Decide Which Way the Data Flows
Before connecting anything, write down where each person starts and where they need to end up. Most events need one or both of these:
- Out: new registrations, cancellations and check-ins go from your event to a CRM, email list or chat channel
- In: people who fill in another form, or who are already in a CRM list, are added to your event
Start With a CSV Export
If you only need the list once or twice, an export is enough. Download attendees with every registration answer and import the file where it needs to go. Nothing to set up and nothing to break.
Move to an automatic connection once you find yourself exporting every few days.
Send New Registrations Out With Webhooks
A webhook is an address in another tool that your event software calls the moment something happens. Zapier's Catch Hook and Make's Custom webhook both give you one, and from there you can create a CRM contact, add someone to an email list or post in a chat channel.
In Shoal, owners and admins add webhooks on the API page and choose what to send: someone registers, joins the waitlist, cancels or checks in. Each message carries the person's details and their registration answers.
Bring People In From Other Forms
If people sign up somewhere else first, such as a partner's form or a CRM campaign, use the API to add them to your event. Match people by email so sending the same person twice updates them instead of creating a duplicate, and send only the fields you want changed.
Shoal's API never emails anyone, so you decide when invitations and tickets go out.
Make Sure Messages Are Really From You
Anyone who learns a webhook address could send fake data to it. Each Shoal webhook has its own signing secret, and every message is signed with it, so the receiving tool or your developer can reject anything that doesn't match.
Expect Retries and Duplicates
Tools go down. Good webhooks try again when the receiving end doesn't answer, which means the same message can occasionally arrive twice. Use each message's id, or the person's email, to skip ones you've already handled.
Shoal tries each message up to seven times over about a day, and switches off a webhook that has failed for three days so it doesn't keep knocking on a closed door.
Keep Keys Safe
An API key is a password for your event data. Give each tool its own key so you can revoke one without breaking the others, keep keys out of shared documents, and revoke any key you no longer use.