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Navigation: Designing an App > Adding Behaviors

Connect Commands and Integration

The Connect and the Connect and Search commands can call a connection from the app. Connections allow inserting, selecting, or updating data using send or receive parameters.

Connections can be used for:

•Background lookups

•Popup lookups

•Creating a new instance of a different app and passing data into that new instance

•Updating data in an existing instance of a different app

•Writing to database tables

•Calling stored procedures

•Passing data from the app to a Web Service

Before you can drop in a Connect command and configure it, you must first set up a connection and a connection action. The exception to this rule is with the System Meta Data connection. For more information on this type of connection see the System Meta Data Connection topic. For more information on setting up connections and using them in your apps, see the Calling the Connection from an App topic.

If you are using a connect command to Insert, Update or Delete data in a database when the app is submitted, it is recommended that you use the behavior event 'App submitted successfully'. By doing this you can be sure that the data in the app and in the database remain synched.

A scenario that presents a risk and should, therefore, be avoided would be to include the Insert, Update or Delete Connect command just before a Submit Data command, normally on the press of a button.

In this scenario it is possible that the Connect command would update the database successfully but an invalid format in a field (for example Email, URL, Phone, Custom or Date) would prevent the app from being submitted after the successful database update.

The following video tutorials cover integration with third party data sources such as databases, directory services and others. Before this type of integration can be included in your app design it's first necessary for system administrators to define the integration parameters in the Connection Dashboard. To learn more about these topics check out the Connection Video Tutorials
	Connect & Search (4 min)	Watch this tutorial to see how to allow app users to search for a record and then import data from that record into their app instance fields.
	Filtering using App Fields (2 min)	The Connect & Search tutorial, above, demonstrates how a user can filter look-up results directly in the search dialogue. Watch this video to see an alternative approach to filtering using field data in an app.
	Populating Drop-Down & List Objects (5 min)	An alternative to the Connect & Search option is to populate drop-down or list objects with data from the data source in run-time and then allow the app user to select from that up to date list.
	Populating Tables (3 min)	Watch this tutorial to learn how to populate data from an external data source into multiple columns in a table object.
	Linked Connections (4 min)	If the data you need to display in your app is coming from different data sources, or if a selection in the app is necessary before more data can be returned then it might be necessary to link connections together. Watch this tutorial to see an example of how that can be managed.
	Insert Connection (5 min)	The Insert Connect command will, as its name suggests, insert a new record into a data source. The data source could be any of the different types, from database through to CSV files. Watch this tutorial to see how to specify the Insert command when designing your apps.