Platform Integrations & API

Overview

Integrations allows institutions to connect their Mainstay data to a third-party platform, such as a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) or Student Information System (SIS). This enables a 2-way sync of contact record data, including default fields (name, phone, email, etc.) and custom fields created by the partner.

Once an integration instance is configured, this acts as a "set it and forget it" feature. That is, whenever you save a change to a contact in Mainstay or the connected platform, that data can be automatically synced across to the other platform.
 

SFTP

Many external systems support SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol), a simple solution for transferring files from one server to another. If your system supports SFTP, we recommend this as the most straightforward and maintainable approach.

• SFTP Inbound (Contacts)
• SFTP Outbound (Contacts)
• SFTP Outbound (Conversations)

Mainstay API

Mainstay also offers a public REST API. Documentation is available at https://docs.api.mainstay.com.

1. To use the Mainstay API directly, first, navigate to the "Mainstay API" Settings page.
2. Click + Generate a new token.
3. Enter a name or note and click Create token. On the next screen, copy the API token. You will not be able view it again, but you can always revoke it and create a new one.
4. Refer to https://docs.api.mainstay.com/ to build your API integration.
   • Some services like AirTable and Google Sheets allow you to create your own scripts and run them on a schedule. As a simple example, this block of code will fetch all of your contacts and log them in the console: 

   • let response = await fetch('https://api.mainstay.com/contacts/', {
       method: 'GET',
       headers: {
         'Content-Type': 'application/json',
         'Authorization': 'APIToken YOUR_TOKEN_HERE'
       },
     });
     
     console.log(await response.json());

   • example in AirTable:
   • 
   • The syntax of your script highly depends on the service running it. But a general pattern for syncing contacts might be:

   • let data = await response.json();
     for (let i in data.results) {
       let contact = data.results[i];
       
       // filter out contacts you don't want, for example, those with no phone number
       if (!contact.phone) {
         continue;
       }
     
       // identify contacts already in your table, for example, by matching to CRM ID
       if (YOUR_TABLE.find(record => record.id == contact.crm_id)) {
         // update the existing record here
       }
       
       // other contacts must be new
       else {
         // create a new record here
       }
     }

Tips

• Contact records that are designated Test Users will be ignored by platform integrations. See Test Users.
• If a contact record is Archived, reimporting that contact via CSV upload or platform integration will un-archive the contact.
• If a contact record does not have a value for a particular field, that field will not be sent for that contact record in outgoing requests. Similarly, when importing information, if the value for a field is blank or null, it will be skipped.
• However, like the Mainstay API and CSV upload, these platform integrations do support clearing the value of all custom fields and the following default fields. Set the field to UNSET (all capitals) and the value will be cleared out.
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Preferred Name
  • Phone
  • Email
  • Enrollment ID
  • CRM ID