Application and Entity Management

In the context of CPaaS X, Applications and Entities are two types of building blocks that can be used by Infobip clients in a modular way. Configure these building blocks using the Infobip API to create structures that apply to your business needs, and then apply a more modular approach to large-scale messaging and reporting for your platform.

Applications and Entities are designed to be flexible to manage configurations and resources in whatever manner meets your needs. They are similar in the sense that the same configuration can be applied but different in that they will represent different 'actors or objects' in your world.

You can associate Applications and Entities with Resources that you own, allowing you to define your business assets (environment, customers, resources) on the Infobip platform so you do not have to manage the complexity of CPaaS execution.

Read on to learn more about Applications and Entities, or get started creating applications and entities using the API or web interface.

Application

Use Applications to represent, on the Infobip Platform, an application, environment, use case, or some other object used on your system. If you have a Production environment and Test environment, these could be represented, and their configuration defined, in a Production Application and Test Application.

Or perhaps, you solve different use cases for your customers, say a Marketing use case and a Transactional use case where each use case has different requirements and configurations. You could choose to represent these by two different Applications (or more depending on how many use cases you support).

All this extensibility can be done without adding complexity to your account structure.

Use Applications as stand-alone objects or in conjunction with Entities and Resources.

For every application, clients define and assign a unique identifier called an Application ID.  This gives clients full control over sending, managing, and reporting on their messaging or calls. For example, what notifications and reports they want to receive or how they want Infobip to manage their Sender resources and sending strategies.

Entity

An entity, on the Infobip platform, can be used to represent an object you distinguish clearly on your system. For example, use it to track your customers' consumption on the Infobip platform. Companies with 10s, 100s, or 1000s of customers find it very challenging to reconcile traffic and billing to each of those customers during the billing cycle and it is very resource heavy to try to unpick this data. Or perhaps you have different cost centers in your company and want to track traffic and cost for each. An Entity can represent either; be it customers, cost centers, or indeed, whatever you want it to represent.

For every Entity, clients define and assign a unique identifier called an Entity ID.  This gives clients full control over sending, managing, and reporting on their messaging or calls. For example, which notifications and reports they want to receive, or how they want Infobip to manage their Sender resources.

Entities can be used as stand-alone objects or together with Applications and Resources.

Examples

The following examples show a high-level overview of Applications and Entities being used in conjunction.

The first image shows how a client has used Applications for their two different use cases and entity for their customers.

The next example shows how a client is using Applications to define their different environments and entities for their different cost centers.

To get started and create an Application and Entity configuration, head over to the Application and Entity API (opens in a new tab) documentation to learn more.

Create

You can create and manage Applications and Entities using API or directly from the Infobip platform.

API

Create and manage your Applications and Entities using the API. The Application and Entity API (opens in a new tab) documentation contains all you will need to create and manage applications and entities for your particular use case using the requests below.

API	Information	Request
Create application	Create an application associated with the specified applicationID.	POST/provisioning/1/associations
Create entity	Create an entity associated with the specified entityID.	POST /provisioning/1/entities

Any changes you make using the API will automatically be visible in Infobip system.

Web Interface

You can create applications and/or entities directly from the web interface. Navigate to Developer Tools > Applications and entities to access the applications and entities area.

From the applications and entities area, you can see all active applications and entities for your instance and any resources associated.

Toggle between the Application and Entities tabs and click Create Application (or Create Entity). Set the ID (this cannot be modified later) and add an optional alias.

Your application or entity has been created and it will be visible in the Applications and Entities area.

You can then start linking entities and active resources for your particular use case. The example below shows an example application that has 2 entities and some resources already associated.

Associate Resources to Applications and Entities

After you have created applications and entities you can then explicitly associate them to a resource if required by your use case.

You can associate a resource to applications together with entities, or separately.

Note, you must explicitly associate a resource to an application and/or entity if you want to use certain features, like Sender Strategies, or functionality like Inbound messages or calls.  It is also possible to implicitly associate a resource to an application and/or entity in any send request that supports applicationId or entityId, so long as that application and/or entity has been created.

Implicitly associating a resource means that reports for that request will contain that applicationId and/or entityId.

Manage

You can manage your applications and entities through the web interface or using the API.

Edit

Due to the interconnected nature of CPaaS X, applications and entities have limited scope for modification. You can edit the alias of an application and/or entity, however you cannot modify the ID. Any changes that you make will immediately be reflected in the system.

Use the modify application (opens in a new tab) and modify entity (opens in a new tab) APIs to edit applications and entities via API. Alternatively, click Edit Application (or Edit Entity) when you are viewing your applications or entities in the web interface.

Delete

If you need to delete an application and/or entity, you can do so via API and in the Infobip platform. However, before you complete this step there are a few important considerations to remember.

Be careful when deleting applications and entities as any linked configuration like resource associations, sender strategies, and subscriptions will also be deleted.

If you have associated a resource (e.g. number, or domain, etc.) to an application and/or entity then that resource association will also be removed. The resources can then be re-applied to a new application and/or entity whenever you like.

Also, if you delete applications and/or entities associated with a resource used for inbound traffic that inbound traffic Infobip sends to you will also be affected.  The inbound traffic will no longer be associated with the application and/or entity so you will no longer receive applicationID and/or entityID in the messages.

