In the process of docking with a third party, sometimes it is a simple business, but the docking is so complicated. What is the reason for this situation?
Some time ago, I met a friend in the communication group of the product manager:
This article will take electronic contracts as an example to discuss: why is the docking of third-party platforms becoming more and more complicated?
Author's note: In order to facilitate the elaboration of views and ensure the legibility of the content, the processes involved in the article have been simplified to a certain extent, and cannot be used as a reference for docking with third-party electronic contract platforms.
As I said in "Novice Product Managers Must Learn Technical Interface Document Knowledge", when designing and developing products, the product needs to use certain functions, but the implementation of these functions may lack the advantages of the business field, or lack the advantages of the technical field, or the advantages of both fields are obviously insufficient, so it is often necessary to connect with third-party platforms, such as the "electronic contract" mentioned by the friend above Because it involves strict filing and authentication, there are only a handful of companies that can do this business in China, so most companies' products can only choose to connect with qualified third-party platforms.
However, in the process of docking with third-party platforms, the problem exposed is becoming more and more obvious, that is, it is clear that only a very simple business needs to be implemented, but the interface side provides a lot of interfaces, which makes the product manager feel that the docking is very complicated, so what is the reason for such a situation?
To answer this question, we first need to look at what the simplest interconnection process should look like from the perspective of the docking party, and then analyze why the interface provider cannot follow the simplest process.
First, the simplest docking process
From the perspective of the docking party, although the above process is connected to four interfaces, real-name authentication and signing only need to jump to the page of the docking platform through a link, so the core docking steps only need two steps:
- After the signatory performs real-name authentication through the docking platform, the business platform sends the documents to be signed to the docking platform, and the signatory signs on the page provided by the docking platform to sign.
- After the signing is completed, the business platform obtains the signed documents and saves them to its server.
So why can't the docking platform provide such a simple process to the docking party, but make a lot of interfaces for each link, mainly based on the following considerations.
Second, for the compatibility of the scene
Taking the generation of documents to be signed as an example, there are two scenarios, one is that the business platform directly generates the documents to be signed and uploads them to the third-party platform, and the other is that the business platform uploads the template to the docking platform, and then fills in the content of the template and generates the documents to be signed.
Through the above operation process, it can be found that whether it is directly uploading the file to be signed, or generating the document to be signed through the template, you need to do an upload action at the beginning, and the two are just different files, therefore, when designing the interface, the step of obtaining the file upload address and uploading the file can often be designed as 2 interfaces, instead of 4 interfaces, and the system only needs to mark clearly whether the current file belongs to the document to be signed or the template in the interface parameters according to the upload scenario, such as using " file" indicates the document to be signed, and template indicates the template.
Therefore, if a bunch of interfaces are encapsulated into an interface according to the business process, then in the above two scenarios, some interface content will belong to "reinventing the wheel".
3. For the flexibility of the process
In the electronic contract signing process, there is a link called "signing process archiving", the concept of archiving is to indicate that the document has been signed, and the document can no longer be signed, we imagine that the archiving process and the real archiving process are as follows:
Doesn't it feel inexplicable and redundant, obviously one interface can do it, but it is necessary to call one more archiving interface before the electronic contract platform archivs, but if I tell you the following two scenarios, you should be able to understand the intent of this design:
- The platform needs to manually review the electronic contract signature, and only file it after the review is passed, and require the signatory to re-sign if the review fails;
- If you find that a signatory is missing from a document that needs to be signed by more than one person, you need to add the signatory and have the signer sign it.
Therefore, when the platform design interface, various scenarios have been taken into account, so the decision-making power of some important links is returned to the business platform to decide, so as to make the process more flexible.
4. Essential asynchronous notifications
In the process of signing the contract, the signing process and the real signing process are as follows:
The signing process in our imagination is achieved overnight, but in the real scenario, from the platform initiating the signing process to the signer signing, or the scene of multiple people signing until the last person completes the signing, it is necessary to wait for a period of time, which may be very short or long, but the system cannot always wait there (loading), so there is an "asynchronous notification" The concept of asynchronous notification can be understood as the completion of a certain process takes a certain amount of time, during this time, the business system does not need to do any processing, and when the process is completed, the docking platform will notify the business system through another interface, and the business system will carry out follow-up processing, this interface is the asynchronous notification interface.
For example, if a process is signed by multiple people, it is filed after all signatories have signed it, and the process is as follows:
Fifth, the commerciality that cannot be ignored
For example, in the signing process mentioned above, the signer needs to first conduct real-name authentication through the platform, and splitting the real-name authentication interface is equivalent to separating the real-name authentication business from the electronic contract signing business.
So, now you know, why is the third-party platform docking more and more complicated?
That's all for this article, thanks for reading!
Columnist
Product Jin Li, public account: Product Jin Li (ID: IMPM996), everyone is a product manager columnist. A product manager who is not a proper business and his product design.
This article was originally published by Everyone is a Product Manager and is prohibited from reprinting without permission.
The title image is from Unsplash and is licensed under CC0.
The views in this article only represent the author's own, everyone is a product manager, and the platform only provides information storage space services.