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Integration

Gain full control of your system integration architecture with Nodinite's Integration Landscape. This page guides you to visually design, document, and manage integrations for robust governance, traceability, and operational excellence.

  • ✅ Visually design and document integrations before implementation
  • ✅ Map all dependencies and relationships for complete traceability
  • ✅ Manage your service portfolio and prioritize based on real data
  • ✅ Integrate seamlessly with Monitor Views and Log Views for end-to-end insight

Start now: See the Add or manage Integration user guide.

Understanding Integration as the Root Object

An Integration serves as the root object in the Nodinite Repository Model—the highest-level entity that ties all other Repository entities together. Think of an Integration as a documented integration scenario answering: "What business capability or technical workflow are we implementing?"

What Makes Integration the "Root Object"?

An Integration contains and references all other Repository entities:

  • Systems - Which systems participate? (SAP, BizTalk, Dynamics 365)
  • Services - How do they connect? (Service endpoints with direction and contracts)
  • Transport Contracts - What gets logged? (Message Types + Endpoints combinations)
  • Message Types - What formats are exchanged? (XML invoices, JSON orders, EDIFACT shipments)
  • Endpoints - Where physically? (HTTPS URLs, file paths, MSMQ queues, SFTP servers)
  • Custom Metadata - Business context (owner, SLA, priority, environment, approval status)

Without an Integration tying these entities together, you'd have isolated documentation: Systems without relationships, Services without context, Messages without business purpose. Integration is the glue that creates a cohesive integration CMDB.

Examples of Integration Scenarios

  • "Order-to-Cash: SAP to Dynamics 365 via BizTalk"
  • "Employee Onboarding: HR+ to Azure AD to Office 365"
  • "Invoice Processing: Supplier Portal to BizTalk to SAP ERP"
  • "Real-time Inventory Sync: MES ↔ WMS bidirectional"
  • "Customer Master Data: Salesforce to SAP via Azure Logic Apps"

Design-First Integration Approach

Design your Nodinite Integration instance before you create the solution to:

  • Share and communicate your proposed solution (design first, not document later)
  • Ensure visibility of all dependencies and relationships upfront
  • Manage service portfolio and plan or prioritize based on facts, not assumptions
  • Meet architectural requirements set by your enterprise or solution architects—both formal and informal
  • Validate implementation by comparing design vs actual logged events

The Design-First Workflow

  1. Create Integration - Document business scenario ("Order-to-Cash") before coding
  2. Define Systems - Identify participants (source, destination, intermediaries)
  3. Map Services - Connect Systems through Services showing direction
  4. Specify Transport Contracts - Define Message Types and Endpoints for each Service
  5. Add Custom Metadata - Capture owner, SLA, environments, approval status
  6. Share with Stakeholders - Use Integration Landscape to visualize and gain approval
  7. Implement - Developers build following documented design
  8. Auto-Validate - Logged events populate landscape confirming design matches reality

This design-first approach prevents "build first, document never" chaos that costs integration teams months of retrofitting documentation.

graph LR subgraph "Repository" roi(fa:fa-puzzle-piece Integration) roService(fa:fa-gear Service) roSystem(fa:fa-dice-d6 System) roTCS(fa:fa-dot-circle TransportContracts) roMessageType(fa:fa-file MessageTypes) roEndpoint(fa:fa-sign-in Endpoints) roi -.->|"0..*"| roService roService -->|"1..1"| roSystem roService -.->|"0..*"| roTCS roTCS -.->|"0..*"| roMessageType roTCS-.->|"0..*"| roEndpoint end

The graphical representation, called Integration Landscape, illustrates the relationships between the different Nodinite Repository Model artifacts.

Every Repository Model entity has a concept page and a Web Client user guide; see Repository Model Building Blocks for the full list.

Here are some quick facts about the Nodinite Integration repository item:

  • ✅ Each Integration has a unique name.
  • ✅ You can create any number of (unique) Integrations.
  • ✅ Organize your Integrations using unlimited Custom Metadata and Custom Fields.
  • ✅ You can associate Integrations with Monitor Views.
  • ✅ You can access Integration data from within Log Views.
  • ✅ A well-defined Integration lets you easily apply relevant filters on Log Views.
  • ✅ You can associate Systems containing Services and Contracts.

How Integrations Fit into the Integration CMDB

Integrations are level 1, the top layer, in Nodinite's purpose-built integration CMDB (Configuration Management Database). Unlike generic IT CMDBs tracking servers and applications, Nodinite focuses specifically on integration relationships; see The Integration CMDB Hierarchy for the full chain from Integration down to Endpoint.

This hierarchy ensures completeness. You can't have orphaned Services (they belong to Integrations), you can't have undefined Transport Contracts (they reference specific Message Types and Endpoints), and you can't have Messages without context (they're tied to Integrations via Transport Contracts).

