Fire ExactTarget Triggered Email from Salesforce

Question

If I want Salesforce events (such as status change on a custom object) to send Exact Target emails, looks like ExactTarget Triggered Emails are the way to go. As I understand it, ExactTarget Triggered Emails are triggered by a call to the ET API.

However searching around it seems that its not very easy to call the ET SOAP API from Apex. Apparently the recommend approach is to build an in-the-middle web service in .NET or something, and then go:

Apex -> in-the-middle web service -> Exact Target API

Is that still the case or does the new ExactTarget REST API make it possible to call ET directly from Apex code? In which case, is there an example somewhere?

Answer 1

In order to use SOAP services - that is the current workaround. To perform triggered sends, there is a REST route for that. Create the triggered send definition in the exacttarget account first, then use the following:

https://www.exacttargetapis.com/messaging/v1/messageDefinitionSends/key:{customerKey}/send

{
    "From": {
        "Address": "[email protected]",
        "Name": "Code@"
    },
    "To": {
        "Address": "[email protected]",
        "SubscriberKey": "[email protected]",
        "ContactAttributes": {
            "SubscriberAttributes": {
                "Region": "West",
                "City": "Indianapolis",
                "State": "IN"
            }
        }
    }
}