Plan event-driven workflows

Separate event from action

An event says that something happened. Your receiving workflow decides whether that event should trigger an update, notification or review. A shipment milestone should not automatically imply that billing documents are complete.

Choose the events that matter

• →Order changes that another system needs to reflect.
• →Carrier assignment changes that affect coordination.
• →Pickup and delivery milestones relevant to customer updates.
• →Financial changes that require reconciliation.
• →For each event, name the owner, expected action and recovery path.

Design a reliable receiver

• →Verify the sender using the supported authentication mechanism.
• →Validate the payload against the documented contract.
• →Retain the event or correlation identifier needed to prevent duplicate processing.
• →Keep receipt and downstream completion as separate states.
• →Handle duplicates and delayed events without reversing newer business state.

Make failures visible

1. 1Record when the event arrived and which record it concerns.
2. 2Track whether the intended downstream action completed.
3. 3Surface rejected or unresolved events to an operator.
4. 4Before replaying, check whether the first attempt already changed the destination.
5. 5Use the documented retry behavior rather than assuming a delivery schedule.

Questions for your integration review

• →Which events are available to this account?
• →Are delivery order and uniqueness guaranteed?
• →How are signatures, credentials and rotation handled?
• →What retention and replay controls exist?
• →How does an operator inspect an unresolved event?