Event API overview

The Event API is a real-time notification system based on webhooks, enabling partners to respond to changes as they occur inside the Optum Connections platform.

What is an Event?

An event is something that's already happened vs. a command, which is to issue an instruction for something yet to happen. There are multiple stages that take place in a payment lifecycle and you can think of each of these stages as events.

Refer to Types of events for a detailed look at the different event types and definitions of each.

What does the Event API do?

The terms event API and event-driven API are sometimes used interchangeably, but the end result is the same: The user is getting the data in real-time as it becomes available. In practical terms, the Event API:

• Enables subscribing to events. Refer to Subscribing to events
• Notifies subscribers of events. Refer to Responding to an Event

Example: Payment loading events

If we attempt to load a check payment, the payment may either load successfully or it may fail to load. If the check loads successfully, the event is Payment Loading Completed. However, if the check fails to load for any number of reasons, the event is Payment Loading Failed.

In the chart below, you can see that once we receive the approval to load the payment (which in itself is represented by the event Payment Loading Requested), the payment begins to move through one of several possible scenarios: