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Overview

Unify is built to support custom data models and huge volumes of data. If you have data that lives in an external data system, you can send it over and use it to power anything within Unify. Examples of data systems you can connect to Unify include:
  • Data warehouses — Snowflake, BigQuery, ClickHouse, Redshift, etc.
  • Databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, etc.
  • Data lakes — S3, Databricks, etc.
Data within Unify is stored in objects. Objects are the building blocks that allow you to store and interact with records in Unify. Every object has a set of attributes which represent the fields that make up the object. You can send external data into objects in Unify. Unify provides a set of standard objects, such as Company and Person, that are used throughout the platform. You can also create custom objects to store data from external sources or represent information that doesn’t fit into standard objects.

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Modeling data

You can insert data directly into the standard Company and Person objects. However, this loses track of where the data came from. It can also lead to lots of custom attributes being created on those standard objects over time, many of which are not applicable for most records. Instead, Unify recommends defining custom objects to represent external data sources. You can create a custom object which aligns with the data source and then create a reference attribute to link it to the standard objects.
ExampleSuppose you have a table of product users in your data warehouse. One thing you could do is insert them directly into the Person object in Unify:
Avoid: Directly inserting external data sources into standard objects.
However, a better strategy is to create a new object in Unify called “Product User” and connect it to the Person object using a reference attribute. Then, insert the product user records into that object instead:
Prefer: Inserting external data sources into custom objects linked to standard objects.
This is how Unify builds its integrations into Salesforce, HubSpot, and more.
This has several benefits. It allows you to connect many data sources to Unify without adding many custom attributes to the standard objects. It also makes it easy to filter data based on whether it came from a specific source or not.

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Getting started

1

Define objects and attributes

The first step is to define the objects and attributes that will store your data. This is how you declare the format of the data and how it relates to other objects.

Manage via API

Create and manage objects, attributes, and records in Unify via API.

Manage via UI

Create and manage objects, attributes, and records within the Unify app.
Once the objects are created, you can create, update, and delete records using the API. They will also become available in any tools that connect to Unify, such as the Hightouch and Fivetran destinations for Unify.
2

Sync data into Unify

Once the objects are created, you can sync data into Unify using the API directly or via a supported integration.

Connect via Hightouch

Sync object records from Hightouch data sources into Unify.

Connect via Fivetran

Sync object records from Fivetran data sources into Unify.

Sync directly via API

Create, update, and link object records using the Unify API and SDKs.