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Integrations

The Integration Challenge

Your business runs on multiple platforms. Sales uses Salesforce. Finance uses QuickBooks. Legal uses Clio. Operations uses Slack. HR uses a separate ATS. Getting them to talk to each other requires either:

  1. Point-to-point connectors: Custom integration code for every tool pair (expensive, fragile).
  2. Middleware platforms: Zapier, Make, RapidConnect (adds cost, complexity, another vendor lock-in).
  3. Manual data transfer: Copy and paste between systems (slow, error-prone).

flow8 solves this by providing native integrations with 15+ critical business tools, plus the ability to call any API via a generic REST API module. One platform, all your tools, no glue code.

The Integration Catalog

Clio

The leading practice management system for law firms. flow8 integrates deeply with Clio’s API, enabling:

Operations:

  • Create matters — automatically generate new matters from client intake, specifying practice area, client info, and matter details.
  • Manage contacts — create, update, and search contacts in Clio.
  • Create and manage tasks — assign tasks to attorneys or staff, link them to matters.
  • File uploads — automatically upload documents (PDFs, images, emails) to matters.
  • Time entry — post billable time to matters (though legal teams often prefer manual time entry for accuracy).
  • Search and retrieve — query matters, contacts, and tasks by name, date, practice area, etc.

Use case: Client intake flow. Email arrives → flow8 extracts data → creates matter in Clio → uploads docs → notifies attorney. Clio becomes the single source of truth; flow8 handles the data routing.

Accounting & Finance

QuickBooks Online

The most widely used small-to-mid market accounting system. flow8 operations:

  • Create and read invoices — generate invoices, fetch invoice details and history.
  • Manage accounts payable — create bills, record payments.
  • Search customers and vendors — query the customer and vendor database.
  • Retrieve financial data — pull account balances, transaction history.
  • Categorize transactions — auto-categorize incoming transactions based on vendor or description.

Use case: Invoice reconciliation. Daily flow pulls invoices from multiple sources, matches them in QuickBooks, flags discrepancies, and emails a report.

Bexio

Swiss-based accounting for SMBs. Similar to QuickBooks but optimized for European tax and legal requirements. Operations:

  • Invoice management — create, update, and retrieve invoices.
  • Contact management — create and search contacts and companies.
  • Retrieve rates and pricing — access billing rates for time-tracking integration.
  • Expense tracking — record and categorize expenses.

Use case: Multi-region accounting. A group with Swiss and US operations syncs invoices across Bexio (Swiss system) and QuickBooks (US system) daily, ensuring consolidated reporting.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft Graph API (Email, Calendar, OneDrive)

flow8 integrates with Microsoft 365 via the Graph API, the modern Microsoft API for Office 365 services:

  • Email operations:

    • Read emails from a mailbox.
    • Send emails.
    • Create draft emails.
    • Move emails to folders.
    • Search emails.
    • Attach files to emails.

  • Calendar operations:

    • Create calendar events.
    • Fetch events for a specific date range.
    • Update event details.
    • Send meeting invitations.

  • OneDrive/SharePoint:

    • Upload files.
    • Download files.
    • Create folders.
    • List files in folders.
    • Move or copy files.
    • Share files with specific users or groups.

OAuth2 integration: flow8 uses OAuth2 with Microsoft 365, so you never expose your password. Permissions are scoped (e.g., “read email only, not write”).

Use case: Multi-step approval workflow. Document arrives → stored in OneDrive → calendar event created for review → email sent to approver → response captured → document moved to final folder. All via Graph API, all in one flow.

Google Workspace

Google Drive, Sheets, Cloud Storage, Translate

  • Google Drive:

    • Upload files.
    • Download files.
    • Create folders.
    • List and search files.
    • Share files with users or groups.
    • Move files between folders.

  • Google Sheets:

    • Read rows from a spreadsheet.
    • Append rows (log data to a sheet).
    • Update specific cells.
    • Query by range or filter.
    • Create new sheets.

