Best Practices for CRM Integration Using ITI Digital's JSON Feed

The ITI Digital team has had the opportunity to work with multiple CRM systems and clients, such as Simpleview, HubSpot and Tempest. Although the setup, capabilities and technical support may vary depending on your agreement with these third-party Content Management Systems, we've outlined a list of our integration best practices we recommend following. 

Please feel free to share this public link with your web agency or CRM team.

If you are a Simpleview customer, choosing to embed the ITI turn-key content DIV widgets instead of a JSON integration, please review our step-by-step guide and other information available by clicking here: Integrating the ITI Digital DXP Modules in a Simpleview Site. 

What is Available for CRM Integrations - JSON Feed Access

The ITI Digital team will provide a dedicated JSON Feed URL containing a unique API Key during the onboarding of your ITI Digital events calendar, containing all approved events. This URL is what your CRM/CMS technical team needs for your calendar integration. If you are an existing ITI Events Calendar client and just recently transitioned to a new website in this format, we can provide the data feed at any time, upon request.

Example URL: https://imgoing-prod-api.xyz/api/v2.0/AccountName/events?limit=20000&key=32zA46shWa0dEN9aylRj9dO3vA1M64WaLYXTqZB9U

Account Name = Client's account username

Key = unique to each client

Populating Event Categories

Event Categories in the ITI dashboard can be matched to your CRM/CMS calendar categories. For further clarification of this process:

• The ITI dashboard will allow you to create categories (the same from your CRM/CMS or more) and use that to categorize your events at the time of event approval in the ITI Dashboard. The process would go like this: 
  • a) create the event category options on your ITI Dashboard; 
  • b) as you approve an event, also "tag" them in the particular category of choice; 
  • c) the event details + the category you assigned are immediately available in the ITI Feed your CRM/CMS uses to pull data. 
  • d)  Ensure your CMS/CRM understands that event "A" should go to category "X" automatically. The category parameter is available on the ITI Feed. Pro Tip: Ensure all desired CRM categories are created on the ITI dashboard ahead of time, and let the your CMS/CRM team know that those results need to be matched accordingly when they call the ITI Feed. 

Determine Event Approval Status in CRM/CMS

We recommend directing your CRM/CMS system to automatically mark all ITI events as "Approved" when received in the CRM, from the ITI feed. This way, your team will only need to review and approve (and categorize) the event once in the ITI dashboard. The only events you may have left to manage in the CRM are those manually submitted directly through your website.

Note on Event Images Format

Every event on the ITI Feed contains an image, either provided by the event's organizer or a placeholder of your destination logo that our system introduces, should the organizer not provide any image. 

Images in the ITI Feed via URL are available in .webp format only, which is recommended for improved web performance. With that in mind, I recommend reaching out to CMS/CRM company if you are seeing events in your calendar without an image. 

Confirm Time of CRM Updates

Events approved in the ITI Dashboard are immediately available in the JSON data-feed. However, they will appear in your live calendar depending on the determined schedule of updates setup by your CMS/CRM. Confirm this schedule, so that both teams are aware of when the events become available on your website.

Notes on DTN - For Simpleview Customers Only

Utilizing the JSON feeds will not affect utilizing DTN services nor CRM functionality for reporting.

Additional Integration Support

Please let us know if we can assist with any other questions during the integration. Reach out to our Onboarding Specialist or Submit A Ticket. We are happy to discuss technical details with your website development agency directly, as needed.