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How Templafy Integrations Enable Connected Content

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Sam Polgar
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About this article

This article explains what Technologies organizations can use to connect their business content - the benefits of Connected Content are explained in greater depth in our blog post here. 

Overview

  1. Positive Business Outcomes by Connecting Content
  2. How Templafy supports all client architectures
  3. Difference between Content Connector and Library API
  4. Out-of-the-box (Templafy-built) Content Connectors
  5. Custom Content Connector
  6. Templafy Library Public API

Positive Business Outcomes by Connecting Content

Templafy's Content Connector and Library API enable organizations to integrate company Templates and Assets stored in different systems with Templafy so they can easily be utilized by end-users in their business document creation.

Without Templafy, inserting assets into a business document requires several steps. For example, to insert a picture into a presentation, the user must find the image, download it, insert it in the presentation, and finally resize it to fit the content. Integrating assets to Templafy will allow the user to get the company-approved images right where they work with the Library pane and reduce the overall process to one click: inserting the desired image that will automatically be resized.

When assets aren't integrated with Templafy, companies risk their users finding images or logos from Google rather than using the company-approved assets. Research shows that's the default behaviour for 69% of users, details in our Content is Everything report.

 

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How Templafy supports all client architectures

Templafy supports different client architectures with 3 mechanisms below, ensuring a range of clients with different IT requirements can Connect their Content:

  1. Out-of-the-box (Templafy-built) Content Connectors
  2. Custom Content Connector
  3. Templafy Library Public API

What's the difference between a Content Connector and the Library API?

  • The Content Connector displays company-approved content directly in the workspace applications for Office and Google. Content doesn’t leave the client's system; it’s always stored in the client system; Templafy simply displays the content. Images, PDFs, slides, slide elements, text elements, and email elements are made available to end-users by the Content Connector.

    Please see the Content Connector section and diagram below for further details.

 

  • The Library Public APIs enable IT departments to send their content to the Templafy Library; content is stored in Templafy. Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Images, PDFs, slides, slide elements, text elements, and email elements can be made available to end-users with the Library Public API.

    Please see the Library API section and diagram below for further details.

 

Out-of-the-box (Pre-built) Content Connectors

Out-of-the-box connectors are plug and play, the Templafy administrators set the integration up, and end-users can browse the content and insert it into documents immediately. There may also be setup steps on the end system.

Use-case example

An IT company manages text elements in SharePoint. SharePoint is managed by multiple people from multiple teams – none of which are admins in Templafy. The IT company can fully manage these text elements from within SharePoint without needing to:

  1. Train admins on a new platform
  2. Keeping all security controls within SharePoint
  3. Maintaining workflows and content expirations in SharePoint 

How it works

Templafy built and supports the integrations; client administrators insert credentials in Templafy to allow the integration to authenticate with the external system.

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Admin Experience

Add authentication details to allow the users to access the content stored in SharePoint from within Templafy.

End-User Experience

  1. Open Templafy task pane and click on the connector
  2. Search and view items from the external system
  3. Click and download them into a document/presentation/spreadsheet immediately

Benefits

  1. Built & supported by Templafy
  2. Easy setup
  3. Often feature-rich as Templafy built and maintains it

Knowledge Base Links

 

Custom Content Connector

The Custom Content Connector is similar to the out-of-the-box Connectors as it has a similar end-user experience. The differences are

  1. Templafy built a set of APIs allowing customers and partners to integrate with
  2. Partners have built their own integrations that work with the Custom Connector API

When organizations need the flexibility to pull assets from any system or the system is not listed in our supported list of out-of-the-box connectors, Templafy provides the Custom Content Connector API as a solution.

Use-case example

A large multinational corporation uses several asset management systems and would like to surface assets in the Templafy add-in for staff to insert into documents. Their engineering department uses the Content Connector API's to query assets from the different systems to display in Templafy

How it Works

  1. The Custom Content Connector is a set of APIs customers can use to pull assets from another system into the Templafy Task Pane to be used in business documents
  2. The client development team, or our partner, will need to build the integration with our APIs
  3. Many of our partners built their own integrations using the Custom Connector APIs that customers can leverage - these aren't supported by Templafy but offer a faster setup than a customer building it themselves

Admin Experience

Enter the URL and credentials of the Custom Content Connector – these will be provided by the partner or developers who create the connector

End-User Experience

  1. Open the Templafy task pane and click on the connector
  2. Search and view items from the external system
  3. Click and download them into a document/presentation/spreadsheet immediately

Benefits

  1. Support for any asset system
  2. Partners can build and support the integration between Templafy and their DAM with the custom content connector

Knowledge Base Links

 

Templafy Library Public API

The Public API is a set of APIs that enable the customer to send content (Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Images, PDFs, slides, slide elements, text elements, and email elements) from their system into Templafy.
This is different to the Content Connector API because Content Connectors display assets from the client system whilst the public API allows clients to send content from their systems into Templafy Library.

Use-case examples

  • Synchronizing Asset Management Systems with Templafy
    The client IT department can automatically synchronize images, templates & assets between an external DAM system and Templafy eliminating the necessity for the admin to manually upload the files
  • Automatic upload of slides daily 
    When companies need to upload slides daily to keep prices and like UpToDate, this can be automated using the API.
  • Automatic upload after approval
    If companies have internal approval processes for new content such as slides, our API can help upload these pieces of content automatically once the last approval has been given.

How it works

  • Templafy provides APIs for developers to build with
  • Developers will use the APIs to push assets such as documents/powerpoints/images into the Templafy Library
  • The Templafy Library is available to end-users

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Admin Experience

An API key will need to be retrieved to allow communication between the API and the external system. 

End User Experience

End users access the Templafy library to view assets that are sent to Templafy by the API’s from another system

Benefits

  • Clients with internal workflows can interact with Templafy
  • Clients can synchronize their internal systems with Templafy

Knowledge base links

 

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