> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://dev.smile.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Overview

In this section, you will use the Smile.io API to send customer and order events so that we can issue rewards.

<Info>
  Heads up - send these requests in the background!
  Customer and Order events should be sent to Smile.io in the background so these API calls don't block any web requests. We recommend using a background job or queue to achieve this. In order to ensure successful delivery of the events to Smile.io, the background job should be built to retry the request in the event of network failure or failure to connect with Smile.io.
</Info>

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create a new Smile API key">
    Login to [Smile Admin](https://app.smile.io) and create a new API key under **Settings** > **Developer Tools**. The API key must have the `event:write` scope.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Get familiar with the Smile API">
    The backend integration portion of the setup involves communicating with Smile's API. To do this, you should refer to our [API Reference](/api/introduction) to understand how authentication, errors, and rate limiting work
  </Step>

  <Step title="Send customer events">
    From your backend server, send [customer events](/guides/deprecated/custom-platform/custom-backend-int/custom-customer-events) any time a customer is created, updated, or deleted.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Send order events">
    From your backend server, send [order events](/guides/deprecated/custom-platform/custom-backend-int/custom-order-events) any time an order is created, updated, or deleted.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Once the backend setup is complete, you can proceed to [integrate Smile with your frontend](/guides/deprecated/custom-platform/custom-frontend-int/overview).