You use Pega Platform™ to connect the application to these distributed resources primarily by using REST. You then have real-time access to the rich data that they store. Pega Platform supports a range of integration standards and communication protocols, such as JSON, XML, SOAP, WSDL, and FTP. Use these options to focus on the business requirements of your application.

Pega Platform includes powerful and flexible facilities to define data structures and manage data. You can define individual fields, arrays and repeating groups, multilevel structures, and a variety of other data structures. To support the exchange of data with other systems, you can configure the application to convert a Pega Platform data structure into a fixed record layout, a JSON document, a message, or a relational database row. Pega Platform provides the following tools to integrate with your application:

• REST connectors

  Interact with external systems over HTTP and consume information that RESTful web services expose. For example, you can use REST connectors to send file attachments over a REST call.

  For more information, see Creating a REST integration by using the Create REST integration wizard.

• REST services

  Use the REST interface in Pega Platform to make calls between your application and external systems. For example, call a REST service to retrieve details of an assignment or process file attachments for storage in a repository.

  For more information, see Service REST rules.

• Mappings

  You can use JSON and XML formats in Pega Platform to map data that you bring into your application. You can map all data or only the properties that you need to build your data model.

  For more information, see Creating a data object and connecting it to a system of record using REST and Data transforms.

• File processing

  Pega Platform offers a set of capabilities for processing files. Store and source case attachments with repositories, and use repository APIs to interact with repositories. For example, you can call the Get file API to retrieve a file from a specific repository. You can move and process files from another system by using file listeners. You can also securely transfer files to and from Pega Cloud applications by using the Pega Cloud SFTP service.

  For more information, see the following documentation:

  • Creating a repository
  • Repository APIs
  • Using file listeners
  • Pega Cloud SFTP service
• Email processing

  Manage email directly in your application. Pega Platform provides different options to configure email based on your business requirements. For example, you can configure an email to automatically create a case or use Pega Email Bot™ to route incoming messages to the correct stakeholders.

  For more information, see Integrating with an email provider.

• Cloud integration

  Integrate your Pega applications that run in Pega Cloud Services environments with your enterprise systems.

  For more information, see Integrating Pega applications in Pega Cloud with external systems.

• Web services

  Use the SOAP integration interface to interact with external systems through Web services. You can also generate WSDL files that describe the external SOAP service.

  For more information, see Creating a SOAP integration.

• Asynchronous messaging

  Communicate with external applications by configuring Pega Platform to publish messages or receive messages. Send and receive messages without a direct integration between systems.

  For more information, see Messaging service overview and About Connect MQ rules.