In this guide, we walk you through everything you need to extract employment data about your users using our API. This includes:

• A general overview of the data flow
• Generating your API keys
• Providing a webhook URL (to receive events from Belvo)
• Creating a link
• Getting employment and owner information

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What data can I get about my users?

For a detailed list of data that our Employment Record API returns for your users, see our:

• Dedicated Employment Data (Colombia) guide
• API Reference

General flow of data

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Average time to retrieve employment data

The average time it takes for Belvo to retrieve employment data from an employment institution and send you a webhook event is 15 seconds. However, this can vary depending on the institution's responsiveness and their current request load.

Belvo uses asynchronous workflows to improve your data flow (check the diagram below).

Whenever you create a link, Belvo automatically extracts all the Employment data for you in the background, and once we have all the data, we notify you via a webhook that the data is ready to be retrieved (see the purple WEBHOOK sections in the diagram below). So that we can notify you once the data is ready, you need to provide a URL to where we can send events.

Generate API Keys

To use our API, you will need to generate some API keys to authenticate all your request.

To generate your API keys:

1. Sign in to your Belvo Dashboard.
2. Choose the Production environment to create your API keys.

   Note: Currently, employment data for Colombia is only supported in the production environment.

3. Go to Developers -> API Keys.
4. Click on Generate API Keys, which will automatically generate your API keys.
5. In the pop-up, copy and securely save the values for Secret ID and Secret Password.
   Note: In the pop-up, you also have the option of forking Belvo's API collection. For more information on how to use Postman and Belvo's collection, see our Getting started in 10 minutes guide.

✳️ Done! You've just generated your API keys! But before you can start making API calls, you just need to set up a webhook where we can send events to.

Add a webhook URL

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Just testing out?

If you're just starting your integration and aren't sure how to get a URL for a webhook, you can use a service like Pipedream. Check out our Getting started in 10ish minutes to see how it's done!

To set up a new webhook:

1. Sign in to your Belvo Dashboard.
2. Choose the Production environment to receive webhook events.
3. Go to Developers -> Webhooks.
4. Click +New webhook.
5. Fill in the New webhook form with the required information.
   1. URL: the URL to receive the webhook notifications.
   2. Authorization: an optional bearer token to use if your URL is protected.
6. Click Create webhook.

✳️ Done! You've now created a webhook and can start creating links and receiving events!

Whitelisting Belvo IP addresses

Belvo will send events to your webhook URL from the IP addresses listed below. Your security team may want to add these to their list of IP addresses that they allow events from (otherwise, your system may block events from reaching your system).

• 3.130.254.46
• 18.220.61.186
• 18.223.45.212

Create a link

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What's a link?

A link is Belvo's term for a connection between your user (CURP) and the employment institution (IMSS). Whenever you want to extract information from a new user, you'll need to create a link.

To create a link, you just need to make the following POST Register a new link request:

curl --location 'https://production.belvo.com/api/links/' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic BASE64(SECRET_ID:SECRET_PASSWORD) \
--data '{see examples below}'

{
  "institution": "pila_co_employment",
  "username": "valid_cedula_de_ciudadania",
  "fetch_resources": ["EMPLOYMENTS","OWNERS"],
  "access_mode": "single",
  "external_id": "COHORT_32_User_6790023X5"
}

{
    "id": "74c01cb4-edf1-44d6-8876-b1dc2aebcb14",
    "institution": "pila_co_employment",
    "access_mode": "single",
    "status": "valid",
    "refresh_rate": null,
    "created_by": "6e9be884-4781-4143-b673-aca02475ee8c",
    "last_accessed_at": "2024-06-26T16:25:54.344113Z",
    "external_id": "COHORT_32",
    "created_at": "2024-06-26T16:25:54.334413Z",
    "institution_user_id": "BidIxnZkKvQx0_F0oSYVx6Jnsh4Zmoat2ot2iOoG018=",
    "credentials_storage": "365d",
    "stale_in": null,
    "fetch_resources": [
        "EMPLOYMENT",
        "OWNERS"
    ]
}

✳️ Done! Belvo will now connect to the institution and validate that the provided Cédula de Ciudadanía is correct. Once validated and your link is created, Belvo will asynchronously load the employment data. We will send you a webhook once we have retrieved the data for the given link, and you can then extract it with a get request.

Wait for a webhook and get employment data

As soon as your banking recurrent link is created, we asynchronously load the employment information available for the link and will send you the following webhook:

In the webhook payload we include the number of employments found for the link.

{
  "webhook_id": "03d1ca0d62db4f769488265d141047b7",
  "webhook_type": "EMPLOYMENTS",
  "process_type": "historical_update",
  "webhook_code": "historical_update",
  "link_id": "2f5d361d-dad6-45d4-a0bf-26d479766067",
  "request_id": "4363b08b-51eb-4350-9c74-5df5ac92a7f6",
  "external_id": "your_external_id",
  "data": {
    "total_employments": 1 // The total number of employment record profiles found for the link
  }
}

Once you receive the notification, you can get further details by making the following request:

curl --request GET 'https://api.belvo.com/api/co/employments/?link={id}' \
-u [Secret Key ID]:[Secret Key PASSWORD]

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For details about the response body, make sure to check out our List Employments (Colombia) API reference documentation or Employment (Colombia) Data Dictionary.

Wait for a webhook and get owner data

As soon as your banking link is created, we asynchronously load the owner information available for the link and will send you the following webhook:

In the webhook payload we include the number of owners found for the link.

{
  "webhook_id": "aadf41a1fc8e4f79a49f7f04027ac999",
  "webhook_type": "OWNERS",
  "process_type": "historical_update",
  "webhook_code": "historical_update",
  "link_id": "16f68516-bcbc-4cf7-b815-c500d4204e28",
  "request_id": "4363b08b-51eb-4350-9c74-5df5ac92a7f6",
  "external_id": "your_external_id",
  "data": {
    "total_owners": 2 // Total number of owners
  }
}

Once you receive the notification, you can get further details by making the following request:

curl --request GET 'https://api.belvo.com/api/owners/?link=link_id' \
-u [Secret Key ID]:[Secret Key PASSWORD]