We are using Integration Manager to create a batch of monthly invoices. I want to build a replacement that creates a batch in GP and imports the invoices into the batch. After review, the batch will be posted to GP. Is this doable with either of these API's and which would you choose?
Integration manager can use econnect for its insertion engine. If you are processing a high volume of transactions, you will notice a huge difference between integration manager's UI engine and econnect. When you create a new integration, simply choose the econnect option and whatever data source you have set up.
Concerning the non-IM APIs, both may be used, and they are situational. The web services sits on top of econnect, and it is much slower integrating because you are passing information between several layers. It does provide a secure link between your SQL server and any outside integration sources, and it is ideal if you need to setup something to allow integrations to happen through middleware such as a billing gateway. If you have access to build an econnect process/app that makes a connection to your SQL server for GP, this is the fastest way to integrate SOP and receivable transactions. It maintains all the business rules to help ensure GP does not break in as a result of a patch, and the speed is fast enough to push thousands of records without requiring a custom integration solution.
If you want to get done quickly, and do not mind working from the integration manager interface, just build your integrations using econnect. If you have the time to develop a custom integration routine, go for econnect. If you want to leverage WCF technology on top of econnect, go for web services.
Each are listed in the amount of time it will take you to develop from fast implementation to slower implementation.
Related
We'd like to allow our users to make changes to our ERP (only very limited conditions) from within the smartsheet. Is there a way to add a web service call based on changes to a cell?
It's certainly possible to do what you've described (provided, of course, that your ERP supports inbound web service calls to update data there).
If you're wanting to do this programmatically (i.e., by writing a script in Python or any other supported language), you can use the Smartsheet API to create one or more webhooks that will monitor Smartsheet for the type of changes you specify, and send your integration notifications when those events occur. Your integration would then listen for those inbound event notifications, and when they are received, it would programmatically issue the appropriate web service call(s) to update data in the ERP.
It's also worth mentioning that, depending on what ERP you're using, it may be possible for you to accomplish your goal without having to write any code. If you're interested in exploring the feasibility of that approach, I'd suggest you check out products like Zapier, Power Automate, etc. to see if they offer a connector for Smartsheet and your ERP. You may also want to check out the Smartsheet Connectors and Integrations page to see if there's a connector for your ERP listed there.
I'm developing an ecommerce website.
It's for a "ground-based" clothing store that is used to sells only via third party platform.
And now want a own website.
I started with Wordpress+Woocommerce.
Then i tried a ZeitNow+Next+Graphql+React version.
It connects itself to Wordpress+Woocomerce database via GraphQL Queries.
It uses ZeitNow to avoid implementing a real Node+Express server on my machine.
Which path to choose to complete the website and publish it ? My doubts are related mainly to COSTS.
If i choose the classic WP+Woocommerce way i need :
0-20 EUR /year for Domain Name.
120EUR / year approximately for a classic web server (with PHP+MySQL) hosting plan where to place the Wordpress+Woocommerce.
If i'd like to choose second option, based on what i know actually i need :
0-20 EUR /year for Domain Name.
120EUR / year approximately for a classic web server (with PHP+MySQL) hosting plan where to place the Wordpress+Woocommerce "head" part of my project, .
0EUR /year for serveless ZeitNow (free plan).
But where i need to place the "App" (ZeitNow+Next+GraphQl+React)?
An other Web server (with Node) ?
So an other 120EUR/ year plan ?
Or beacuse it's serverless i can only "deploy" to zeitNow and only link my domain to ZeitNow?
Its not clear to me.
I found on the web things like "Netifly", "Firebase", "Heroku", "AWS" ...
Are they all equivalent to Zeit Now?
I would like to publish a website with benefits of WooCommerce CMS system.
Like adding products, managing stocks, handling discounts plans, access to PayPal and Stripe payment methods integrations (i don't trust my self enough to build integration on my own due to security risks).
