This article provides a step-by-step guide to becoming a certified Inlet partner. It explains how to prepare your integration, complete certification, and confirm that your integration meets the technical and operational requirements for using the Inlet API in production.
1. Prepare your integration
Before requesting certification, partners should ensure that their API integration is complete and tested in their development environment.
The certification process verifies that the integration follows the requirements described in the Inlet API Integration Guide.
Partners should also review the API documentation and confirm that their system correctly sends requests, processes responses, stores returned values, and handles errors.
2. Certification levels
Inlet uses different certification scopes depending on the complexity of the integration.
Standard API certification
Standard certification applies to integrations that create, update, and revoke access for relatively simple booking flows.
This usually covers:
- Creating access for a booking
- Updating existing access
- Cancelling or revoking access
- Handling returned access codes, links, and reference IDs
- Error handling and retry behavior
- Logging and monitoring
- Re-syncing or bulk-updating access when requested by Inlet
PMS and complex integration certification
PMS and complex integration certification applies when the integration supports more advanced booking journeys or operational flows.
This may include:
- Hotel PMS integrations
- Company, agency, or tour operator bookings
- Group bookings
- Multi-room bookings
- Room changes
- Check-in and check-out status updates
- Common-door access
- Meeting rooms, conference rooms, or other bookable resources
- Booking types where guest communication should be suppressed
For these integrations, Inlet certifies the specific user journeys supported by the partner system. Only scenarios that have been tested and approved are included in the certified scope.
If the integration does not support a specific flow, such as group bookings, common-door access, or PMS check-in/check-out status, this should be documented during certification.
For more details, see PMS Certification for Inlet API Integrations.
3. Submit certification request
When the integration is ready, submit a certification request to the Inlet team.
Include:
- Company name
- Integration name
- Supported use cases
- Whether the integration is standard, PMS, or complex
- Contact details for the technical responsible
The Inlet team will then schedule a certification review meeting.
4. Certification review
During the review meeting, the partner demonstrates the integration and the Inlet team verifies that the API calls and supported user journeys work correctly.
The partner should be prepared to demonstrate the following:
- Creation of access for a booking, such as an access code or access link
- Update or revocation of existing access
- Error handling and retry behavior if a request fails
- Re-syncing or bulk-updating existing access when Inlet requests it, including storing and using any newly returned access code
Typical topics reviewed include:
- API request structure
- Handling of API responses
- Use and storage of returned IDs, codes, and links
- Error handling and retry behavior
- Logging and monitoring
- Customer data validation
Additional review for PMS and complex integrations
For PMS and complex integrations, the review may also include the specific booking journeys supported by the partner system.
This may include demonstrating flows such as:
- Creating a standard booking
- Updating dates, guest details, or room assignment
- Cancelling a booking or marking it as no-show
- Handling room changes
- Handling early check-in or late check-out
- Creating access for company, agency, group, or multi-room bookings
- Suppressing guest communication where required
- Creating access for common doors or other bookable resources
- Logging and retrying failed create, update, cancellation, or revocation events
If any issues are identified, the partner must correct them before certification can be granted.
5. Certification approval
Once the integration meets the requirements, it will be certified and approved for production use.
Production credentials can then be issued and the integration may be deployed to live customers.
For PMS and complex integrations, Inlet will confirm which scenarios are included in the certified scope. Features or user journeys that have not been tested are not included in the certification.
In some cases, Inlet may request re-certification if the integration changes significantly or if major issues are detected.
Re-certification may be required after changes to booking logic, communication rules, room-change handling, common-door logic, group booking behavior, error handling, or other certified flows.
Integration checklist
Before requesting certification, ensure the following items are implemented.
API integration
Access handling
Data validation
Error handling and reliability
Monitoring
PMS and complex integrations
Complete this section if the integration supports PMS workflows or other complex booking journeys.