in the Retry Queue using three filters: Integration, Status, and Category.

Submitting to the Queue When you click an item in the Retry Queue, you see its full details. If you can solve the problem, you can click Submit to Retry Queue to add the item 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, you may want to replay that flow for the same registrations as before. This is not something you can do directly; you can ask Certain to arrange it for you. You may be able to specify a date range, or even an event.

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