Advanced Connections are LoanPro's webhook tool, allowing you to send information to third-party systems based on your own custom automations and business logic. 

Advanced Connections can be used for a wealth of different purposes. Instead of simply sending a payload of information, you could automate your processes. For example, you can use Advanced Connections to automatically log AutoPay adjustments, create third-party integrations with other software like Slack, or make changes to customer profiles. You could even use some of our other tools in tandem with webhooks—like creating Walkthroughs for your users that have them select smart checklist items that automatically send out webhooks.

In-Depth Information

If you've used webhooks in the past (or if you've read some of our articles on the subject), you'll know that webhooks allow you to send information to a separate system when an event occurs. This is helpful if you're using two pieces of software in tandem and would like them to communicate with each other. Typically, webhooks are used to simply send information across the web. This form of communication isn't doing the things you see an API doing—like creating, updating, or deleting stuff. If you're using webhooks right now, you're probably also using an additional piece of software just to reformat the information you're receiving so that you can use it in your system. That probably took time and a lot of money to develop, and you're probably still spending money to maintain it.

LoanPro takes webhooks a step further. Now, you can use LoanPro's webhooks to send GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE requests to other URLs. You can also send information in whichever format you'd like and with custom headers—meaning you can use webhooks to update information via a separate system's API. To top it all off, you can also use LoanPro's Context Engine Variables in the URL, payload, and custom headers, giving you some incredible automation options.

This opens a wealth of possibilities for automating your processes. If you're using a separate piece of software and you're wondering if you could use this to automate LoanPro API usage, you absolutely can. Our webhooks feature may fully eliminate your need to build and maintain the middleware that connects your processes. You can wave goodbye to using third-party integration services, too.

Let's take a look at how these features work. Each setting is going to be dependent on what you'd like your webhooks to do, but we'll give you a few examples to show you what you could build yourself. Below, we'll show you how to build a webhook that's sent to an external source and how to build one that's sent to LoanPro to update something. Let's create a trigger-based webhook that's sent out when a loan is five days past due and in the "Open" or "Collections" loan status. Here's our rule:

(and (= status-days-past-due 5) (or (= loan-status "Open") (= loan-status "Collections")))

Method and Callback URL

 If you're familiar with webhooks, you'll know that the callback URL is the destination of your webhook. How the destination handles the information you send is determined by the method.

Tokens and Custom Headers

When sending and receiving information over the web, it's a good idea to use some form of authentication. Most APIs require authentication, and you likely use authentication with your own external systems. LoanPro's webhook functionality provides a few different authentication options. You can generate and use a new authorization token within the webhook setup page. Or, you can use custom headers to provide the headers that are required for the receiving source.

Autopal-Instance-Id: <Tenant ID>
        Authorization: <Bearer token>
        Content-Type: application/json

Payload Formatting

Here, you'll determine what information you're sending to your destination. Our webhooks have two different formatting options. First, you can select and send Context Engine Variables in the 'Variables to include in the callback payload' section. This text field cannot be formatted in a specific way, but you can include as many variables here as you'd like. Your second option is using the second text field and using 'Custom Body Formatting'. Here, you can format your payload in any way you'd like. If you'd like your payload to be sent in a JSON format, as a string of text, or in another programming language entirely, you can do so.

In our webhook's case, we'll have some specific information that should be sent.

{
           "eventName": "Customer's Loan is 5 Days Past Due",
           "context": {
               "current-date": "2022-09-26",
               "next-scheduled-payment-amount": 89.24,
               "loan-id": 3579,
               "loan-status": "Open",
               "next-scheduled-payment-date": "2022-10-20",
               "status-days-past-due": 5,
               "status-amount-due": 158.70,
               "customer": {
                   "primary": {
                       "full-name": "Douglas McCallagher"
                   }
               }
           }
           "trace": "204262bb-4634-49ad-8b88-db8217b76c09",
           "auth": "",
           "attemptNumber": 1
        }

{
           "Notes": {
               "results": [
                   {
                       "body": "This customer was late on their payment  on [[v('current-date')]]. Their outstanding balance at the time was $[[v('status-amount-due')]].",
                       "categoryId": 2,
                       "subject": "Delinquencies",
                       "type": "STANDARD"
                   }
               ]
           }
        }