Begin with the business event
Describe what causes the exchange: a new customer, an approved order, a shipment confirmation or a master-data change. This creates a shared definition of timing and responsibility.
Design for repeats and failures
Messages can be delayed, retried or received more than once. An interface needs an idempotency approach, traceable identifiers and a defined path for resolving rejected records.
Make support observable
Operations teams need enough information to know what was sent, received, rejected and resolved. Logging should support the business identifier, not only a technical error code.
Practical example
Example: shipment confirmation
A confirmation flow should establish the shipment identifier, expected timing, retry behavior and who resolves a mismatch when the receiving system rejects a record.
Best practices
Put the fundamentals in place.
- Use stable business identifiers across both sides of the interface.
- Agree data ownership before mapping fields.
- Create an exception queue and a documented resolution process.
Frequently asked questions
What is idempotency in an integration?
It is the ability to safely handle a repeated message without creating an unintended duplicate business result.
Who should own an integration exception?
Ownership depends on the failure, but it should be defined in advance across business, application and technical teams.
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