Software planning guide · English
How to scope integrations between business applications
Define which system owns each record, what triggers an exchange, what data moves, and how failures are recovered. Confirm API access, provider permissions, limits, and charges before treating an integration as an included feature.
Prepared 2026-10-23. General planning guidance; confirm the exact product, provider, and terms for your requirement.
Identify the source of truth
For each customer, product, order, and payment record, decide which application is authoritative. Sending updates in both directions without ownership rules can create loops and conflicting records. Map required fields, identifiers, and status changes. A customer name is not a reliable unique identifier. Include examples of a correction, cancellation, and duplicate request.
Check provider requirements early
An integration can depend on paid API access, app approval, account ownership, message-template approval, or an existing subscription. Confirm these with the provider rather than assuming that a logo on a supplier’s website proves support. Ask who will own the account and credentials, who pays usage charges, and how credentials are rotated without losing service.
Make failures visible
Agree how the application records retries, alerts the team, and reconciles a transaction that has partially completed. Avoid treating an HTTP success response as proof that the entire business workflow finished. Test revoked credentials, rate limits, duplicate callbacks, and a temporary outage. Keep logs useful for investigation without copying unnecessary personal information or secrets.
Questions for your brief
- Which system owns the final record?
- Is provider access already available?
- Who monitors and resolves failed exchanges?