How your integrations are structured
The building blocks of a HighCohesion integration: streams, jobs, events, transformations, entities and issues, and how they fit together.
The short answer
Your integration is a set of streams, one for each type of data that moves between two of your systems. Each time a stream runs it creates a job; a job creates events, one per record; each event is transformed and sent to the destination and tracked as an entity; an event that cannot be processed becomes an issue. Knowing these six words is enough to find anything in the Control Panel and to talk to the HC team.
How it works
Streams
A stream is a configured data flow between two systems. Each stream has one source and one destination and runs in one direction. For example, "Orders: Shopify to Peoplevox" takes new orders from Shopify (the source) and sends them to Peoplevox (the destination). A separate stream handles the reverse direction: "Fulfilment: Peoplevox to Shopify". You can see all your streams in the Control Panel under Streams.
How a stream is triggered
Each stream's source runs in one of three ways: manually, started from the Control Panel for one-off loads such as a product import; on a schedule, for recurring pulls such as inventory or shipment updates; or by webhook, for real-time pushes from systems that support them, such as Shopify.
Jobs
When a stream runs, it creates a job: one run of that stream. A job creates between zero and many events, one for each relevant record found in the source system. If nothing new is found, no events are created.
Events
An event is a single unit of data passing through a stream: one order, one inventory update, one fulfilment confirmation, one return. When a new order is placed in Shopify, that creates one event in the relevant orders stream. HC picks it up, transforms it and sends it to the destination. Every step is tracked.
Transformations
Data rarely moves between systems unchanged. A transformation is the logic applied to an event in transit: mapping fields from the source format to the destination format, converting values, applying business rules, or splitting a single event into multiple records. Transformations are configured by HC based on your systems and requirements. You do not configure them yourself; if you need one changed, you raise a request with the HC team (see Requesting a mapping change).
Entities
Events create or update entities: the records HC keeps to track and deduplicate each order, customer or SKU.
Issues
If an event cannot be processed, because a required field is missing, the destination system returns an error, or the data does not match the expected format, the event becomes an issue (also called a failed event). Issues are captured and logged in the Control Panel and, depending on your alert settings, you receive a notification. Some can be fixed and resubmitted from the Control Panel; others need HC to investigate the underlying cause.
What this means for you
The hierarchy stream → job → event → entity is the map for finding anything in the Control Panel. Start at the stream, then the job, then the event.
You can fix and resend individual events yourself. Changes to a transformation, adding a stream or resending in bulk go through the HC team.
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