Integration Development
How to get better as a Frends Developer.
Welcome to the Frends Integration Development learning path! This collection of articles is designed to provide you with a solid foundation for any type of integration development on the Frends platform. Whether you are a developer, an architect, or in a role that requires a basic understanding of integrations like IT support or project management, this path will equip you with the necessary skills.
The path is structured to guide you from the basics of creating integrations to more advanced scenarios, ultimately preparing you for the Frends Integration Development certification.
Prerequisites
If you are purely focused on learning integration development with Frends, this is the place to be. All you will need is a bit of time and possibly some understanding what integrations and APIs are, as well as some knowledge on programming with a C-like language, such as C# that we use in Frends. Only the very basic programming skills are needed as Frends is a low-code platform.
In case your aim is towards the Frends Developer Certificate, you should already know the basics from Frends Fundamentals level, which is a prerequisite to taking the Developer Certificate. Unless you need a refresher on the basics, you can head straight over to the more advanced topics on complex integration scenarios.
Getting Started
Frends' low-code integration editor makes it easy for anyone to understand the logic behind the integrations, while being powerful enough to make it possible to create anything in the capable hands of integration developers.
Having version control and CI/CD capable deployment and environments built in to the platform makes it easy to develop and deploy new features to test and production. Once deployed, the provided logging features show instantly what happened and where.
Are you perhaps interested in creating APIs using Frends? We have full suite of API management features too, built in and always included, just like the other features. Pop in your OpenAPI specification and link a process to each endpoint, and you're ready to get the integration logic flowing through an API. Securely, of course.
Frends Basics
Regardless of your role, you might want to get familiar with Frends Glossary as well as Frends Highlights which will help you understand the platform and terminology used better.
For the very basics of the platform, we recommend also checking out the Welcome tour in your Frends Tenant. You can find it from the Home View of your Frends Platform, under Onboarding, if it didn't launch automatically. You can also check this interactive demo we have built just for you:
Integration Development Basics
In order to get started with integration development on Frends, we recommed reading these guides and articles first. These are the same we have available on Getting Started with Integration Development page at the beginning of our Docs.
Adding Logic to your Processes
Now that you know the very basics of how to create and run Processes and view Process Instances in Frends, we can include additional logic in the Processes.
You can learn more about what is possible to use in Frends Processes from the Shapes reference documentation.
You can also check out the tutorials for the topic by taking the Tutorial 2a: Adding logic into your Process path in your Frends Tenant, under Onboarding section in the Home View.
You should also take a look at Tutorial 3: Subprocesses and Tasks in the same Onboarding section for additional features available for Processes.
Finally, we have some curated guides available for you here in the Docs:
API Development
APIs are a core part of Frends capabilities, allowing you to easily create a specification for an API and connecting Processes to each of the endpoints of your APIs.
In order to secure and monitor your APIs, you should take a look at API Policies and the basic authentication methods available.
With the API set up, you will want to deploy and test them as well, like with the standalone Processes.
To complement these guides, you can take the Tutorial 5: API-First Development within your Frends Tenant to get a hands-on experience with APIs.
Advanced Topics
In order to get most out of Processes in Frends, you should get familiar with these topics. This starts the Advanced section of this learning path, giving additional information about integration development to those aiming to become professional developers with Frends.
Advanced Integrations
While a lot can be done with the basic shapes in Frends Processes, learning to use some more advanced ones and how to use C# efficiently as well will enable you to create most anything you might want to program in general.
By this point, you should get familiar with the full reference documentation for Frends shapes, that are included below the Shapes article.
You should also check out our articles about the programming features and details for Frends Processes:
And here are some guides to check out for more advanced integration scenarios that are not that rare to encounter.
AI is the next big thing in Frends, as it is coming to be part of our Processes already. Using the AI Connector enables a wide variety of actions that can be done automatically within Processes, which used to require human intervention and tasks.
AI Connector reference documentation
Examples - AI Connector usage example
You can also take the Tutorial 6: Including AI in my Processes from Onboarding section in your Frends Tenant to get more familiar with the shape.
Advanced APIs
While the basics of API development don't change from the basics, there are additional methods and details you should know going forward.
By this point you should also be familiar with API Triggers.
Frends Platform API
The Frends Platform API allows Frends to be managed via an API interface. This can be used to automate actions, such as editing Environment Variables or deploying Processes, or accessing Process Instances for monitoring them.
Platform management over API
Frends Platform API is a RESTful API that allows you to perform tasks and actions, and receive data from your Frends Tenant. The API thus allows automating management and monitoring tasks that otherwise would have to be done single piece at a time manually.
Accessing the API description and reference is done through your Frends Control Panel, using URL such as yourtenant.frendsapp.com/swagger. You can also find the latest Platform API reference from here.
Because it is an API and it's accessible within Frends as well, what better way to create your automation to your Frends Tenant than using Frends Processes to implement them. This way you can create Processes that will perform actions to other Frends Processes, as well as collect monitoring data and adjust values in your environment as needed.
The API is designed to be used in a RESTful manner specifying Frends elements to be accessed by their identifiers. Some responses provide links, which help with further requests for the elements contained in the response. Lists use paging or continuation tokens if the data is rapidly changing, e.g. Process Instances. In these cases you need to use the continuation token to have a consistent experience enumerating the list.
Using the Platform API
Platform API needs to first be enabled before it can the taken into use. After enabled by Operations and Frends Support, you can learn how to use it by following for example this guide.
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