Questions about the API Functionality

[PatODay]

Hi, I have a few questions regarding the Click & Pledge API and how it interacts and posts data with Salesforce.


Currently we are using Wordpress with Gravity Forms and Click and Pledge. I believe the workflow for our donation forms data currently is the form is submitted, the payment is processed through the Click & Pledge plugin for Gravity Forms, a successful transaction allows Gravity Forms to move on to the after_submission hook, which we have custom code in place to post the data to Salesforce either creating a new Salesforce contact or updating an existing one. When the payment is processed through the Click & Pledge plugin/API that then triggers a POST to Salesforce creating the contact in C&P Temporary Contacts which is then merged with the Salesforce contact that was created or updated with the successful form submission.


We are in the process of developing a new website, moving off of Wordpress and instead using a JavaScript/React/Express stack with Formik for forms, this has me thinking that Payment as a Service is the route we should be looking at. I am wondering:

1. What are the differences between Payment as a Service, Form as a Service, and Salesforce PaaS Class Library?
2. What are the required fields that the API expects any submitted form to have?
3. Does the reCAPTCHA have to send any kind of status or validation code to be included in the request to the API?
4. Is there any way we can set up an Admin Web Interface to be able to view transaction details similar to how that data is already presented in Gravity Forms using C&P?
5. Are there any plans to move from SOAP to a REST API?

Thanks!

[CnP.LiveSupport.AB]

1. What are the differences between Payment as a Service, Form as a Service, and Salesforce PaaS Class Library?
2. What are the required fields that the API expects any submitted form to have?
3. Does the reCAPTCHA have to send any kind of status or validation code to be included in the request to the API?
4. Is there any way we can set up an Admin Web Interface to be able to view transaction details similar to how that data is already presented in Gravity Forms using C&P?
5. Are there any plans to move from SOAP to a REST API?

1. PaaS (aka Donor Management) is the Salesforce app that receives the transaction data, and then reviews its settings to determine how to match existing Contacts, create Opportunities, and assign values to custom fields on the Account, Contact, and Opportunity related to the transaction. It also provides Virtual Terminal, that allows nonprofit staff at the organization to process sales internally for other forms of payment, and manages autoresponder emails that can be sent out based on just about any kind of variation in the transaction. PaaS can manage the information is has written into Salesforce, so if it wasn't initially configured correctly, settings can be modified, and existing data can be replaced under the new settings.

FaaS is a way of creating custom forms and submitting values using HTML form fields. It hits the same API engine that all of our products' forms do, whether the form is from a Virtual Terminal, Swiper1, Connect forms, Event Management registration forms. So PaaS handles the resulting data from any of these forms in a consistent way.

Class Library is the foundational Salesforce app with for the code that PaaS and Event Management (also both SF apps) use. PaaS requires the Class Library to operate, and Event Management requires both PaaS and the Class Library.

2. Which fields are required depends on whether the transaction is processed publicly online, such as an online donation form, or internal to the organization. The simplest way to review this would be to checkout our manual's FaaS Fields page, which specifies which fields are required for an online page. Internal transactions have less requirements, best reviewed by looking required fields in the Virtual Terminal- either in Connect or Salesforce. If you have questions about the need for a specific field, let us know and we'll be glad to clarify, but the requirements you'll encounter in these two sources are either requirements by the bank, or requirements in Salesforce for a Contact. First Name is the only field that is an exception to this rule; we do require a first name.

3. I will need to look into the details of this question for you, and should be able to provide you more details by tomorrow. We do have reCaptcha on all of the forms created by our products because we are constantly monitoring the many attempts at fraud that are made against our nonprofit customers, so I would suspect there is some additional form of verification needed, even if it is not reCaptcha. Nonprofits are routinely targets for fraud.

4. The flexibility to manage transaction details is as flexible as Salesforce is - all the transaction data that is posted to Salesforce is there to build from; however, I would caution that because the data and its requirements are managed by the PaaS and Event apps, we cannot support any impact that is made to our apps based on modifying data in custom fields that are created by our apps.
I'm not personally familiar with how Gravity Forms presents their data, but I can find someone on our team that is more familiar to add their input.

C&P Connect is the administrative interface to your C&P account and is already available to you. I would suggest you consider it as a simple option if you are concerned about additional Salesforce Customization.

User adoption is always a very difficult part to any implementation project, but you do have several options available to you there.

5. Yes, this is due in a future release of our API. At the moment this is looking like Q1 2021.


I will look into that 3rd question and get additional feedback from our team about Gravity Forms' management of transaction data,and follow-up with you again tomorrow.

Regards, Amanda

Amanda Byrne, C&P Customer Advocate

[PatODay]

Thank you so much for such a detailed response. I'm going to read through more of the documentation and will post any more questions here.

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

About your question:

Does the reCAPTCHA have to send any kind of status or validation code to be included in the request to the API?

Please note that reCAPTCHA is a server side inspection of the transaction. You are making sure your form is not under attack and ONLY post to us transactions that need to be processed. reCAPTCHA needs to be set up with your WordPress and once set up then you send us the transaction. Our API does not have anything to do with reCAPTCHA.,

Hope that helps.

[PatODay]

Hello, I've got another question. I'm trying to make a post to the Click and Pledge API, I'm able to get the XML to go through in the Sandbox environment, but when I try to make a post to https://paas.cloud.clickandpledge.co...rvice.svc?wsdl as this is what is listed in the docs under 'Web Service' https://manual.clickandpledge.com/Pa...a-Service.html

The request is coming from a secured server using https, but is giving me a 400 error on the attempted posts, so I want to make sure I'm trying to hit the right endpoint. Can you please confirm that API requests should be made to https://paas.cloud.clickandpledge.co...rvice.svc?wsdl ?

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

Please see:




The correct link to use is as shown above.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.