To connect an external system to Blink, you need to create an app in the Blink Admin portal. There are two kinds of apps and the one you pick will determine which APIs you can use and how you authenticate.

• App Identity: is a participant in Blink Chat. Use it to create chats, manage chat participants, send messages and react to what people say.
• Legacy App: is used to deliver content to the Blink Feed (alerts, updates, notifications) to users and teams, and to retrieve Blink Forms and their submissions.

Both are created from Manage Apps in the Blink Admin portal by navigating to Created Apps tab and clicking Create app.

Which one should I use?

Use App Identity if you need to:

• Post messages into a Blink chat (e.g. shift alerts, reminders)
• Build a chatbot or two-way conversation with employees
• React when someone posts a message or joins/leaves a chat

Use Legacy App if you need to:

• Send rich, one-way posts to users' Feed (CardKit cards, images, attachments)
• Let users choose which types of posts they receive from you
• Retrieve Blink Forms and form submissions

If your integration needs both today, create one of each.

Coming later: App Identities will eventually support the same endpoints as Legacy Apps, including the Feed and Form APIs. For new integrations, start with an App Identity where it covers your use case.

What an App Identity does

An App Identity is the "account" your integration uses to talk to Blink Chat. It has its own name, tagline and logo, and shows up as a member in the chats it creates or joins.

With an App Identity you can:

• Create chats and add Blink users to them.
• Send messages, with markdown formatting and link previews.
• Receive a webhook whenever something happens in a chat your app belongs to, then fetch the message details.

What a Legacy App does

A Legacy App publishes feed events to Blink users and teams, and gives you access to Blink Forms data. Posts are built with CardKit and can include images, attachments, reactions, comments and push notifications.

With a Legacy App you can:

• Send, update and archive feed events.
• Group posts into post categories that users can switch on or off.
• Target specific users or teams by ID.
• Retrieve forms and form submissions (Get Forms, Get Form Submissions)