AgentsInsight is a property management and marketing platform, allowing commercial property consultants to market properties across platforms such as Rightmove, Zoopla, and their own website.
We originally built an integration between AgentsInsight and the Vail Williams website in 2015, which integrated with a simple data feed that AgentsInsight provided with all property information.
After maintaining the data feed integration since 2015, updating it and tweaking it occasionally, we saw AgentsInsight announce a new way of integrating through the platform via an API.
What is an API?
An API is simply a way for two technology platforms to interact and share data.
Whereas humans interact with websites through a visual interface, websites interact with other websites through a “programming interface”, or an Application Programming Interface (API) specifically.
While data feeds expose a dump of all data available, an API provides specific sections and pages to extract specific data, often requiring some kind of authentication.
This means APIs offer a much more efficient, reliable and secure method of integrating two systems than data feeds.
Upgraded features
We took advantage of the new API offered by AgentsInsight and updated the website to use this integration instead of the old data feed.
Not only did this make the property synchronisation faster and more reliable, it also allowed for us to extract new data from the AgentsInsight system that was previously unavailable from the feed, enabling VW to offer more value to website visitors.
This upgrade meant that when the old data feed method was later discontinued by AgentsInsight, no work was needed by Vail Williams since they were already prepared.
