Standards for third-party integrations

Some third party applications use activities or create a UD table, and others may do something else. The follow information details best practices when developing third-party integrations for iMIS EMS:

• ASI is transitioning away from the use of Activities. The best practice is to use “purpose” built tables instead of creating a new Activity type.
• Activities are rarely "quite right" for third-party use. We want to discontinue the use of overloading properties for other uses.  The one exception would be compatibility with already existing activity types.
• Do not extend or overload the use of interactions. Interactions should stay at their core purpose of: sent a mailing, sent a billing, made a phone call; without adding secondary or overloaded (multiple use of same) fields.

In summary, most apps should use a user-defined table or use standard existing tables (or activity) when already exists.