I work for a nonprofit that has begun to use Airtable extensively. We house almost all our data in it and we use Make to integrate it with almost everything we use. However, we have one major system that is not currently integrated and that requires a meaningful amount of double entry.
We are going to need to build a custom API integration. We have spoken with the technology team at this company and they are happy to work with us to do so. They recommended we get someone who knows Airtable well to build the integration and said they will provide the guidance needed for their side.
I have built all our Airtable systems and integrations using no/low-code, but I am most definitely not a developer! I think this will be a fairly straightforward project for someone who is. If you are interested in this project, let me know and I’ll send you my email and details.
When you say custom API integration, do you mean that their technology team has already developed a REST API on their end, and you need someone to help make the custom API calls to their software?
If so, this is usually relatively straightforward by using Make’s HTTP modules, and this is something that I can help you with!
You can feel free to contact me through my website at scottworld.com.
Hey @MLO,
To integrate the two parts “Airtable” and the external service you mention, depending on how do you want to let them exchange information you can use the following options:
Send data from Airtable and receive data in Airtable using webhooks
Create scenarios to on make where you can access the external system with HTTP module, as @ScottWorld mentioned
You can create custom apps in make which will be your own modules developed in your account in make. Those modules will be available for use in the future from you and your team.
This makes me wonder; major systems generally come from major companies. And major companies tend to have modern APIs. But the next statement suggests they don’t have a modern API because modern APIs are fully documented, mostly mature, and easily utilized by customers.
Big companies that have this wired, don’t need to have conversations or provide much assistance. This is one of the big advantages of the API economy; developers are able to self-help their integration requirements.
There’s a tool that runs in the browser and can be used to eliminate double entry if in fact, the first entry is through a web app of some sort. This tool is capable of scraping the web app and posting the data directly to Airtable (through the API or a webhook listener). It can read the page where the data is being captured or other pages or reports where the data exists. This would be a possible approach if the major company doesn’t actually have an API or they need to do some work on their end to make this happen. I’m not a big fan of scraping to achieve interoperability, but I don’t know the true nature of the data or the major system.
There’s another tool that you might want to investigate; it also has the underlying ability to read the current page, extract the data, and POSTing the data to Airtable, and also mostly without requiring any code. Again, this is a remote possibility, but it would make it possible for you do this without coders and a lot of other system dependencies.
Did the OP mention the major system has a web-interface? That would make things easier. Unless clarified, a “major” system may be called the way because they used to be a dinosaur running on Unix based but have a protected niche with little competition. For a company that is new developing an API, there is two red flags there, 1) risk of bugs and you are the guinea pig, be ready for fun or 2) there billing hours $$$ and an invoice will come just in time when non-profits close their books. Need to take the whole picture into consideration when evaluating the options.
I’m just seeing all these new replies! I somehow didn’t get the notifications earlier.
Anyway, I’m finally coming back to this need and wanting to move it along much more quickly. (This has not been a major priority for my role but it is very important to our organization.)
The system we are using has been around for quite a while, but it is a relatively niche product and a small company. It does have a GraphQL-based API and a web interface.
Would we also be able to get data into this system from Airtable and vice versa using Make or another low-code tool?
I will reach out to those who have posted individually to discuss details and begin to move forward.
Thank you all for your help in navigating this unknown world for me!!