How your integrations are structured

Understanding how HighCohesion is structured helps you know what to expect when something goes wrong and gives you the vocabulary to talk to the HC team.

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: a stream called "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".

Your full integration is made up of multiple streams — one for each type of data that needs to move between systems. You can see all your streams in the Control Panel under Streams.

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. HighCohesion 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 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 HighCohesion based on your systems and requirements. You do not configure them yourself, but if you need one changed, you raise a request with the HC team.

How streams are triggered

Each stream's source runs in one of three ways: manually (started from the Control Panel — used for one-off loads such as a product import), on a schedule (recurring pulls such as inventory or shipment updates), or by webhook (real-time pushes from systems that support them, such as Shopify).

Jobs, events and entities

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 in turn create or update entities — the records HC keeps to track and deduplicate each order, customer, or SKU. This hierarchy — stream → job → event → entity — is the map for finding anything in the Control Panel.

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. Depending on your alert settings, you will also receive a notification. Some exceptions can be fixed and resubmitted from the Control Panel; others require HC to investigate the underlying cause.