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Social Media - Linked In
Social Media - Linked In
Is there a way to integrate Linked In into Digital Clay....like having contact records be updated when their linked in profiles change?
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ZevToledano
- Posts: 722
- Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:29 pm
Re: Social Media - Linked In
There are many ways. Any web site or web service can be integrated. It's usually a matter of finding out what API or URL parameters the web site exposes.
For example, the simplest integration is showing a linkedin profile in a Digital-Clay tab in a form. You can add a "LinkedInID" field per Contact, then add a 'URL tab' that inserts the ID into the linkedin url in order to show that person's profile.
To retrieve data from a web site, you use External Functions: http://www.digital-clay.com/support/wik ... _functions The ideal method is to find a fixed API that the web site exposes, that returns data in a fixed structured format like XML. This includes SOAP API. You then build an External Function in Digital-Clay and use this function in automations. For example, if linkedin has a SOAP API to retrieve contact details in XML format from his public profile (an External Function can retrieve multiple fields with one call), then you can run an automation whenever a user clicks on a button in the form to update the profile, or update profiles on a schedule using a "Scheduled Event on Items". If the site requires login, then you program two External Functions, the first one to login and store the login token in a field, and the second to retrieve data using the token. Alternatively, you can program an External Function to use URL parameters and extract data from an HTML page using tokens, but the danger here is that this may break whenever they change their web site.
Alternatively, in some cases, if you can program code on the other end (e.g. program an add-in in linkedin) then you can PUSH data from linkedin to Clay whenever data changes using Data Injection: http://www.digital-clay.com/support/wik ... _injection. But this is obviously more advanced.
The Wiki articles should help you get started. Or you can contact your Clay representative about us doing the work for you. Of course the first step is to research linkedin API.
For example, the simplest integration is showing a linkedin profile in a Digital-Clay tab in a form. You can add a "LinkedInID" field per Contact, then add a 'URL tab' that inserts the ID into the linkedin url in order to show that person's profile.
To retrieve data from a web site, you use External Functions: http://www.digital-clay.com/support/wik ... _functions The ideal method is to find a fixed API that the web site exposes, that returns data in a fixed structured format like XML. This includes SOAP API. You then build an External Function in Digital-Clay and use this function in automations. For example, if linkedin has a SOAP API to retrieve contact details in XML format from his public profile (an External Function can retrieve multiple fields with one call), then you can run an automation whenever a user clicks on a button in the form to update the profile, or update profiles on a schedule using a "Scheduled Event on Items". If the site requires login, then you program two External Functions, the first one to login and store the login token in a field, and the second to retrieve data using the token. Alternatively, you can program an External Function to use URL parameters and extract data from an HTML page using tokens, but the danger here is that this may break whenever they change their web site.
Alternatively, in some cases, if you can program code on the other end (e.g. program an add-in in linkedin) then you can PUSH data from linkedin to Clay whenever data changes using Data Injection: http://www.digital-clay.com/support/wik ... _injection. But this is obviously more advanced.
The Wiki articles should help you get started. Or you can contact your Clay representative about us doing the work for you. Of course the first step is to research linkedin API.