Integration onboarding

This is the path for integration partners: teams building a product that Shepherd clinics turn on. If you’re a clinic building on your own data, you don’t need this; you can self-serve keys (see Authentication).

Here’s what to expect, start to finish.

1. NDA

Before any sandbox access or detailed API material is shared, we sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement. Share your company name and a contact email to get started; see Contact.

2. Kickoff

The Shepherd product team reviews the integration and gets you set up. This is a good time to tell us your target start date and the milestones you’re working toward, so we can schedule check-ins.

3. Sandbox access

You’ll receive everything you need to build against a safe, production-like environment:

• Integration keys: a public and a private key.
• A demo clinic to build against, with login details and its clinic id.
• Documentation links, including this site and the live API reference.

Build and test against the sandbox base URL https://demo-open-api.shepherd.vet/pav2/. In the demo clinic you can explore settings and add sample clients, patients, and inventory, then validate your integration against realistic workflows.

Note

The Shepherd API is polling-based; webhooks are not available yet. Pull changes on a schedule using the date filters described in Conventions. Integrations are enabled per clinic, so each clinic turns your integration on from their own settings.

4. Build and test

Implement against the sandbox. If a multi-location operator might enable your integration, read Groups and multi-site early; group data sharing changes what your queries return.

5. Verification

When your integration is working, show us. A short demo or screen recording of the key flows lets the team confirm it behaves as expected before it touches real clinic data.

6. Help content

Partner integrations include user-facing help content, so clinics know how to use your integration. You’ll work with Shepherd’s product operations team to put this together. Completed help content is required; a specific named clinic is not, since you build against the demo clinic.

7. API Service Agreement

Once your integration is verified, we send the API Service Agreement. It’s signed before moving to production.

8. Production

The Shepherd team issues production keys, and clinics can then enable your integration on their accounts. Read production keys from environment variables or a secrets manager, the same as in the sandbox.

9. Beta, then general availability

New integrations go through a beta period (around 30 days) before general availability, which lets early clinics give feedback. When an integration reaches general availability, it’s announced in the Shepherd product update newsletter.

Questions?

Start anything integration-related from the Contact page.