22 articles about Integration, in reading order.
Parsware Platform
Every business application ends up talking to something else: an accounting package calls in, a payment provider gets called out to, files go somewhere other people can fetch them. This is the map of how Parsware does each of those, and of the series that walks through them one at a time.
Parsware Platform
A Custom API gives another system one address to call that keeps its shape while your tables change. We built one from nothing: the contract, the script behind it, the OpenAPI description it generates, a call from outside, and a second version answering beside the first.
Parsware Platform
A Custom API doesn't have to answer JSON. Declare HTML and its script writes a page: here, a receipt for one booking that another system can drop into a confirmation email or open in a browser. And because the page is built from what a guest typed, every value goes through htmlEncode on its way in.
Parsware Platform
Before another system can call Parsware it needs an identity of its own: an app registration, with a client id, a secret, the scopes it may use and the role it holds. We registered a front-desk dashboard that reads visitors and nothing else, and looked at what each of those choices decides.
Parsware Platform
A registered application doesn't send its secret with every call. It trades it, once an hour, for an access token, and sends that. Here is the one request that gets one, what is inside it, how to use it, and what each refusal means.
Parsware Platform
At the end of the month, finance wants the expense claims as a CSV file it can fetch. A Custom API builds the file from the claims table and puts it in object storage, where it stays until somebody collects it. We called it from finance's own system and found the file in the Storage screen.
Parsware Platform
A reporting tool outside Parsware wants your data: which tables it may read, what their columns are, pages of rows, and totals. The reporting endpoints answer exactly that, read-only, and only what the application's role may read. We pointed the front-desk dashboard at them, and ran a saved query by name.
Parsware Platform
Every table, view, form, query, report and process you build in Parsware is a plain JSON document underneath, and every kind has a published schema. So a document can be written in an editor, by a script or by an AI assistant, checked before it's sent, and the platform checks it again the same way the designer's own are. We wrote a saved query by hand.
Parsware Platform
When a screen needs something tables, forms and views can't say, you write it in React. A custom app is built on your own machine with two downloads from the help site, packed into one file, uploaded once, and opened from the Shell like any other app. We built a visitor board for reception.
Parsware Platform
Everything a custom app does in Parsware goes through one object: who's using it, where it was opened, the data their role can read, saved queries, Custom APIs, object storage and the log. We grew the visitor board with company totals from a saved query, readable visit purposes, and a button that keeps today's list as a file.
Parsware Platform
A field sometimes needs an editor the platform doesn't ship. A custom control is one React component that stands in for it: it shows the field's value, reports every edit, and leaves saving to the form. We built a badge-number field for the front desk outside the repository, packed it into one file and installed it.
Parsware Platform
A web resource is a file stored in a solution and served by the platform: a stylesheet, a script, an image, a page. We built the printable visitor badge as four of them, a page with its stylesheet, script and logo, and opened it at its address.
Parsware Platform
A custom app or control is part of its solution, code and all. We exported Visitors from Development with its visitor board, its badge field and its web resources, imported it into Test, and watched an altered copy of the same file get refused.
Parsware Platform
Packing and uploading a control for every change is slow. In a development environment, register its running dev server instead: save a change, refresh the form, and it's there. We fixed the badge field's dash this way, then packed 1.1.0 when it was right.
Parsware Platform
A list that hides rows is only safe if every other way in hides them too. We signed in as Robin, who may read claims only in his own units, and tried the search box, a claim's address and the record API directly. Each gave the same answer as the list.
Parsware Platform
Apps and integrations keep their files in object storage: exports, uploads, documents too big for a record. Storage in the Admin Control Center shows every bucket, what is in it and how much room it takes, and clears out files nothing points at. We looked inside Northwind's finance bucket, uploaded an invoice into one of its folders, and previewed a sweep.
Parsware Platform
A portal is a Studio app published at an address of its own, for people outside your organisation: customers, partners, the public. It reads only through Custom APIs, its visitors are portal users rather than platform users, and a rule on the table decides whose rows each one sees. We published the service desk sample, signed up as a customer, started a company, raised a case, and saw it from the inside.
Parsware Platform
A public form that creates a record, from somebody with no account, protected from scripts by a moment's proof of work rather than a puzzle. We published the contact form sample, sent a message with a document from a private window, found it in the Messages app, and turned the one tick off to see the other side.
Parsware Platform
On a portal, every visitor reaches the same table through the same Custom APIs, and each must see only their own company's rows. One rule on the table does it, for reads and writes alike, without a filter in any script. We put two companies' cases side by side, asked for the other company's case by its id, looked at the rule, and switched it off to see what it was holding back.
Parsware Platform
A visitor on a portal can raise a case. Can they correct it later, and send the document your team asks for? On the service desk they can now: change the subject and the urgency, add a note and attach a file, all in one save through one Custom API. The contract decides which fields a visitor may touch, and the file follows the same rule as the record.
Parsware Platform
A list of records on a portal page, without drawing the list: the platform's own grid, with the columns a view decides and the rows a Custom API returns. We put one on the service desk, picked its table, view and API in the designer, then added a column and watched it arrive empty until the API was told to return it.
Parsware Platform
One case, followed from both sides: a customer raises it on the portal, the support team answers it inside the platform, the customer replies with a photo, and the status says whose turn it is at every step. The customer and the team never share a screen, and each one sees only what is theirs to see.
