Custom Tile - Data options

Barsana Gohil

Hello,



I am looking to build a custom tile that will allow the user to manage associations between 2 RE constituents and the ability to maintain some data per association.


Could you please let me know what are the possible options for storing the association and associated data - so that it can be retrieved and maintained in the custom tile.


Please note that we are not looking at large volumes of data - so performance or scalability is not a major factor but a simple solution would be helpful.


Is it possible to access the RE Supplemental tables from a custom tile using the Sky API?

What other database connection options are available to load and update data in a custom tile?


Any recommendations would be most welcome.


Many thanks,

Barsana

Ben Lambert

Hi Barsana,

Since the custom tile is a website running wherever you deploy it, you're really free to use whatever tech you'd like to store the association. Your add-in can push/pull data to/from another database anywhere (Amazon, Azure, on-prem systems, etc.). Depending on the specifics of your scenario, you might even be able to leverage constituent custom fields to store the association (using the CreateConstituentCustomField endpoint), or it may be more appropriate to define an actual Relationship record in NXT to represent the association (in which case, you might take a look at the CreateConstituentRelationship endpoint in the Constituent SKY API).

Keep in mind that add-ins render hidden by default and are only made visible when your code indicates that the add-in show be shown (by specifying showUI: true when your add-in code calls the ready() function). So for example your add-in could perform some logic up front and only show the custom tile if you find that the constituent has a custom field that represents the association.

Hope this helps!