Integrating with Edlink does require some technical work on your end, and if you don't have an in-house engineering team, you'll need to outsource the development work. While we perform all development work in-house, our clients have worked with a number of different contract development teams in the past. Here are a few things that we recommend when doing so.
Evaluating Contract Development Teams
When evaluating a contract development team, there are a few key things to keep in mind:
- Experience: Make sure that the team has experience working with the technologies that you're using. If you're building a mobile app, for example, you'll want to make sure that the team has experience building mobile apps.
- Portfolio: Look at the team's portfolio to get a sense of the work that they've done in the past. This will give you a good idea of the quality of their work and whether or not they're a good fit for your project.
- References: Ask for references from past clients. This will give you a sense of what it's like to work with the team and whether or not they deliver on time and on budget.
- Communication: Make sure that the team communicates well and is responsive to your needs. You'll want to make sure that you can get in touch with them easily and that they're able to answer any questions that you have.
Relevant Technology Experience
Here are a few of the technologies or concepts that teams will need to be familiar with when integrating with Edlink:
- REST APIs: Edlink's API is a REST API, so the team will need to be familiar with how to make HTTP requests.
- OAuth 2.0 or OIDC: Edlink uses OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect for authentication.
- Data Modeling: The team will need to be able to map the data that they're working with in a way that makes sense for your application. This is the toughest one to evaluate, as it requires the developer to have a deep understanding of your application's purpose (and some product design intuition).
- Data Syncing: The team will need to be able to sync data from Edlink's API to your application, often at scale. This one can be tricky for developers who have not worked with large data sets before.
Getting a Recommendation from Edlink
While we perform all development work in-house, our clients have worked with a number of different contract development teams in the past and we'd be happy to recommend one to you. You can find a list of these teams on our website, along with their contact information. It is important that you still evaluate the team based on the criteria above, but we hope that this list will help you get started.
If you are a contract developer and would like to be added to our list of recommended teams, please reach out to us.