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EDI integration uses industry-specific standards and it supports multiple communication protocols. Before you start EDI Integration, it would be good if you have the following information ready:

1) EDI Standard. For example: X12, EDIFACT, etc

2) Communication Protocol: How are we going to retrieve the EDI document? Is it through FTP, local disk or AS2?

3) EDI Document version: For example: 4030. 4050, 5010, etc

4) EDI Document type: This is depending on the integration flow and the standard. Take X12 for example, 850 (Purchase Order), 856 (Shipment), 861 (Receipt), etc

Bugzilla is an Open Source Defect Tracking System to manage software development. We can integrate to Bugzilla through the web service or directly to the database.

For example, you can integrate Bugzilla with a support system. When a case is confirmed as a bug, then the bug will be automatically created in Bugzilla. You can find the demo here.

SmartTurn is a very good warehouse management system. It has features which cover from item purchasing to item shipping, within these processes, item inventory/warehouse status will be automically updated.

So how can integration help? Let’s talk about one of the features that we can perform in SmartTurn, Order Fulfillment. Here is one scenario:

1. I am managing a clothing wholesale business, a customer has ordered 200 items from my company. Within these 200 items, 100 will be shipped to location A, 50 will be shipped to location B, and the rest to location C.

2. If the customer is placing an order through my CRM or eCommerce system. The integration process can synchronise the Sales Order into SmartTurn specifying all the item details and customer’s shipping destinations.

3. SmartTurn will then check the inventory status, if the stock is insufficient, the shipment will be put ‘On Hold’.  If everything goes well, the inventory count will be deducted in SmartTurn. We can then synchronise the latest inventory count to our Accounting System.

Below is a simple diagram illustrating the above scenario:

We can integrate SmartTurn with any other CRM, ERP system or etc. which improve efficiency in order processing and fulfillment. As with the above scenario, updating the customer information and purchasing details, processing the transaction before confirming shipment status and other details.

The time logged in a specific issue can be retrieved from JIRA by using the JIRA API (getWorklogs). The result returned will include the details of the time logged into an issue. For example:

<multiRef id=”id1″ soapenc:root=”0″ soapenv:encodingStyle=”http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/” xsi:type=”ns3:RemoteWorklogImpl” xmlns:soapenc=”http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/” xmlns:ns3=”http://service.soap.rpc.jira.atlassian.com”>
<author xsi:type=”xsd:string”>hmkhong</author>
<comment xsi:type=”xsd:string”/>
<created xsi:type=”xsd:dateTime”>2011-10-12T06:22:18.663Z</created>
<groupLevel xsi:type=”xsd:string” xsi:nil=”true”/>
<id xsi:type=”xsd:string”>10002</id>
<roleLevelId xsi:type=”xsd:string” xsi:nil=”true”/>
<startDate xsi:type=”xsd:dateTime”>2011-10-12T06:22:00.000Z</startDate>
<timeSpent xsi:type=”xsd:string”>2 hours</timeSpent>
<timeSpentInSeconds xsi:type=”xsd:long”>7200</timeSpentInSeconds>
<updateAuthor xsi:type=”xsd:string”>hmkhong</updateAuthor>
<updated xsi:type=”xsd:dateTime”>2011-10-12T06:22:18.663Z</updated>
</multiRef>

If you find the “pretty” format too difficult to calculate, you can use the timeSpentInSeconds. This field will returned time logged in seconds.

The new database.com from Salesforce is opened for business now. This is an exciting service from the integration stand point. We can use it as a cross reference storage and this model is scalable. Also, the same Salesforce connector we use works for database.com, nice.

Salesforce campaign object has a feature called “Advanced Setup” which allows the user to edit the campaign member status picklist values for each campaign.

Under this advanced setup, you can add, remove or replace the name of the campaign member status for the current campaign. You can also globally rename and replace the campaign member values, to do that, you will need to go to the campaign member “Status” field setting (Setup > Customize > Campaign > Campaign Members > Field > Status).

Each campaign has its own set of picklist values of the campaign member status. This means that each time you created a campaign, you will need to enter the campaign status values to update the picklist.

In one of our recent projects, we are dealing with Quotes and Opportunities in Salesforce. We find that the Quote feature useful when it comes to creating quotation and opportunity data sync.

Within an opportunity, you can create multiple quotes which consist of quote details and quote line items. You can also save the quote as a PDF and send it to the customer. Let’s say if the customer has agreed to the quote, you can then sync the quote line items to update the opportunity line items. After the initial sync, updates to the quote line items and opportunity products will automatically be synced in bidirectional.

However, custom field sync between Quote and Opportunity is not supported out-of-box. You can see the feature request here:

http://success.salesforce.com/ideaview?id=08730000000HpBHAA0

Let’s hope that Salesforce will enhance this feature soon. Meanwhile, we just have to use a workaround to achieve this.

We are building an interesting integration between Salesforce and JobReady RTO. It synchronises course and student data between two systems. Stay tuned for more updates.

There is a feature in Boomi called ‘Trading Partner’ which can provide a solution for EDI integration.

The Trading Partner functionality can be configured with the details for both your company and your trading partners in terms of document standards and communication types.

For more details or information about Trading Partner configuration in Boomi, you can check out the documentation.

TIM would like to proudly announce that WDCi just turned 3 years old. Happy Birthday WDCi and have a great year ahead!