Integration CMDB Enables Key Capabilities

  • ✅ Portfolio Management: See all integration scenarios across your enterprise catalog
  • ✅ Dependency Mapping: Understand which Integrations share Systems, Services, or Endpoints
  • ✅ Impact Analysis: When a System changes, see all affected Integrations instantly
  • ✅ Service Reuse: Identify Services used across multiple Integrations for consolidation opportunities
  • ✅ Living Documentation: Integrations auto-populate from logged events—documentation builds itself
  • ✅ Operational Context: Integrations appear in log filters, monitor views, and alerts providing business context

The Integration as root object concept ensures your CMDB always has complete, traceable, operationally-integrated documentation.

Tip

You gain instant rewards that grow as you invest in the Repository! The more Integrations you document, the richer your operational context becomes across logging, monitoring, and alerting.

Use the Action menu on a row in the Integrations Overview to jump to the related entities:

  1. Click Action on the Integration's row.
  2. Open Systems, Services, Contracts (while Contracts are enabled), Message Types, or Endpoints: each submenu lists the related items.
  3. Click an item to open it.

The same menu also has Show Landscape, View, Edit, Duplicate, Show in Mapify (Mapify license), Show in Mermaid, and Delete, Restore, or Permanently Delete.

The Action menu of an Integration row opening its related Systems, Services, Contracts, Message Types, and Endpoints, animated walkthrough (7.12)
Animated walkthrough: the row Action menu of INT1001: Contoso Orders to ERP steps through the related Systems, Services, Contracts, Message Types, and Endpoints.

The Interactive Integration Landscape: A Truly Unique Feature

The Integration Landscape is Nodinite's signature capability—a visual, interactive, explorable representation of your integration portfolio. No competing product offers this capability.

What Makes the Integration Landscape Revolutionary

Visual Integration Design

  • Drag Systems onto the canvas to design Integrations before building them
  • Connect Systems through Services showing direction and message flow
  • Add Transport Contracts defining which Message Types and Endpoints are valid
  • Share the visual diagram with architects, business stakeholders, and developers

Auto-Population from Logging

  • Integrations appear automatically when logged events include Context Options
  • Systems "light up" when messages flow through them
  • Services show traffic indicators and last-activity timestamps
  • Living documentation: Landscape reflects reality without manual updates

Interactive Exploration

  • Click an Integration to see participating Systems, Services, and Transport Contracts
  • Choose View from the menu in a System's footer to see all Integrations it participates in
  • Click a Service to jump to log events for that Service's Transport Contracts
  • Hover over connections to see which Services link Systems together

Operational Health Visibility

  • Integrations show health status when Services link to monitored Resources
  • Color indicators (green/yellow/red) display real-time operational state
  • Click through from landscape → Service → Resources → Monitor Views for deep-dive troubleshooting

The landscape makes Integrations tangible—not just database records, but visual, interactive architecture that anyone can understand.

Integrations in Operational Systems

Integrations aren't just design documentation—they're embedded throughout Nodinite's operational features:

In Logging

Filter log events by Integration to see messages for specific business scenarios:

  • "Show me all log events for the Order-to-Cash Integration"
  • "Which Integrations had errors in the last 24 hours?"
  • "Compare message volumes across Integrations this month vs last month"
  • Integration context appears in every log event (via Transport Contracts) providing business meaning

In Monitoring

Associate Integrations with Monitor Views for targeted operational visibility:

  • Create a Monitor View showing health of all Services in the "Order-to-Cash" Integration
  • Alert only when critical Integrations experience errors (prioritize by business impact)
  • Dashboard widgets show Integration-level metrics (throughput, error rate, latency)

In Business Process Monitoring (BPM)

Integrations bridge technical implementations to business processes in a BPM:

  • A BPM diagram for "Order-to-Cash" references the Integration providing visibility into technical execution
  • Business users see: "Order processing step implemented via Integration INT001"
  • Clicking the BPM step navigates to the Integration Landscape showing Systems, Services, and current health
  • Technical teams drill from BPM → Integration → Services → Log Events for end-to-end troubleshooting

In Alerting

Email and webhook Alarm Plugins automatically include Integration context:

  • "Integration Order-to-Cash failed: Message from SAP to BizTalk rejected"
  • Custom Metadata attached to Integrations (owner, SLA, escalation contacts) appears in alert body
  • Recipients immediately understand business impact without checking documentation
  • A receiving system, such as a ticketing tool behind a webhook, can assign or route the incident on these values; who receives the alert from Nodinite is set on the Monitor View's Alarm Plugins

This operational integration means Integrations serve quadruple duty: design documentation, operational filter, business context provider, and alert metadata source.

