Updates in Connectors | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• An overview of the new Connectors features from the Fall ‘23 Release

New Release Features

For a full list of features, visit the Fall ‘23 Release Notes .

Sign up for our upcoming webinar for a roundup of the new features!

Dry Run and Run Results UI

With Dry Runs in Connectors, users can now review Connector run results and confirm the potential changes prior to applying the updates in Yext Content.

Additionally, we have introduced a new Run Results UI where users can view all the important information users need to to effectively monitor and manage a Connector run.

Now, when you click into a connector you can click View Details to view a new page that is dedicated to displaying the results of a Connector run. This new page will provide detail on the status of the run, any errors that occurred, and the outcome of the run — such as entity updates, creations, or failures. This information will be available for both dry runs and active runs.

How This Impacts You

Dry Runs and a Results page will significantly improve the user experience for creating and managing connectors. Customers can now test their connector configurations, and gain insight into how the connector will impact their data before the connector automatically applies changes. This provides users with more control and will minimize data quality risks while ingesting content.

Feature Availability

To turn this feature on in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Fall ‘23: Dry Runs in Connectors (early access).

Detailed connector run data is available for any connector runs that occurred after November 8, 2023.

Additional Resources

• Dry Runs reference doc.

Connector Updates

This release we have release a series of updates to the Connectors framework:

Apply a Template Transform

If you have a template already created in your account, you can leverage the Apply Template Fields transform to apply fields from an existing template to entities in your connector run. You can add all fields, or select a subset of fields you would like to add. You can also add a condition to this transform if you only want to apply templates to new entities.

Automapping

When selecting an entity type on initial connector configuration, or updating the entity type of an existing connector, we will automatically map fields from your connector to fields in Yext Content for that entity type.

Ingesting Multiple Entity Types

Now, on the Map Fields screen you can select a set of entity types you would like to ingest via the Connector.

We will also respect field mapping by entity type. So, if there are fields that are present on some entities and not others, we will map the field for relevant entity types, and ignore the mapping for entities that do not have a corresponding field enabled.

Linked Connector as a Trigger

You can now set up a connector to run when another connector within your account has completed a run. For example, if you want a blog connector to run after a help article connector, because the blog may link to help article entities and you want to sequence the connector runs.

To do this, you will click on Schedule & Trigger Settings in your connector configuration and select Add a Linked Connector as the trigger, and select the connector you would like to have trigger the run of the connector you are currently editing.

How This Impacts You

These new features will help save you time, and make the management of connectors even easier.

• Automapping will save you a lot of time, as you no longer have to manually map each field.
• The ability to ingest multiple entity types means you can create one connector to ingest a variety of data that you may store in a single source, instead of having to create a connector for each entity type.
• Linked Connector as a trigger allows you to easily manage connected data to keep everything updated in a relevant sequence.

Feature Availability

Each feature listed above is behind a different product feature. To turn these on in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select any of the following:

• Fall ‘23: Apply Template Transform in Connectors (early access)
• Fall ‘23: Auto-map Columns to Fields in Connectors (early access)
• Fall ‘23: Connector Triggers (early access)
• Fall ‘23: Map to Multiple Entity Types in a Single Connector (early access)

Additional Resources

• Map Fields reference doc
• Transform Options reference doc.