Concepts
Integration
An integration defines how your application will interact with a third party SaaS tool. You will have a single integration for all of your customers that are connecting your application with a particular SaaS product. For example, you might have an integration called mySalesforceIntegration
. Salesforce is the provider that we are integrating with.
You create an integration by defining it in a manifest file and then deploying it using the amp
CLI. (See CLI Overview).
An installation is specific to a single customer that sets up one of your integrations to connect with their SaaS instance. For example, mySalesforceIntegration
might have 30 installations - one for each of your customers that have connected their Salesforce instance with your application.
Installation
An installation is an instance of an integration, for a particular customer. It is created:
- when a customer connects their SaaS instance in an embeddable UI component
- or when you make an API call to the CreateInstallation endpoint.
An installation captures the following information:
- the credentials for connecting to the customer’s SaaS instance. (Ampersand supports OAuth, Basic Auth, and API Key based authentication.) We call this the connection.
- a customer’s preference for which objects and fields they want your application to read or write, and fields they’ve mapped. We call this the config.
For other terminology, refer to Terminology.