This week: Essential integrations / services / API' s
We are going to be talking through the main / really popular API partners out there and give some quick feedback on how to integrate/go about them. Plus some lessons learned to keep in mind when planning integrations like this.
Sendgrid + Other Transactional Email
John: Formatting emails — inline styles only.
John: Some services have "Templates" with "Placeholders", some you pass the full HTML
John: Having some kind fo "log" object in your own domain can be very helpful.
John: Priority on background jobs for timely emails —
JP: Iterable. Opendoor uses this tool to send text, email, and push notifications. Everything hinges around handlebars / mustache and OOF - inline styles
JP: Side project with send grid, just a list of template ids
await deliverTemplateEmail({ to: user.emailAddress, templateId: SOME_TEMPLATE_ID, data: { contactFirstName: user.firstName, viewMyAccountLink: ${config.BASE_URL}/user/dashboard, }, });
Stripe + Other Payment Providers
- John: Tokenization and data storage
- John: Drop in vs Whitelabel — "Checkout" vs "Elements"
- John: Embrace Test Mode in Stipe (Super powerful)
- John: Subscriptions, Promocodes + More
- JP: I actually don't have much to say about payment providers. The interesting thing is that in Opendoor world, we hand off our users to an operator. I.e. you wouldn't purchase a home a la Amazon
Twilio (SMS)
- John: STOP replies edge case
- John: Logs are helpful
- John: Twilio Webhooks
- John: Testing mocks is really useful
- JP: Seriously, twilio powers the world. We've used tools that hook into Twilio that provide an interface for customer support. See Front App
Scheduler / Chron Jobs
- John: Heroku Scheduler
- John: Think about failure handling, resend logic into scheudulers
OAuth Login?
Other?
Picks
- John: Sweet Maria's Green Coffee Beans and Roasting Guides
- JP: None!