ADVANCED
INTEGRATION
OPTIONS
for Little Green Light
Hunter Williams
CONTENTS
05
INPUT VIA
WEBHOOKS
18
OUTPUT TO
PERMALINKS
23
BONUS: API
Advanced Integration Options for Little Green Light
This guide covers two advanced methods for integrating
third-party software services with Little Green Light. The first
approach lets you write data to Little Green Light, and the
second approach lets you get data out of Little Green Light,
so this is our “advanced I/O guide” (input and output).
Level of difficulty: Advanced
You don’t need to be a true computer programmer to use
the advanced integration options described in this guide, but
you do need to be comfortable working with code (or at
least pseudo code).
Here are the 3 approaches we'll discuss in this guide:
Input via webhooks: Little Green Light’s new custom
integrations “listen” for data sent via webhooks
Output via scheduled reports to a permalink:
Scheduled reports can write to a permalink (web
location), which another application can use as a data
table
API: Not yet released for general use, LGL has created
an API and it’s available for beta users. This section
provides a case study and describes how to participate
in a beta
01
I N P U T
V I A
W E B H O O K S
01
CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
How to connect to Little Green Light via a
webhook
The steps involved:
Find a software service that can push data via webhooks
Set up a custom integration in LGL
Copy the “listener” URL into the software service
Test the integration
Step 1. Find a software service that can push data via
webhooks
A large and growing number of software services offer
webhooks. To find out if a software service offers webhooks, try
searching for the name of the software and webhooks, such as a
search for “Facebook webhooks”. The first result for this search
is:
ADVANCED INTEGRATION OPTIONS| 07
Be aware that not all webhooks are created equal. Some may
simply send a confirmation message that an action occurred
but not pass through other useful detail. Others expect you to
use a combination of webhooks and an API to be able to pull in
information.
Some examples of software offering webhooks of one kind or
another include:
- Facebook
- Google Drive (and Forms and Sheets)
- Eventbrite
- Campaign Monitor
- Stripe
- Gravity Forms
- Zapier
Zapier is an easy place to start, because they have already
done a lot of the work involved in connecting services. They
make it easy to find which services offer hooks for sending and
receiving data. While Little Green Light is not yet listed as a
pre-integrated service, you can choose a listed service to
trigger sending data via webhooks and then connect that
through a custom “Zap” (also known as a "connection") to Little
Green Light.
CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
Step 2. Set up a custom integration in LGL
Once you find a service that can send a webhook, you need to
set up a “listener” in your Little Green Light account. You do that
in Settings > Integration Settings by clicking on the "Custom
integrations" link and then the “+ Add new integration” button..
Then provide a name for your integration and the list of fields
you’ll be integrating from the other software.
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CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
Step 2. Set up a custom integration in LGL (cont.)
Upon saving, Little Green Light will show you the new integration
and the URL for its listener.
From this area, you can:
Edit the name of your integration and the fields it is integrating
Update the mapping of where each field should be going in
your LGL account
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CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
Step 3: Copy the “listener” URL into the software
service
Now that we have our listener set up in Little Green Light, we
need to return to the other software service and tell it where to
send the webhook-driven data.
The exact way you set this up in the other software will vary from
one service to another. You may need to obtain developer
credentials.
The one thing you’ll have to do for sure is paste the URL for your
LGL listener into the software service that’s sending the data. Your
URL will look something like the following (note the word "listener"
at the end of the URL).
https://prefix.littlegreenlight.com/integrations
/d34079f9-24b1-431e-beca-89a68c080673/listener
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CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
How do the various sets of data fields all connect?
The custom integration lets you map data from one set of fields
(from the source application) into your Little Green Light fields.
The illustration below shows how the custom integration listens
for data fields, and then pushes them into the appropriate fields in
Little Green Light.
When you set up your custom integration, you’re taking care of
steps B and C in the diagram below. In step B, you are setting up
your listener and identifying the exact field names it will receive
from the other software. In step C, you are mapping those fields
into your Little Green Light account.
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CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
Step 4: Test the integration
Now it’s time to test the integration and see what happens. How
you test will vary depending on the software you’ve integrated.
On the Little Green Light side, the place to look for results is your
Integration Queue. If the webhook has sent data successfully,
you’ll see new records waiting for review in your Integration
Queue (unless during the integration mapping you check the “Do
not require review” box).
The Integration Queue in Little Green Light
ADVANCED INTEGRATION OPTIONS| 11
CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
End-to-end example: Twitter mention integrated via
Zapier
Here’s an illustrated example of a custom integration, step by
step.
What we want this integration to do: Any time our organization
(in our example, the organization is Little Green Light) is
referenced in a Twitter post (using our Twitter handle
“@littlegrnlight”), we’d like to pull that post into our LGL account as
a note on the constituent record of the person who made the
post.
In this process, we cover steps A through D in this diagram:
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CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
End-to-end example: Twitter mention integrated via
Zapier (cont.)
Set up integration in Zapier (steps A and B)
We set up an account on Zapier (free for limited use), and then
searched through the software providers to find one we wanted to
integrate to our LGL account. We selected Twitter. In Zapier, there
are pre-defined options for which trigger you want to use.
From there, we set up a link to our Twitter account, and then set
which terms should act as a trigger for this Zap (as each integration
is called).
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CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
End-to-end example: Twitter mention integrated via
Zapier (cont.)
