Syncaroo actively helps ops, sales, events, and exec teams across coworking businesses implement managed integrations that help achieve strategic objectives.
We’ve previously covered the benefits of both individual managed integrations and the management of your integration infrastructure.
But today we’re going to dig into our simple framework for testing your integrations.
After all, crossing your fingers and hoping nothing will break isn’t a reliable long-term implementation strategy, right? RIGHT?!
Red, Yellow, Green Tests
Using the familiar traffic light colors, you can start thinking of what shouldn’t ever happen, what should intentionally cause a pause, or what should successfully pass through.
To illustrate this best, let’s consider real-time booking integrations.
A red test should always “stop”.
For example, for most types of workspace, someone trying to book for 1 am on a Saturday should not be allowed to proceed.
These tests let you verify that your business rules are detected and actually taken into account by your integrations.
You could extend this to test for settings and rules that apply to all bookings across your business (e.g. for bookings after 6 pm, before 6 am, or on weekends).
Yellow tests should fail, due to specific clashes.
For example, you probably don’t want two separate bookings clashing for the same meeting room at the same time.
Use these to test for known clashes with specific events, existing bookings, or blocked out dates/holidays.
Ideally, the third-party platform will present alternative rooms/times to best serve the customer.
Green tests should succeed – and demonstrate value.
For example, is the room just “blocked” in a calendar for new bookings, or do you have enough information to streamline other tasks?
Use these tests to ensure you’re seeing the booking in your management system, that there’s enough information for your ops/community team to facilitate a streamlined check-in experience, and that your accounting and reconciliation processes run smoothly.
Pro-tip: It’s not enough to just see the booking “in the calendar” if your front-of-house, onboarding, and accounting team all look elsewhere to get their important tasks done.
Beyond bookings
While we used real-time bookings as an example here, you should definitely plan and run Red, Yellow, Green testing across all your important data-syncing integrations.
Whether it’s keeping your CRM in sync, or automating WiFi (de)provisioning, ensuring access control is in your full control, deploying a vibe-coding-ready data infrastructure, or hiring a swarm of AI agents – knowing and checking what should or shouldn’t work is a best practice we think every growing flex space business should master.
Not just a setup checklist
We recommend running RYG tests every quarter or every six months, or more frequently if systems are mission-critical.
Too much to think about across all your integrations and data-syncs?
We’d recommend checking out Syncaroo’s Fractional CIO offering.
