Archive for the ‘Integration Corner’ Category

TIM’s Tip: Netsuite Integration - Unset a field

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

When building or developing an integration to Netsuite, you may need to unset a field.

For system fields and custom fields, the approach is different.

For system fields, you can send an empty phone tag to Netsuite. For example:

For custom fields, you need to use the add the custom field ID into nullFieldList. For example (custentity4):

TIM’s Tip: Magento Integration

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

if your application is not listed in Magento connect or you need to build a custom integration process, here are some options that you may find helpful:

Magento API

You can access the majority of the modules using the Magento Core API. It supports both SOAP and XML RPC protocols.  In addtion you can also create your own API.

Magento Database (Mysql)

If you are connecting to Magento via the database, it’s important to study the relational diagram in advance and understand the dependencies. This approach will be vulnerable if the database schema changes during future upgrades, requiring you to update your integration as well.

Integration Platform

In addition to the approaches described above, you can also integrate to Magento using an integration platform such as Boomi Atomsphere. Boomi uses an XML format to interchange data between applications. This approach results in a robust and easily maintained integration.

Any form of use-case with Magento can be integrated. Here are some use-case scenarios that we have implemented to date:

  • Integrate Mangento with GreatPlains (CRM/ERP)
  • Integrate Mangento with SmartTurn (Inventory Management Software)
  • Integrate Magento with Netsuite (CRM/ERP)
  • Integrate Magento with Salesforce (CRM)

If you need any more details on how to integrate with Magento feel free to contact us.

TIM’s Tip: Saasu Integration for Activities and Combo Item

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

We have upgraded our Saasu Connector by implementing the newly released API by Saasu:

  • Activities : CRUD
  • ComboItem: CRUD

This implementation is important in one of our recent project. Feel free to check out the use case here.

Check out our Salesforce-JIRA Studio demo

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Another blockbuster hits the waves, check out our latest demo, this time it’s JIRA Studio to salesforce.com.

Whew, time for a pina colada.

TIM’s Tip: JIRA Studio Integration

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

The new JIRA 4.0 connector we have developed also supports JIRA Studio because JIRA Studio API is identical to the remote APIs shipped with the JIRA’s standalone version.

If you are integrating JIRA studio with another Cloud based application such as Salesforce, Netsuite, etc, you can also choose to deploy your integration processes in the Cloud environment. By doing this, it can save you time and cost to maintain an integration server.

Drop us an email to find out more about how we can help you.

TIM’s Tip: MYOB Migration

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Not all data is available through the MYOB UI export data feature. If you want to get more data, you can try the MYOB ODBC Direct. More information about MYOB ODBC Direct can be found here.

AtTask Integration

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

WDCi has completed another AtTask integration projects. See details here:

http://www.wdcigroup.net/wedidintegration_attaskpeoplesoft.html

If you would like integrate AtTask with another application, please contact us.

Get Salesforce & Netsuite talking

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Want to see how easily you can integrate Salesforce and Netsuite?

Grab a pina colada and some popcorn and check out our short demo showing a common use case - Integrating Opportunity and related objects between Salesforce and Netsuite.

TIM`s Tip: Netsuite Data Migration - Data Cleansing

Friday, June 4th, 2010

We have recently completed a large Netsuite migration project. This migration exercise involved ~1,000,000 records. Some details on this engagement can be found here.

One of the most important factors for a successful data migration is ensuring the data is as clean as possible before inserting into the target system. Inserting the data into the target and cleaning later involves a lot of extra work.

Before migrating your Netsuite data, consider a clean-up of the following objects as they typically generate a lot of duplicate data:

Account Addresses

When you export the Customer records to CSV, you may get duplicate records due to the addresses and contacts. For example, if you have a customer with 4 addresses and 3 contacts, you will likely end up with 12 records in total.

Export your Account data first and see if you can merge or remove duplicate records before migrating this data.

Opportunity and Opportunity Product

This is also similar to the behavior above. If you have one opportunity with 5 opportunity line items. When you are exporting the opportunity to CSV, you may get 6 records in total. Each opportunity line item will appear as a record inside the CSV file.  This may not be valid to merge or remove, but it’s advisable to check the Opportunity records to determine if you can clean this up before a migration.

If your Netsuite environment contains a substantial number of Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities, it’s worthwhile to merge and clean the data prior to importing into the target system.

Our migration planning guide may be of help if you are planning a data migration exercise.

TIM’s Tip: Estimating a Data Migration exercise

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Maybe you are thinking, what’s so hard, I just dump the data out of system 1 and insert it into system 2, maybe, maybe not.

How long will it take to migrate your data from one or more systems to another system?

It really depends on a few factors:

  1. How easy it is to export data from the source system(s)?
  2. How easily data can be imported into the destination system(s)?
  3. The volume of  data.
  4. The number of objects and fields involved.
  5. Do you need to transform the data before importing into the new system?  and if so, how complex is the transformation?
  6. Are their data dependencies, ie object 1 must be created before uploading object 2?
  7. Do you need a data cleansing exercise to remove/fix bad data and merge duplicates?
  8. If you need to clean the data, should it be loaded into an intermediary data store to make that process easier.

The quality of your data is a really important factor in how long the whole process will take.

If you have such a requirement, check out our migration planning guide or feel free to contact us.