Now we’re ready to set the destination for this integration. Zapier
has many pre-defined services as possible destinations, but to
integrate to Little Green Light we set up a custom webhook
integration.
We chose the Post option, and at this point Zapier asks for the
destination URL:
ADVANCED INTEGRATION OPTIONS| 14
CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
End-to-end example: Twitter mention integrated via
Zapier (cont.)
To come up with the URL, we go to our LGL account and add a
new integration:
We pasted in the destination URL and defined the fields that
should be sent from Twitter to Little Green Light.
CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
End-to-end example: Twitter mention integrated via
Zapier (cont.)
Complete custom integration in Little Green Light (steps C and
D)
Returning to our custom integration in Little Green Light, we
define the fields that we’re expecting to receive from the
external software (Twitter fields coming in via Zapier, in this case).
And we finish by mapping the fields into our LGL account.
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CHAPTER 1 | INPUT VIA WEBHOOKS
End-to-end example: Twitter mention integrated via
Zapier (cont.)
With these steps completed, we should see a successful test
from Zapier (they automatically sent a test using an existing
Twitter message).
And sure enough, in our Integration Queue, we see this Twitter
mention has been brought in successfully.
ADVANCED INTEGRATION OPTIONS| 17
02
O U T P U T
T O
P E R M A L I N K S
02
CHAPTER 2 | OUTPUT TO PERMALINKS
Output via scheduled reports to permalinks
Your Little Green Light account has lots of great data in it, but
how can you make use of that data in another software
application? One method is to export data to a spreadsheet and
import that to your other software. But, using scheduled reports
and the permalink publishing option, you can make this happen
automatically. Files written to the permalink location can then be
used by a third-party software application.
The pieces to the puzzle are:
A. Generating a scheduled report in LGL, and publishing to
a permalink
B. Using the data in a separate software service
ADVANCED INTEGRATION OPTIONS| 19
CHAPTER 2 | OUTPUT TO PERMALINKS
A. Generating a scheduled report in Little Green Light
In Little Green Light, you can schedule reports to run
automatically every day, every weekday, every Monday, or the
first of every month. And on scheduled reports you can choose
to copy the resulting file to a permalink location (a cloud-based
file location).
After running your report, you’ll see the location of the
permanent link in the "Scheduled reports" area.
The permanent link provides a fixed URL where the data from
this report will be stored as a data file. When your report updates
every weekday, week, or month, you can pull in that new data
very easily, and the location of the data (the permanent link URL)
will stay the same.
The great thing about this is that you can use another application
to point to that data source, and it will automatically update with
the new data.
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CHAPTER 2 | OUTPUT TO PERMALINKS
B. Using the data in a separate software service
There are a number of online software services that can pull data
from a cloud-based location, such as an LGL permalink,
including Excel and Google Sheets.
For example, you can create a Google Sheet to pull in data from
an LGL report, and then use Google Sheets to perform
calculations, create a chart, or run other manipulations on the
data.
In Google Sheets, the formula to pull data from another location
will look like this:
=importdata("https://demo3.littlegreenlight.com/rptlink
/d0e961d9-7339-4c71-8468-254a6c3f1f0c")
The URL in this formula is the location of the permanent link for
your LGL report.
In a Google Sheet, you can place this formula at the top left
corner of where you want the report data to flow in. In this
example, we’ve put the formula in cell B1, and after hitting the
Enter key, the Google Sheet goes out to the permanent link
location and pulls in the data.
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CHAPTER 2 | OUTPUT TO PERMALINKS
B. Using the data in a separate software service (cont.)
When you open the spreadsheet the next time, you can force the
Google Sheet to re-pull the data by putting your cursor in cell B1
and clicking Enter.
Now that we have our data in a Google Sheet, we can take
advantage of some of Google’s capabilities. Here are a few
examples of what you could do:
Create a heatmap showing a distribution of donors by state:
Or, create your own dashboards:
ADVANCED INTEGRATION OPTIONS| 22
03
B O N U S :
A P I
03
CHAPTER 3 | LITTLE GREEN LIGHT API
Bonus: API
The Little Green Light API allows third-party software to query,
read, and write data to an LGL account. The API is in the early
stages of release. At this point it’s still a by-invitation type option,
but if you are interested in pursuing a possible API integration
with LGL, we’d love to hear from you.
Please provide the following pieces of information and email
us at [email protected].
1. What service would you connect to LGL via an API (i.e.,
name of your software)
2. Do you have a developer who can do the coding on your
side to hook up an API?
3. Which fields do you want to be able to read from LGL?
4. Which fields do you want to be able to write to LGL?
ADVANCED INTEGRATION OPTIONS| 24
CHAPTER 3 | LITTLE GREEN LIGHT API
API Example
LANDSCAPE is software used by land trusts and other
conservation groups to manage land acquisition and
stewardship. The developer of LANDSCAPE used the Little
Green Light API to integrate the two services, so that contact
information updated in one system could be automatically
reflected in the other.
The key to this integration is that each contact to be synced from
LANDSCAPE needs a one-to-one relationship to a constituent
record in Little Green Light. Once the two records are linked via
unique identifiers, keeping them in sync is pretty simple. To set
up the initial relationship requires a lookup and then a
confirmation by the user that the correct record has been found
(or that a new record should be created).
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