WEBSITE PLANNING

Plan for Repeated Integration Notifications

Use an event ledger and a repeat-delivery worksheet to prevent one integration notification from creating duplicate work.

Define the business action first

A webhook is a notification that another system sends to your application. Receiving a notification and completing the associated business task are separate steps. Write down the intended effect: update one order, create one task or record one status. An integration review becomes much clearer when it starts with that observable outcome instead of a generic requirement to connect two apps.

Work through a repeated event

Fictional example: event E-104 reports a change to order O-52. The first delivery creates task T-18. A second delivery of E-104 must find the existing processing record rather than create T-19. A failed first attempt needs a different treatment: the system should resume or retry unfinished work, not mark the event complete just because it was received. Record received, processing, completed and failed separately.

Use an event worksheet

For each integration, document the provider event identifier, business record identifier, expected action, duplicate check, completion evidence, retry owner and retention period. Decide how simultaneous deliveries are handled so two workers cannot both perform the same effect. The developer should also distinguish a repeated event from two different events about the same record; those are not automatically interchangeable.

Verify the provider behavior

Stripe documents duplicate deliveries and says event order is not guaranteed. That is a concrete provider example, not a promise about every integration. Review the actual provider before choosing the retry design. Read Stripe webhook guidance. A staging test should replay a duplicate and a failed attempt with notifications disabled, then compare the business records. North Front Digital can review the intended workflow through custom web applications.