7 Issues While Integrating Third-Party Add-Ons On Your ExpressionEngine Website
These days almost every organization has been using third-party integration platforms or add-ons, and the same is applicable and beneficial for the ExpressionEngine website. As you all know, this API software like ERP, payment gateways, etc, plays an important role in managing programming functions smartly and power the integration with another business’ app. For instance, your business might integrate Google’s API to power Google Ads Integration with the website.
Using API integration software will help you provide n number of advantages — reducing the workforce, saving time, efforts, & managing return policies. Integrating 3rd party add-ons to your ExpressionEngine Website helps businesses to manage numerous functions and operations rather than build one from scratch. It also allows web applications to communicate with other functions effectively.
Once you successfully integrate these add-ons with your EE websites as per your business’ and customers’ needs, it will assist in enhancing the number of customers. We understand that it might be daunting to perform these tasks on your own, so may hire an ExpressionEngine developer to help you with the same. Ultimately, you can focus on managing your website effectively. But it is necessary to check whether these add-ons work properly with your ExpressionEngine website or not because every integration doesn’t work efficiently on all websites.
So, if you are experiencing any issues while integrating third-party add-ons to your ExpressionEngine website, and you are unable to figure it out, here are some points to consider:
Third-Party Add-On Integration Problems
As we discussed above, not all third-party add-ons integrate successfully with your website, at the same time, many companies face challenges and can not find the reasons for it. So, collaboration with these EE add-ons like Smart Export Pro, Smart Member Pro, Smart SEO, etc. can affect your efficiency, productivity, and flexibility.
1. Time Constraints
Integrating 3rd Party add-ons with your website to get a solution within a few days or weeks, you need to work with your Express Engine service providers to ensure all necessary features, functionalities, customization mode are developed before deployment and integration. While using plug and play features ensure that you can use certain and fixed products immediately, you still need to complete the formalities of the test, train and customize before deployment.
2. Integration Cost
Another issue with third-party add-ons is high-level cost integration. And it is not just a one-time cost, if you are integrating third-party add-ons with your ExpressionEngine website, you need to take care of costs related to upgrading, customization, training, and further processes. So not considering hidden costs and future expenses may cause further challenges.
3. Lack Of Backup Or Archival Plan
Before integrating 3rd party add-ons, it becomes necessary to make consistent plans for backup, data recovery, archiving, etc. Taking all processes like monitor backups, disaster recovery determination, legal and regulatory compliances, etc., into account together becomes impossible. If you miss any of these, it can prove to be a huge challenge.
4. Access Issues
There are multiple access and reachability issues between the company and the third-party integration. But most of the time, you will find that suppliers use different kinds of technologies and platforms that are out of the users’ reach and knowledge. At the same time, problems arise when you find the same copy and paste code to the test and examine the product on different platforms or devices. It also relentlessly impacts the UI and breaks device momentum.
5. Less Attention To UI
In API integration, suppliers and vendors offer addition and customization services as per the company’s needs, which disturb and affect the prevailing algorithm and impact the product compatibility of the previous model, and also damages the user experience.
6. Lack Of Post-Implementation Training
Whether you are planning to manage the cost or sheer laziness of those included in decision making, post-implementation training for third-party add-ons integration plays its crucial role in it. When you implement new third-party add-ons, it is necessary to train your employees. If your employees are often badly trained, what really happens is, it becomes hard for your manpower to accept changes and they prefer manual and traditional entries even after integration.
7. Lack Of In-Depth Integration
It is very common for integration to be faulty or incompatible. Many times it happens, files may not sync properly, forms may not sync correctly, communication may take place between wrong units and customers, etc. Without scaling future uncertainties and unknown requirements, you may also miss the opportunity to gather important information. Deep level integrations are usually missing from many available third-party add-ons.
Closing Thoughts
The aforementioned points highlight major and common problems of every third-party add-on while integrating with ExpressionEngine’s website. In case you feel that it is challenging to solve such issues, then you can always hire an ExpressionEngine developer to help you with the same. So, it is necessary to verify that your website runs only on qualified applications and platforms. It is also essential to verify and examine the connections in the functionalities pre and post-integration execution. To overcome such challenges and problems, the testing team and quality analysts should examine and verify each and every upgrade and change before the product release.
Originally published at https://www.zealousweb.com.
