What is the Ecosystem?

When we built our Podium platform, we designed it to be the core of independent schools’ communication solutions. We’ve provided the foundation and many of the essential tools to change the way schools think about their processes.

 

Our goal is to create an open market for innovation in the K-12 space in which the best ideas rise to the top. Schools are then served by multiple companies under one umbrella.

 

To accomplish this objective, we needed to establish three key elements:

 

1. An open API (application programming interface) that enables other applications to interact with Podium programmatically.

 

2. A commitment to sharing indicated by the resources we have allocated to expand our service-oriented architecture and allow easy bi-directional connectivity between data systems.

 

3. An Ecosystem agreement, which stipulates the common expectations for all our partners. The agreement ensures that every company who joins us pledges to comply with prevailing data privacy standards and protect our clients' data.

 

Our Ecosystem is not simply a list of links to trusted members and partners; it has more substance to it. We work with our partners to mutually develop the proper connections that deliver added functionality to platform. To do so, we have expanded our service-oriented architecture (SOA) and created SOAP-based interfaces to allow other platforms to communicate with Podium.

 

Integration occurs at one of two levels:

 

1. Channel/application integration – Data supplied by our partner appears in a Podium portal, created by WhippleHill’s design team.

 

2. Data integration - We have exposed our Web services interfaces to read and write data, and both accept and produce full or partial data feeds.

Are you a school software solutions provider interested in integrating with WhippleHill? Contact Integration Product Manager Jill Judd at jillj@whipplehill.com to begin the process.
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Glossary of Terms

Channel - A block of content-display space either on the Portal or a Podium page.

LDAP - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. LDAP is used to authenticate Podium users against a database other than WhippleHill’s.

REST - Representational State Transfer. A style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems.

SAML - Security Assertion Markup Language. An XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between an identity provider and service provider. SAML has become the definitive standard underlying many Single Sign-On solutions.

SOA - Service-oriented architecture. An IT infrastructure that allows applications to exchange data.

SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol. The protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over computer networks. SOAP is the foundation of the Web services protocol.

SSO - Single Sign-On. A system designed to minimize the number of times a single user must log into multiple applications.

Web service - A software system that is accessed over the Internet and executed on a remote system hosting the requested services.

XML - Extensible Markup Language. A general-purpose specification for creating custom markup language that allows information systems to share structured data via the Internet.