Manage Integrations

Explore how to work with Integrations using the Nodinite Web Client user guide in the Core Services section. Use the following user guides to work with Integrations:

What Every Integration Carries

New 7.12 An Integration shares one set of features with the other Repository entities: Systems, Services, Contracts, Message Types, Endpoints, and Domains.

Feature What it gives you
Custom Metadata Business context such as owner, SLA, and lifecycle stage; Filter by Custom Metadata narrows the list (Portfolio Filtering)
Tags The same labels you use on Log Views, Monitor Views, and Articles; edit them in the Tags field on the edit page, filter the list with Filter on Tag, and tag many Integrations at once with With Selected > Manage Tags
Articles The Articles card on the edit page links the Articles that document the Integration; the button on each list row counts them and opens them in a reader (The Articles Card on Repository Entities)
C4 Properties How the Integration is drawn in C4 Diagrams: C4 Component Kind, C4 Technology, and a Component Type; needs the Mapify license. See Repository Properties for C4 Diagramming
Show in Mapify and Show in Mermaid Draw the Integration and its relations from its Action menu; Show in Mapify needs the Mapify license (Mapify Rendering, Mermaid Rendering)
Delete, Restore, Permanently Delete Delete is a soft delete that you can undo (Show deleted records); act on many Integrations at once with With Selected (Delete (n), Restore (n), Permanently Delete (n); it needs the Modify right); only the built-in Administrator Role permanently deletes, because Integrations are system entities (Two delete models)

For an Administrator with the Mapify license, With Selected also offers Regenerate from BizTalk (n), where n counts the selected live Integrations that have at least one linked Article, and the row Action menu offers Edit BizTalk routes and Refresh from BizTalk; see BizTalk Articles. Step by step: Manage Integrations.

Custom Metadata

You can add any number of Custom Metadata fields to an Integration, just as you can with all entities in the Nodinite Repository Model.

Custom Fields

You can add any number of Custom Fields to an Integration, just as you can with all entities in the Nodinite Repository Model.

Who Uses Integrations?

Different roles interact with Integrations for different purposes:

Enterprise Architects

Design the integration portfolio at the highest level. Define which business capabilities require integrations and establish governance policies.

Solution Architects

Document integration scenarios before implementation. Use the Integration Landscape to share proposed solutions with stakeholders and gain approval.

Integration Developers

Implement Integrations following documented designs. Ensure logging includes Context Options that populate Integrations automatically for validation.

Operations Teams

Filter log events and monitor views by Integration for business-context troubleshooting. "Show me all errors in the Order-to-Cash Integration."

Business Analysts

Understand technical implementations supporting business processes. Use Integration Landscape to see which Systems participate in workflows like Order-to-Cash or Procure-to-Pay.

Support Teams

Receive alerts with Integration context identifying business impact. Route issues to the correct teams based on Integration ownership metadata.

Compliance Officers

Verify which Integrations handle regulated data. Use Custom Metadata to track GDPR, HIPAA, or industry-specific compliance requirements per Integration.

View Integration

Click an Integration's name in the Integrations Overview, or use Action > View, to open its view page. The caret button on a row, Full Details, expands the row in place instead. View Integration in the Integration Landscape opens the same page.

The view page shows the description, the Web Site, New 7.12 the Tags (when set), a link to the Integration Landscape, the C4 Properties, the Log Views, Monitor Views, and Articles that use the Integration, and the foldable Systems, Services, and Contracts below. Custom Metadata shows as its own card when the Integration has values.

Integration view page with its description, C4 Properties, Log Views, Monitor Views, and Articles (7.12)
The view page of INT1001: Contoso Orders to ERP, with Edit, Mapify, Mermaid, and Print at the top. Systems, Services, and Contracts are folded below.

Integration view page of INT001 Orders with the hashtag icon and the Tags Contoso Critical and Contoso Finance under its description and web site (7.12)
New 7.12 An Integration with Tags shows them under the description and web site, as read-only badges.

Next Steps

Integrations Overview (manage your integration catalog)
Add or manage Integration (create new integrations)
Integration Landscape (visualize and explore interactively)
Learn about Systems (Integration participants)
Learn about Services (how Integrations connect Systems)
Manage Integrations (tag, delete, restore, and permanently delete Integrations)

Repository Model (complete integration CMDB overview)
Systems (participants in Integrations)
Services (connection points between Systems)
Endpoints (physical transport channels)
Message Types (message format identification)
Transport Contracts (log point definitions in Services)
Custom Metadata (add business context to Integrations)
Custom Fields (legacy metadata approach)
Articles (attach documentation to Integrations)
Resources (operational health monitoring)
Manage Integrations (add, edit, delete, and restore Integrations)
Log Views (filter log events by Integration)
Monitor Views (associate operational monitoring with Integrations)
Alarm Plugins (alerts include Integration context)
BPM (business processes built on your Integrations)
Repository Properties for C4 Diagramming (Integration properties that shape C4 diagram elements)