How to Create Magento Integration: Step-by-Step Instructions

If you have an eCommerce business, it is evident that the volumes of work for your team will be continuously growing with its development and expansion. As a result, it will be becoming more and more difficult to cope with many tasks performed manually or in some stand-alone apps. That’s when integrations of your website with external solutions will help you a lot. If you have a Magento eCommerce platform, you should definitely continue reading this article. We will explain why it can be feasible to integrate Magento with ERP or any other type of systems and provide some Magento integration tips.

But if you still do not have an eCommerce Magento platform and you are trying to make up your mind on whether it is an appropriate option for your business, you can follow this link and read more about this open-source platform.

What is Magento integration?

Magento is an eCommerce platform that is open to different types of customization and improvements. As a result, it is possible to adapt it to the needs of various businesses regardless of their size and specificity. The potential of websites built in Magento for third-party integrations is rather impressive. But what are we talking about when we mention Magento integrations?

Magento integration presupposes tying it with third-party solutions like order management, shipping management, or marketing automation solutions. It enables seamless communication and data exchange between your Magento online store and external systems.

Magento integrations: Benefits

Over the years of work, we, at Geomotiv, have gained rich expertise in Magento eCommerce development. And we see that with a flow of time, many businesses conclude that they need to power their websites with third-party solution integrations, even if initially they didn’t want to do it.

If we are talking about Magento 2, you can integrate it with the following external solutions:

• Accounting tools. It can be Quickbooks Magento integration or integration with Xero, InvoiceOcean, BitFactura, etc.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Among the popular examples are integrations with Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, ZenDesk, and Pipedrive.
• Product Information Management (PIM) platforms. Popular variants are Plytix PIM, Sales Layer PIM, 1WorldSync, and Akeneo PIM.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. You can choose Magento SAP integration, integration with Odoo, Oracle, or Dynamics 365.
• POS systems. Businesses often choose integrations with Lightspeed, Toast, or Epos Now.
• Magento SMS integration. You can opt for ClickSend, GoSMS, SendSMS, or any other service.
• Marketing automation software. Businesses often decide to integrate Magento with Marketo, Hubspot, or Active Campaign.
• Courier services. ECommerce shop owners commonly choose UPS, FedEx, DHL, and other services.
• Marketplaces. Here we can mention globally known Etsy, Amazon, and eBay.

So, why can integrations be needed?

First of all, they can help you widen your platform’s capacities as you add new functionalities to it. And such a step will significantly facilitate many tasks for you and your team.

Secondly, thanks to integrated services you can boost the productivity of your platform.

But of course, you can say that the above-mentioned arguments are just general phrases. So that’s why let’s have a look at a couple of particular examples.

Of course, it’s only a tiny part of all the benefits you will get with Magento eCommerce integration with any available third-party solutions. But regardless of what exact type of solution for integration we have under consideration, the final goal of all actions aimed at expanding your platform’s functionality is to enhance your customer experience.

The more efficient your eCommerce platform is, the better your clients’ quality of services. So, please, bear this idea in mind when you think about the necessity to integrate Magento with ERP or any other solution.

What are the reasons for the growing popularity of Magento integrations?

Today a lot of providers of software systems of different types offer the possibility to integrate Magento with their solution. And it is not just a trend. This solution has a clear explanation. By allowing integrations with Magento for their software products, they make them more interesting to all the businesses that have Magento eCommerce stores.

One of the key difficulties for eCommerce businesses is managing their orders, inventory, and data appropriately. And here is where Magento integration with CRM, POS, ERP, and other systems can enter the arena and change the game.

By integrating Magento API, businesses can connect to external services and systems and, as a result, build a single ecosystem that will help them to facilitate workflows and expand their business reach to new scales.

Some statistical data can demonstrate why software providers often think about Magento integration. At the current moment, there are more than 144K live websites that use Magento. More than 49K of them belong to Magento clients in the United States. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany were among other leaders on this list.

