Integrations tend to “work” right up until they don’t. The fix is not more glue code—it’s an integration approach that assumes failure and recovers gracefully.
If you need execution help: Integrations and API Development.
Design for failure (because it will happen)
Network calls time out. Vendors change payloads. Rate limits kick in. Your integration should handle these cases explicitly:
- Retries with backoff for transient failures
- Dead-letter queues for messages that need manual review
- Alerting so failures don’t sit for days
Use idempotency everywhere you can
When you retry, you must prevent duplicate writes.
- For API endpoints: accept an idempotency key
- For webhooks: dedupe by event id + timestamp window
Prefer events over polling (when possible)
Polling wastes resources and creates delay. If the platform supports webhooks, use them, and build:
- Signature verification
- Schema validation
- A fallback for replays/resends
Add observability from day one
Minimum recommended:
- Per-integration logs with a correlation id
- Error rate alerts
- A dashboard that answers “what’s broken right now?”
Tie integrations to business outcomes
Integrations exist to reduce friction. Two examples:
- Faster lead routing improves close rates
- Cleaner attribution improves budget decisions
If you’re also improving performance/SEO, connect tracking to your integration work so you can measure impact.
Related: Performance SEO.