Getting Started with Celigo
Introduction
In this post, Getting Started with Celigo, we examine Celigo’s architecture, core components, and main advantages. Celigo is an integration platform designed with both IT and business users in mind. It gives organisations the ability to automate critical business processes offering smooth integration of a wide range of business applications and data sources due to its extensive library of prebuilt connectors, templates, and integration apps. Businesses may accelerate their road towards digital transformation with Celigo, achieve seamless data exchange between applications, optimise their workflows, and increase productivity.
Architecture
The architecture of Celigo is created to offer a scalable and adaptable platform for integrating different business applications and data sources. Celigo is a fully SaaS platform that runs totally in the cloud and doesn’t require any local installations. However, they offer an on-premise agent which can be installed to allow access to systems behind the organization’s firewall, a similar architecture and approach to that of Workato. By ensuring seamless data exchange, scalability of the cloud, process automation, and rapid deployments, Celigo offers a reliable and user-friendly option for companies looking to improve their connectivity and streamline their operations.
Main Components
There are several components which predominantly constitute the Celigo platform. I’ll discuss them in this section.
Flows
Flows are your integration processes, they are called flows as per Celigo’s terminology. Flow builder under the Tools menu item is used to create your flows. Flows ultimately export data from sources to and import it into destinations. They use a component called an “export” to export the data from the source, and a component called “import” to import the data into the destination endpoint. A flow can contain multiple exporting steps and multiple importing steps. Between those two operations, the flow can transform, filter, lookup more information, and add coding steps, called hooks, to manipulate and transform the data. The flow could be triggered manually, using a schedule, or in real-time via a specific-type of exports called a webhook export.
Flows will be grouped under what is so called an “integration”, which is nothing but a collection of flows. Any flows created under the flow builder will be grouped under a single integration called Standalone flows. However, you can create a flow from within a specific integration and then the flow will be added to that particular integration. You can always move the particular flows across different integrations at any point of time.
Resources
The resources section contains different components that either you have created in your flows, or you would need to run your flows. Some of the items you would find here are:
- Connections: the set of connections used in your flows. In Celigo there are north of 250 connections available for you to use. When you create an export or an import, you will define a connection as part of the process. Those connections can then be ere-used whenever you want to connect to the same system. For example, if you created an export to “export” data from NetSuite, you will need to define a NetSuite connection, which can then be reused whenever you want to connect to NetSuite, either as part of some other export, or an import as well
- Exports: list of all exports you have configured to pull data from sources
- Imports: list of all imports you have configured to push data to destinations
- Scripts: Any scripts you have created in your flows, or to run flows, exports, and imports
- Agents: Here you can configure on-premise agents that allows you to access applications behind the company’s firewall
- API Tokens: Here you can generate API tokens that gives access to Celigo API layer or to any API you have defined.
- My APIs: Define API’s that can be used to invoke flows, exports, or imports. These APIs would leverage the scripts created in the scripts section to run the flows, exports, or imports
Marketplace
This is an area that contains pre-existing templates and integration apps created by Celigo and the community. An integration App is a suite of flows that is pre-built, managed and maintained by the developer of the App. It will hold its own subscription outside your subscription to the Celigo platform. You can think of them as prepackaged blackbox solutions to perform end-to-end integration between two systems. A template is similar to an app, but they are free to install, can be edited or modified by you, and falls into your Celigo account subscription. These are similar to pre-built templates used in most other iPaaS platforms. They provide a starting point where you can build on top and extend.
The apps and templates are one of the main reasons that makes Celigo an appealing platform especially in the e-commerce business integration. The apps and templates provided to integrate with NetSuite are second to none. So an organization can quickly install those apps, configure them, and get going in their Shopify / NetSuite integration for instance.
Administration
This is where you do your account management such as creating users, setting account permissions, view subscription status and plan details, audit logs, transfers flows to other accounts, data retention settings, as well as security settings such as settings up SSO & MFA.
Highlights
- Prebuilt fully-fledged integrations and templates between major e-commerce related applications such as Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Big Commerce, and Magento
- Product Portal, allows you to submit ideas and requests for the product team to implement. This is similar to Boomi Ideas
- Very much tailored for the e-commerce business integration scenarios, especially when NetSuite is involved. If all you want is to handle such scenarios, Celigo is a very suitable option.
- Price: again, if all you require is to integrate few systems for your main business process and you are not after an integration platform that can handle anything thrown to its face, Celigo is a very appealing platform can help you do that for a fraction of the cost and effort of what other iPaaS platforms can do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Celigo stands out as a strong and versatile integration platform that enables organisations to achieve seamless connectivity and process automation by bridging the gap between IT and business users. Celigo’s wide pre-built library of apps and templates, especially around the e-commerce business integrations, cloud-based SaaS architecture, and user-friendly visual interface simplify the complexities of data integration so that customers can concentrate on streamlining business procedures and driving digital transformation.
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