Is anyone uploading Vin65 data into a CRM system to track customer contacts? If so, I am interested in which software you’re using and discussing implementing an API interface. Thank you! Laura
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I know a thing or two about using the various APIs that Vin65 currently offers, particularly customer and order data. I’m going to warn you up front, it’s probably not going to work well with those CRMs.
Right off the bat, most of the APIs are SOAP and were originally made to communicate with RMS. Secondly, you’re going to find that most of Vin65’s API interfaces are one-way. So if you’re pushing information into Salesforce, it’s prohibitively difficult to push information back into Vin65 without a lot of hacks, compromises and issues. I’ll add that Vin65 will charge you, or block you, for making excessive calls.
Also, as you probably know, Salesforce has a ton of API interfaces, but that doesn’t mean Vin65 can plug-and-play. You’re going to have to write an intermediary application to (securely) parse, interpret and format the data into Salesforce.
If you’re just trying to get data dumps and want to use other services to analyze or track your sales activity, cool. That can be done. Anything beyond that is going to be difficult.
I do know that @karson and the Vin65 team are deeply, deeply ashamed of these APIs (the type of guilt that only Canadians are capable of feeling). But in order to make redeveloping the APIs a priority, we need Vin65 customers to spend less time asking for new checkboxes for gift memberships and more time asking for more sophisticated tools. That’s the future.
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