  • Google Cloud Storage (GCS):

    • Upload files (large files, backups).
    • Download files.
    • List objects in buckets.

  • Google Translate:

    • Translate text between languages.
    • Detect language.

Use case: Customer feedback collection. Feedback arrives in English → flow8 translates to Spanish and French → stores all 3 versions in Google Sheets → links to customer record. All in one flow.

Cloud Storage

AWS S3 (and S3-Compatible)

Simple Storage Service for storing files, logs, and backups.

  • Upload files to S3 buckets.
  • Download files from S3.
  • List objects in buckets.
  • Delete objects (with caution).
  • Generate signed URLs for temporary access (e.g., share a file with a customer without exposing AWS credentials).

S3-Compatible: flow8 also supports S3-compatible services (Minio, Digital Ocean Spaces, Wasabi, etc.), so you can use the same S3 module with alternative providers.

Use case: Document archival. Processed documents are stored in S3 with metadata (date, type, customer) for long-term compliance. flow8 also deletes local temp files after upload.

Communication

Email (SMTP/IMAP/POP3)

Generic email integration using standard protocols. Operations:

  • Send emails via SMTP.
  • Read emails from a mailbox via IMAP or POP3.
  • Monitor mailboxes (watch for new emails).
  • Parse email content — extract sender, subject, body, attachments.
  • Attach files to outgoing emails.

Use case: Support email triage. Watch an inbox, parse incoming emails, extract data, classify urgency, route to teams, auto-respond with receipt. All via standard email protocols.

Slack

Team communication platform.

  • Send messages to channels or direct messages.
  • Post formatted messages with attachments, buttons, and rich formatting.
  • Read messages from channels (with appropriate permissions).
  • Manage threads — reply to specific messages.
  • Send notifications for flow alerts (execution complete, failure, approval needed).

Use case: Ops alerts. When a flow completes or fails, post a summary in Slack. When a flow reaches an approval gate, post the approval request with a button to approve/reject.

135+ Built-In Modules

Beyond integrations with specific tools, flow8 includes 135+ modules for common operations:

Core & Utility

  • Extract PDF text — OCR scanned PDFs.
  • Generate PDF — create PDFs from HTML or templates.
  • Merge/split PDFs — combine multiple PDFs or split into pages.
  • Image processing — crop, resize, convert images (ImageMagick).
  • Format conversion — convert Word/Excel to PDF (LibreOffice).
  • HTML to PDF — generate reports as PDFs.

Database & Data

  • Query database — read from MySQL, PostgreSQL.
  • Insert/update records — write to databases.
  • Search — full-text or field search.
  • Aggregate data — sum, count, group results.

Key-Value Store

  • Store key-value pairs — persist data across flow runs.
  • Retrieve values — look up stored data.
  • Increment counters — track metrics.

Utilities

  • Parse JSON — deserialize JSON objects.
  • Format JSON — structure data as JSON.
  • Parse CSV — read CSV files into structured data.
  • Generate CSV — export data as CSV.
  • Wait/Delay — pause execution for a set duration.
  • Conditional logic — IF/THEN/ELSE branches (Router).
  • Loops — iterate over lists (Iterator).
  • Aggregation — combine results from parallel branches.

Debug

  • Log output — write debug messages to execution logs.
  • Alert — send notifications for manual review.

Custom Integrations: REST API Module

Don’t see your tool in the integration list? No problem. Use the REST API module to call any HTTP endpoint:

  1. Specify the HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).
  2. Enter the URL.
  3. Provide headers (authentication, content-type).
  4. Format the request body (JSON, form data, etc.).
  5. Parse the response.

Example: Your company uses a custom internal API. flow8 can call it:

POST /api/customers
Body: { "name": "Acme Inc", "email": "contact@acme.com" }
Response: { "customer_id": "12345" }

Treated like any other module: output becomes input to the next flowlet.