Magento integration process

Now let’s proceed to step-by-step instructions on how to integrate your Magento website with any third-party solutions.

What does integration allow us to do from the technical perspective? It lets external services call the Magento APIs. That’s why to conduct integrations you need to have at least a basic understanding of:

• Magento Web APIs (SOAP or REST),
• Web API authentication,
• OAuth-based authentication.

There are several options for you. You can do it either programmatically or manually. In the first case, the integration process includes five steps; below, you can find a description of each.

Step 1. Simple module development

For doing that, you need to build the file structure of the module. It should be placed under <magento_base_dir>/app/code/app/code/<vendor_name>/<module_name>.

Such subdirectories as etc, etc/integration and Setup should be created under <magento_base_dir>/app/code/<vendor_name>/<module_name>.

Now it’s time to define this module file structure. The directories should be changed to the etc directory and the module.xml file should be created. It’s also necessary to indicate the attributes. You should provide a unique name for your module and the version of Magento used by the component.

After that, it is required to add a composer.json file of the module. It will enable the Composer to install the libraries used by your module and update them. This file should be placed in the module-<module_name> directory.

When it is done, you can proceed to creating a registration.php file that will be responsible for registering your module within the Magento system. Place it in the root directory of the module.

At this stage, directories should be changed to your Setup directory, and an InstallData.php file should be created. With this file, the integration configuration data will be added to the integration table.

This line

$this->integrationManager->processIntegrationConfig(['testIntegration']); testIntegration must be linked to your etc/integration/config.xml file. Make sure that the integration name value is the same.

Step 2. Integration files creation

Magento provides the Integration module that automatically conducts several tasks and facilitates many processes. This module manages external accounts that could connect to Magento and maintains user data and OAuth authorizations among other functions.

When it is required, you can customize this module by creating numerous XML files. For doing that, you should ensure the definition of the required resources. The etc/integration/api.xml file is responsible for determining which API resources the integration will be able to access.

The values can be provided in the configuration file config.xml, but that is not obligatory. It should be done only if you want to make the integration pre-configured with default values. To use this possibility, it is necessary to edit the config.xml file in the etc/integration directory.

Step 3. Module installation

Now you need to update the database schema of Magento and data. It can be done via running the command bin/magento setup:upgrade.

The command bin/magento setup:di:compile will be necessary for new code generation.

The command bin/magento cache:clean can be used to clean the cache.

Step 4. Integration checking

At this step, you need to sign in to Magento and then go to the Integrations (System > Extensions > Integrations) grid, where your integration will be displayed. 

Step 5. Integration with your app

Before the integration activation, two pages should be created in your app. They are necessary for handling OAuth communications.The identity_link_url parameter should contain the location that will indicate a page that will deal with login requests.

And the endpoint_url parameter should have the location where OAuth token exchanges will be processed.

For more detailed instructions, you can visit the official Magento website.

How to conduct Magento integration manually

Step 1. First of all, you need to open Integrations. This menu will be available after you open the System section.

Step 2. The next task will be to add new integration by clicking on the relevant option. And you will open a new integration form.

Step 3. After that, it is necessary to add a name for your new integration.

Step 4. Then you need to provide access to the API resources.

Step 5. Now it is required to create public and secret keys for conducting the integration.

Step 6. For activating integration, it will be necessary to create an access token for the external app.

After doing that you will see the integration details, such as a consumer key, consumer secret, access token, and access token secret. The generated access token will be used by the external app. Quite often, this approach is used when it is necessary to integrate Magento 2 eCommerce stores with ERP systems.

Wrapping up

As you see, Magento APIs allow integrating external solutions rather quickly and seamlessly if you have some basic technical skills. But suppose you do not want to conduct integrations on your own. In that case, you can always rely on professionals and be confident that everything will be done quickly and without any errors.

At Geomotiv, we are always open to cooperation and will be happy to help you push your eCommerce business to an entirely new level with Magento API integration. Contact us via leaving your request on our website, and we will offer you the most efficient solution.