Glossary
A brief glossary of the main terms used in the platform.
While we’ve tried to make as much of the Invopop API as intuitive as possible, this brief glossary should help clarify what we mean when using certain words about the platform.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| API Key | This is the code used to authenticate requests to the Invopop API. These should be kept in a secure and secret location. |
| App | Applications (apps) add services and functionality to Invopop workspaces. They may require authentication with an external provider and once an app is configured, they can enable “steps” that can be added to workflows |
| Customer | Customers are org.Part objects containing details about who should receive the document. |
| Document | In a general context this refers to PDFs or JSON documents. This is also the name of the property inside GOBL Envelopes that uses a schema.Object to wrap around the payload. |
| Envelope | More accurately, a “GOBL Envelope” is a wrapper around a payload that adds a header and set of digital signatures. See the GOBL Envelope for more details. |
| GOBL | Stands for “Go Business Language” and is the library and schema we created in order to simplify the creation of electronic invoices and other structured documents using JSON as the primary representation format. For more details, so the gobl.org site. |
| Intent | These represent the link between a job and a specific connector that needs to be executed. They contain a list of events tracking the execution process. |
| Job | A job represents the link between an Envelope and a Workflow. It contains an Intent for each of the integrations that have been executed. |
| Object | In the context of a GOBL document, this refers to a model defined in the GOBL schema that can be used standalone or in the doc property of an envelope. |
| Position | Every user has a “position” inside a company. |
| Provider | Not normally referred to by the API, but worth mentioning due to their importance to Invopop. A Provider is the name we’ve given to the service that is used to execute a task. Some providers are global, most are region specific. |
| Regime | Otherwise known as the “tax regime” is typically the country or potentially state where a company is fiscally registered. It determines the rules that will be applied to a GOBL document, and which providers and thus tasks will be available for the company. |
| Sequence | Refers to the service that is responsible for managing sequences, sequential codes that are guaranteed to be ordered and suitable to be included in legal documents. |
| Series | Part of the sequence service, a series contains a definition that defines prefixes, indexes, and suffixes used to generate sequential codes. |
| Silo | Our name for the GOBL Envelope storage service. (We like this name because it’s short). It’s also responsible for persisting attachments with envelopes, such as PDFs generated by task. |
| Step | A single step inside a workflow that performs an action on the GOBL document being processed. |
| Supplier | A supplier is an org.Party instance of a legal entity or person on behalf of whom invoices should be issued. |
| Transform | This service is responsible for executing jobs using the defined workflow and it’s integrations. Sometimes this will be called the “Transform Engine”. |
| User | Used to grant access to a company, it’ll link an email address with a person. A user may have multiple positions at different companies. |
| UUID | Universally Unique Identifier. Value that is guaranteed to be unique across all devices and systems. Used to reliably identify fields and allows the relation between documents. |
| Workflow | A key component of the Transform engine. The Workflow defines a set of integrations that should be executed by a job. |
| Workspace | Dedicated space where you organize and isolate your workflows, documents, and API keys. Information in a workspace can’t be accessed or shared across other workspaces. Each Organization can have multiple workspaces to separate data by company, country, or use case. |
| Organization | Represents your company or team. It groups users and workspaces, manages member permissions, and handles billing and account settings. |
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