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Sheet SYN-04 — Network Operations Manual

Integrations & the Plugin Bridge

Connecting vendor platforms through the plugin bridge: the add wizard, credentials, sync cadence, and run-level visibility.

Audience: Administrators connecting vendor platforms Focus: Vendor onboarding and sync operations

Scope

Integrations are how a tenant connects a vendor platform to Synapse. This guide covers adding one, keeping its credentials safe, setting its cadence, and reading its sync runs.

Multi-vendor through the plugin bridge

Synapse talks to vendor platforms through a plugin bridge. Each vendor plugin declares its capabilities and its credential requirements, and the product surfaces adapt to that declaration automatically: a new plugin registered on the platform appears in the add wizard with no other change. Vendors such as Cisco Meraki (inventory, wireless, and health), Fortinet (inventory), and Palo Alto Strata (inventory) are examples of what the bridge carries, not a fixed limit.

Adding an integration

The add wizard walks through four decisions:

  1. Pick a vendor. The wizard lists every registered plugin with its capabilities.
  2. Fill in credentials. The form is generated from the plugin’s own credential schema. Secret fields render as password inputs and are never shown again after saving. Typical schemas are an API key plus an optional vendor organization pin or base URL override.
  3. Pick the owning organization and a name. The organization is Synapse’s own structure, not the vendor’s.
  4. Set the sync cadence. The default is every eight hours, with a five-minute floor.

Credentials are encrypted at rest and never returned by any later read. There is no credential reveal or edit: to change a credential, you replace it.

If a vendor’s plan family is not included in the tenant’s plan, the wizard disables creation and shows an upgrade hint instead of failing after the fact.

Testing and syncing

  • Test checks the stored credentials without changing anything.
  • Sync now runs the full sync immediately and reports the resulting run.
  • Scheduled sync runs automatically on the configured cadence.

Every sync produces a run with ordered steps. Each step records its phase, status, and any error, and the run as a whole lands as success, partial, or failed. When an integration degrades, the run detail is the first place to look.

Operating rules worth knowing

  • Creating an integration and running a sync are both audited.
  • The integrations list shows each integration’s health, its last sync status, and per-row test and sync actions.
  • Read access to integration management is deliberately restricted: managing vendor connections is an administrative act.