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.

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,
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, 
• Product Information Management (PIM) platforms, 
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, 
• POS systems,
• marketing automation software.

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.

For example, what will you get with Magento CRM integration?

• Enhanced data management,
• Simple automatic data synchronization,
• Real-time data sharing with cloud platforms,
• Convenient reporting,
• Improved customer service and user experience.

What can Magento ERP system integration bring to you and your business?

• Accurate financial data,
• Better visibility of all incoming orders and payments,
• More effective management of inbound and outbound orders,
• Better marketing planning,
• Reduction of operational expenses thanks to wise and precise planning.

What are the advantages of Magento POS integration?

• More efficient work of shop operators,
• Higher productivity,
• Simple price updating,
• Improved centralized inventory management,
• Better analytics.

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.

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.

The integration process includes five steps, and below, you can find a description of each of them.

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.

Composer.json file

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.

Registration.php file

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.

InstallData.php file

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.

Integration file

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.

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.