Authentication: HTTP Basic, API keys, OAuth2, custom headers—all supported.

Integration Patterns

Data Sync

Pattern: Pull data from System A, transform it, push to System B.

Example: Sync contacts from Salesforce to your email marketing platform daily.

  • Trigger: Scheduled (8 AM daily).
  • Pull contacts from Salesforce (query with filter: “modified in last 24 hours”).
  • Transform (map Salesforce fields to marketing platform fields).
  • Push to marketing platform.
  • Log results.

Data Reconciliation

Pattern: Compare data across systems, flag discrepancies, report.

Example: Reconcile invoices between QuickBooks and Bexio.

  • Pull invoices from both systems.
  • AI matches invoices by vendor and amount.
  • Identify mismatches (invoice in QB but not Bexio, etc.).
  • Generate report and email to finance.

Enrichment

Pattern: Fetch data from one system, enhance it with data from another, store result.

Example: Enrich a customer record.

  • Get customer from Salesforce.
  • Fetch their recent transactions from Stripe (REST API call).
  • Call AI to score their lifetime value.
  • Update the customer record in Salesforce with the score.

Approval with External Action

Pattern: Wait for human approval, then take action in external system.

Example: Contract approval flow.

  • Contract arrives → store in OneDrive.
  • AI analyzes for risk → NeedsApproval (legal team approves).
  • If approved: e-sign via DocuSign (REST API call) → file in Clio → create task in CRM.
  • If rejected: email rejection to vendor.

Async Job Submission

Pattern: Submit a long-running job to an external system, check status later.

Example: Video transcoding.

  • Upload video to cloud transcoding service (REST API).
  • Get job_id in response.
  • Store job_id in flow8’s KV store.
  • Schedule a separate flow to check status every hour.
  • When complete, download transcript and process it.

Managing Credentials Securely

Each integration requires credentials (API keys, passwords, OAuth tokens). flow8 handles these securely:

  • Encrypted at rest: Credentials are encrypted using NaCl and stored encrypted in the database.
  • Encrypted in transit: All API calls use HTTPS.
  • Scoped permissions: You can restrict what flow8 can do (e.g., “read-only access to Google Drive,” “post-only access to Slack”).
  • Audit logging: Who accessed which credentials and when is logged.
  • Credential rotation: You can rotate credentials (change API key, re-auth OAuth) without restarting flows.

You input credentials once, and flow8 manages them for all flows that use that integration.

Custom Integrations: Building Connectors

If you need a proprietary integration for an internal system or custom tool, flow8’s REST API module gives you flexibility. For more sophisticated scenarios, flow8 also supports plugins for custom modules (contact support for details).

Integration Best Practices

Use Field Mapping

When pulling data from one system and pushing to another, field names often differ. Use a mapping flowlet to standardize:

Salesforce "Company" → Internal "Organization_Name"
Salesforce "Opp_Amount" → QB "Total_Amount"

Handle Errors Gracefully

Use error handlers: if an API call fails, retry, then alert. Don’t let a single failed API call break the entire flow.

Log Everything

Every integration call should be logged with input and output. When something goes wrong, you want evidence.

Batch Operations

For large datasets, batch operations to avoid timeouts. Iterator module is your friend: process 100 records by looping, not one giant API call.

Monitor API Rate Limits

Some APIs have rate limits. Track usage and implement backoff/retry strategies. flow8 logs rate-limit errors so you can see when you’re hitting limits.

Summary: Your Tools, Connected

flow8’s integrations let you:

  • Stop rebuilding the same connectors. Use native integrations for Clio, QB, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, and more.
  • Connect tools that don’t natively integrate. REST API module + transformation modules = any integration.
  • Keep data in sync across systems. Automated sync flows ensure single source of truth.
  • Stay secure. Credentials encrypted, permissions scoped, audit trail comprehensive.

Your tool not listed? Use the REST API module. No custom development needed.