Review all resources and configurations linked to the application and/or entity before you delete. For full control, first, delete any configurations and de-associate resources manually before deleting the application or entity.

When you are finally ready to delete an application or entity then click the recycle bin button next to an application or entity on the Applications and entities area of the Infobip platform. Alternatively, use the delete application (opens in a new tab) and/or delete entity (opens in a new tab) API requests.

API Keys with Application and Entity

For extra security, API Keys can be linked (opens in a new tab) to an Application, Entity, or Application/Entity pair.  When this is done, the linked API key can be used only for certain endpoints (sending, reporting, logs) giving extra separation and protection for traffic-related requests while preventing access to management APIs like Numbers, Applications & Entities, etc. This means that if an API key is compromised for traffic linked to an Application/Entity, then no other traffic is impacted.  Plus, remediation by revoking the compromised API key, only needs to be done for a subset of traffic.

It also means that you can share some API keys widely and restrict sharing for others, depending on your setup or use case.  For example, if you have a Test and Production environment represented by two Applications then you may want to create and link two API Keys to each Application.  Sharing the API key for Production can be severely restricted while the API key for Test can be shared more widely.

Standard, unlinked API Key in a Request with Application and Entity

API Key Restriction

You can restrict API keys to particular Applications and/or Entities depending on your use case. This is a good way to ensure that access is controlled at an application or entity level.

If we try to use API Key2 with the BigCola entity, then we will receive an unauthorized access response when we make the request.

If we try to use API Key3 with the McBurger entity, then we will receive an unauthorized access response when we make the request.

Note, it is still possible to use API Key1 in both requests, but the idea is to keep this as a main API key with access to all Public endpoints.

API Keys Endpoints List

See below for the list of endpoints where authorization is supported for API keys linked to Applications and/or Entities.

Channel	Endpoint	Function
SMS	/sms/2/text/advanced#POST	Send SMS message
	/sms/2/binary/advanced#POST	Send binary SMS message
	/sms/1/inbox/reports#GET	Get inbound SMS messages
	/sms/1/reports#GET	Get outbound SMS message delivery reports
	/sms/1/logs#GET	Get outbound SMS message logs
MMS	/mms/1/advanced#POST	Send MMS message
	/mms/1/inbox/reports#GET	Get inbound MMS messages
	/mms/1/reports#GET	Get outbound MMS message delivery reports
Email	/email/3/send#POST	Send fully featured email
	/email/1/reports#GET	Email delivery reports
	/email/1/logs#GET	Get email logs
WhatsApp	/whatsapp/1/message/audio#POST	Send WhatsApp audio message
	/whatsapp/1/message/contact#POST	Send WhatsApp contact message
	/whatsapp/1/message/document#POST	Send WhatsApp document message
	/whatsapp/1/message/image#POST	Send WhatsApp image message
	/whatsapp/1/message/interactive/buttons#POST	Send WhatsApp interactive buttons message
	/whatsapp/1/message/interactive/list#POST	Send WhatsApp interactive list message
	/whatsapp/1/message/interactive/location-request#POST	Send WhatsApp interactive location request message
	/whatsapp/1/message/interactive/multi-product#POST	Send WhatsApp interactive multi-product message
	/whatsapp/1/message/interactive/order-details#POST	Send WhatsApp interactive order-details message
	/whatsapp/1/message/interactive/order-status#POST	Send WhatsApp interactive order-status message
	/whatsapp/1/message/interactive/product#POST	Send WhatsApp interactive product message
	/whatsapp/1/message/location#POST	Send WhatsApp location message
	/whatsapp/1/message/sticker#POST	Send WhatsApp sticker message
	/whatsapp/1/message/template#POST	Send WhatsApp template message
	/whatsapp/1/message/text#POST	Send WhatsApp text message
	/whatsapp/1/message/video#POST	Send WhatsApp video message
Google Business Messages	/gbm/1/messages#POST	Send GBM message
	/gbm/1/logs#GET	Get message logs
Zalo	/zalo/2/messages#POST	Send Zalo messages
RCS	/ott/rcs/1/message#POST	Send RCS message
	/ott/rcs/1/message/bulk#POST	Send bulk RCS message
	/ott/rcs/1/message/template#POST	Send RCS template message
	/ott/rcs/1/message/template/bulk#POST	Send bulk RCS template message
Viber	/viber/1/message/text#POST	Send Viber text message(s)
	/viber/1/message/image#POST	Send Viber image message
	/viber/1/message/file#POST	Send Viber file message
	/viber/1/message/video#POST	Send Viber video message
Apple Messages for Business	/apple-mfb/1/events#POST	Send Apple Events
	/apple-mfb/1/logs#GET	Get message logs
	/apple-mfb/1/messages#POST	Send Apple Messages for Business
LINE	/line/1/messages#POST	Send a LINE message
Instagram Direct Messages	/instagram/1/logs#GET	Get outbound Instagram message logs Early access
	/instagram/1/messages	Send a Instagram message
Messenger	/messenger/1/logs#GET	Get outbound Messenger message logs
	/messenger/1/messages#POST	Send a Messenger message