ShortPen
Analytics & DataManage branded links and click analytics through the ShortPen REST API. Agents mint links per campaign and see which placements produced real traffic.
What This Integration Enables
ShortPen is a branded link platform whose centre of gravity is the click record, not the redirect. Most shorteners hand back a total and a country pie chart. Get Link Analytics hands back the events themselves: one record per click with device type, platform, browser, country and referrer, over a date range you choose, for one link or the whole workspace. That difference decides what you can do with the data. Totals can only be read. Events can be joined, and joining is how a placement gets credit for a signup rather than for a visit.
Around that sits enough structure to keep the events meaningful. Links are minted onto connected domains with custom slugs, folders, tags, UTM parameters, password protection, cloaking, referrer hiding and pixel based conversion tracking, and Get Resources resolves the domain, folder, tag and pixel IDs a flow needs before it writes. Get Account Profile reports the organization's enabled features alongside its monthly link and QR quotas with used and remaining counts, so an agent can check its allowance before starting a batch instead of discovering the limit halfway through one. Deletion is soft, so a retired link disappears from listings while its historical analytics stay recoverable. ShortPen publishes no webhooks, so flows here start from a schedule or from the upstream record that caused the link to be needed, and that is usually the right shape anyway: a link exists because a campaign, product or content item exists.
Without FlowRunner
With FlowRunner
Use Case Scenarios
A rebrand that must not destroy the reporting
A product line is renamed and several dozen destinations move. The agent lists the affected links, resolves the new folder and tag IDs with Get Resources, and builds the update. The careful part is the tags. Update Link replaces the tag list with whatever it is sent, so an agent that supplies only the new tag silently strips the campaign and client tags that the last two quarters of reporting are grouped by. The agent builds the full intended set for each link, shows the reporting owner exactly what would be kept and what would vanish, and writes nothing until that comes back approved.
Raw click events into the warehouse
On a nightly schedule the agent calls Get Link Analytics for the previous day across the workspace and pushes the raw events into Google Sheets or a warehouse table. Because each record carries device, platform, browser, country and referrer, the marketing team can join clicks to signups on their own model rather than accepting the shortener's idea of a conversion. The weekly summary that lands in Slack is built from that table, not from a dashboard screenshot.
A batch that respects the allowance
A campaign record in Airtable asks for a link and a QR code per asset. Before it starts, the agent calls Get Account Profile and reads the remaining monthly link and QR allowance. If the batch fits, it runs Create Link per asset into the campaign folder with the right tags and writes each short URL back to its row. If the batch would exhaust the allowance, the agent stops rather than half completing, and reports how far the remaining quota goes so a person can decide what gets a link this month.
Human-in-Loop Highlight
The gate on ShortPen is not the delete, and saying so matters, because the delete is the operation everyone expects to be dangerous. Delete Links is soft: the links vanish from listings and their historical click analytics remain recoverable. The genuinely unrecoverable act is Update Link on a batch. Sending Tag IDs replaces a link's tags with the supplied set, and an empty array clears every tag it had. Tags are what your reports group by, so a batch update that omits them does not break a link, it quietly detaches months of click history from the campaign it belonged to, and ShortPen makes no promise that the tag set you overwrote can be got back. The agent therefore treats any multi link update as a decision to be shown, not run. It builds the diff, counts what is at stake, and asks: "This update repoints 63 links in the Spring folder. 41 of them currently carry the client tag and the supplied set does not include it, so that grouping would be lost. Apply as is, preserve the existing tags, or hold?" A person picks. This is the digital andon cord applied to reporting data: the agent does the enumeration and the diff, and stops the line before the one write whose damage does not show up until somebody opens a report.
Agent Capabilities
8 actionsLinks
4- Create Link Creates a branded link on a connected domain and optionally generates a QR code for it, with custom slugs, folders, tags, UTM and query parameters, password protection, cloaking, referrer hiding and pixel based conversion tracking. Plan limits are enforced, so an exhausted monthly link or QR allowance returns an error rather than a link. Used as the mint step whenever a campaign, product or content record needs a measurable address.
- List Links Returns a paginated list of a workspace's links with ID, destination, short link, redirect type, folder, tags and QR data, up to a hundred per page. Used to build the working set for an audit, a repoint or an analytics pull, since the returned ID is the input every other link operation needs.
- Update Link Updates a link by its numeric ID, changing only the fields supplied. Sending Tag IDs replaces the link's tags with that exact set, and an empty array clears every tag, so a partial payload can remove grouping you meant to keep. The same plan limits and feature checks as creation apply. Used for repoints and retags, behind a reviewed diff when more than one link is involved.
- Delete Links Deletes one or more links belonging to the authenticated organization in a single call. Deletion is soft, so the links leave the listings immediately while their historical click analytics remain recoverable. Used for end of campaign cleanup, and safer here than on most shorteners for exactly that reason.
Analytics
1- Get Link Analytics Retrieves raw click events for a date range, one record per click with device type, platform, browser, country and referrer. Supply a Link ID to narrow to a single link, or omit it for every click in the workspace over the period. Used to export attribution evidence into a warehouse or BI tool where it can be joined to outcomes rather than read as a total.
Account and Resources
3- Get Resources Fetches the organization's supporting records so a flow can resolve the IDs other operations require: connected domains, folders, tags, tracking pixels, or the organization with its workspaces. Used as the resolution step before any create or update that references one of them by number.
- Get Account Profile Returns the API key owner's profile alongside the organization's enabled features and usage quotas, including monthly link and QR allowances with used and remaining counts. Used to check the allowance before a bulk generation run, so a batch either fits or is reported rather than failing partway.
- Ping API Performs an unauthenticated health check to verify DNS, TLS and routing before other operations run, returning a plain text body. Used as the first step of a scheduled job so a network fault is reported as a network fault rather than as a link failure.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can FlowRunner do with ShortPen?
FlowRunner agents can run Create Link, List Links, and Update Link in ShortPen, plus 5 more actions.
Does connecting ShortPen to FlowRunner require OAuth?
No. ShortPen connects to FlowRunner with an API key, no OAuth flow required.
Can ShortPen trigger a FlowRunner workflow automatically?
ShortPen doesn't currently expose triggers in FlowRunner. It connects as an action step inside workflows started by another trigger.
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