Overview: Integrating external services

You can integrate many different external services in your workflows.

The following sections describe some possible external service integrations.

REST services

For information about invoking REST APIs from workflows, see the following topics:

Web services

For information about discovering and invoking web services from workflows, see Invoking a web service.

IBM Operational Decision Manager business rules

For more information about using Operational Decision Manager business rules and decision services, see Using IBM ODM business rules.

IBM Watson services

Watson provides artificial intelligence (AI) services that you can integrate in your process applications by using the Workflow REST service integration capabilities. For information about the services that are available, see Watson Documentation External link opens a new window or tab .

IBM Cloud services

Requests to IBM® Cloud services must be authenticated. Some service instances, require that you authenticate to the API by using IBM Cloud® Identity and Access Management (IAM) tokens. You can pass a bearer token in an Authorization header or an API key.

Tokens support authenticated requests without embedding service credentials in every call.

API keys use basic authentication. If you pass in an API key, specify the string apikey for the user name and the value of the API key as the password.

For information about the IAM Identity Services API and to download the OpenAPI definition, see IAM Identity Services API .
For information about using a Watson service API key to get an IAM token, see Generating an IBM Cloud IAM token by using an API key .

For information about the authentication options that are available for the IBM Cloud service that you are using, see https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs External link opens a new window or tab

Blockchain and Hyperledger Composer services

For a tutorial that explains how to make your business processes react to blockchain events, see the developerWorks® article Enable business processes to react to blockchain events .
For information about using Hyperledger Composer, see Build Blockchain applications and business networks your way .

IBM App Connect

You can use IBM App Connect to integrate data, apps and APIs across hybrid cloud environments. This allows connectivity with services such as Salesforce, Marketo, Google sheets, Google Drive, and Dropbox. The integration with IBM App Connect supports both outbound invocations and event-driven inbound invocations from and to your process applications. To learn more about using IBM App Connect, see IBM App Connect External link opens a new window or tab .

The following figure illustrates how IBM App Connect can be used to integrate common app services with process apps that are running on prem or on cloud.

Figure showing IBM App Connect interfacing cloud apps such as GoogleSheets, GoogleDrive, Salesforce, and Marketeo to BAW on cloud and BAW on prem.

The following steps outline how you combine IBM App Connect with workflows:

Workflow invokes IBM App Connect

Integrating IBM App Connect in your process application is supported by using external services in your process applications, in particular by using REST service invocation.

To prepare an external service integration, go to your IBM App Connect dashboard, download the OpenAPI specification for the REST service that you want to use as an external service in a workflow. Also, note the IBM App Connect username and password that is needed to invoke the service.
To invoke an API that is provided by your IBM App Connect instance from a process application, use the to create a new external service based on the OpenAPI specification that you downloaded from IBM App Connect, and enter the IBM App Connect username and password on the settings tab for the appropriate REST server.

IBM App Connect interacts with a workflow

IBM App Connect can interact with a workflow by using event-driven invocation of a process applications.

To invoke a Workflow API from an IBM App Connect event-driven flow, specify the application event that will trigger the Workflow API call, for example, the Google Sheets new spreadsheet event, add an HTTP invoke method, and specify the Workflow REST API call, including basic authorization HTTP header. For more information about using Workflow APIs to start a process, see Starting a process by using a REST API call.
For a general tutorial that shows how to call out from App Connect to any HTTP endpoint, see Calling out to an API endpoint by using the invoke method for the HTTP application .