Allow third party apps to plug into the Xero interface
If the Xero interface could be configured to display data from and interact with the apps third party developers are creating similar to the way Facebook applications work inside their platform
Matt Courtney
shared this idea
It is certainly a nice idea in a lot of ways, and Jesse’s use case example is good one.
On the other side, allowing 3rd party applications plug into the core Xero application present some quite major security implications. The data we hold on behalf of our customers is considered highly sensitive by us and we ensure we have bank level security across all aspects of our application.
Second to that, we are a design lead and focused company – we want our software to be really easy to use and remain simple and intuitive, so allowing 3rd parties to introduce interface elements into Xero would be something we would need to carefully plan for.
With this in mind, it would be quite an onerous task for us to implement a secure framework that would allow 3rd party applications to interface within Xero, in a sensible way that does not detract from the UI.
It could still be a worthwhile project though – I’d encourage those interested to keep voting for it and also to please leave a comment about your particular use case – this will help inform our decision making.
Ronan
2 comments
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Matt Courtney
commented
Similar to Jesse's use case I'd like to add a button to a the page that displays a customer record to launch a CRM application and pass some parameters to it that will load the customer's details
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Jesse Reynolds
commented
I was really hoping the API would let me do this already. Because Xero can't include a customer reference on generated invoices (eg for BPay) I plan on writing an app to add this to the invoices for each customer, generate the PDF's and email them. But I was hoping to add a button, or link, somewhere in the Xero web interface (in the create / approve invoice workflow) to trigger this.
