Getting Started with Embedded Chain

Overview

Integrating data from multiple 3rd party systems has become an essential part of building a SaaS application for the Supply Chain industry. Customers expect to buy software that integrates seamlessly with their other tools. However, achieving a robust set of high-quality product integrations typically requires anywhere from months to years of engineering work to build and maintain across multiple providers.

Embedded Chain enables software developers to integrate connectivity with common supply chain platforms into their own applications using a standardized, easy-to-use API. This frees up your development teams to avoid the cost, time, and risk that comes with building and maintaining their own integrations solution.

Embedded Chain interacts with your application via the API described in this document, and your users are able to connect their own accounts together with no intervention needed by your development or support teams. Embedded Chain provides secure authentication for each third-party app provider it supports...

📝 Terminology

Gateway - the Embedded Chain application and API
Client - the application making calls to Embedded Chain (i.e. the Gateway)
Server - the back end application which the Client accesses thru the Gateway
Owner - owns both the Client and Server systems

Basic Workflow

The basic workflow is similar to other embedded integration platforms, e.g. Plaid, Finch, Twilio, and multiple OAUTH providers.

From within the Client Application, an Owner Administrator indicates that she wants to connect her company’s Client instance to her company’s Server instance
The Client Application makes a request to the Gateway to initiate the configuration process
The Owner Admin is presented and interacts with a user interface to enter the authentication + configuration information needed to establish a connection between the Client and Server
At the completion of this configuration process, the Gateway provides the Client with a token allowing access to that Server connection
From that point forward, when requesting access to the Server system, the Client will present that token to the Gateway, enabling the Client to retrieve data from the Server in a standardized format it can then display

Example Use Cases

Present in-line, real-time details of a specific Shipment, sourced directly from the backend TMS system, to your application users
Provide up-to-date status and milestone information on Shipments to an ML algorithm for calculating predicted arrival times
Confirm the status of receivables and payments on a freight invoice