I wolud like also the keep benefits of using React for front End like performance (at least perceived) for Final User, or no need of Ajax request to update Cart and Wishlist.
And what about calculating if my project needs a "payed plan" of ZeitNow/Netifly/AWS to manage the request? How i can calculate them?
Sorry for the high number of question, but for me, understand the co-existence of these things is overwhelming!
Thanks.
You will always need a paid plan on any platform if you are running a for-profit endeavor.
You may need ZEIT Now to host your frontend and another server for the GraphQL API unless you really want to go DevOps-less by using serverless functions.
Here are very relevant pages for calculating costs:
ZEIT Now pricing page. Notice the "Serverless Execution" and also "BandWidth" prices.
Netlify.
AWS.
In the end, you will need to deploy a "Proof-of-Concept" and be really careful with the metrics. It is impossible to pinpoint an exact number with a custom solution because depending on your implementation, it can be more or less expensive to make API calls. Solutions like Shopify may be the best approach for your type of app. I only recommend that you develop your own stack if you want to customize, scale, and prepare the base for a team of developers later.
Disclaimer: I work for ZEIT at the moment.
I need to connect Salesforce to an external database we have, and constantly keep both the database and salesforce updated in as close to real time as we can get. I have tired Google searching possible solutions, but nearly all of them have been outdated by over a year. Any ideas?
Thank You!
Depending on your exact scenario it is quite difficult to give you a proper answer.
However off the top of my head I would suggest two Salesforce products.
Salesforce Connect
https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/products/salesforce-connect/
Salesforce Connect allows you to connect to various data sources and turn the tables / objects of that data source into a SObject. For example MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle etc. There are limitations and thus it would be better to talk to a Certified Architect about such an implementation.
Heroku Connect
https://www.heroku.com/connect
Heroku Connect allows you to connect a Heroku data source with a Salesforce Object. The sync is not immediate but there are quite a few customisations inside the product to make the sync as "live" as possible. There are limitations and thus it would be better to talk to a Certified Architect about such an implementation.
Salesforce Connect has limitations.. It's good for presenting data via the interface, but if you need to act on the data and report on the data it might not be the best bet.
For close to real time hand coded sync, look at the streaming API, or using Salesforce Platform Events.
If you want to use an ETL tool, my organization has had decent luck with DBAmp, which is a Sql add on product and fairly inexpensive as compared to a lot of ETL tools ($1625 annually.) http://www.forceamp.com/ We're able to replicate the entire SF database offline in SQL with DBAMP, push changes to the offline Sql copy and upsert changes. It's also a good backup solution via offline full data copy. We got very good support from them as well when we encountered challenges.
Hope this helps.
Not sure if you are syncing one object or multiple objects but there are a few options that you have.
You can try the salesforce provided features Salesforce Connect which allows you to view and update data from your external source In salesforce but there are limitations with reporting and other considerations you should consider.
If you make use of Heroku, Heroku Connect is your best bet
You can also use a middleware ESB solutions like MuleSoft which can orchestrate keeping data in sync across multiple data sources and do batch loads, but depending on how often changes you want to keep an eye out for api limits for inbound calls to salesforce.
You can roll your own solution where you can use Outbound Messages in workflow (or triggers that initiates an apex class that calls out, but that is more cumbersome and you have to do custom error handling and retry logic which you get for free using outbound messages) to send changes from salesforce to your homegrown service that writes to you database and have you homegrown solution write back to salesforce using the soap or rest api. That would probably take you some time to build. You would also still need to be aware of API limits depending on how many updates are made on the non salesforce side.
You crate a Canvas App which displays data from your DB in Salesforce as a Tab and hook it up via SSO so users are auto logged in. But again there would not be reporting, or any salesforce features that you can take advantage of.
But I really think that you should spend some time to determine what system is your source of truth because that would determine how the data should be synced. You should also investigate if you really need the sync to be realtime or near realtime, or if you can manage with something like an hourly true up on the system that is not the source of truth.
so it occurred to me that it would be helpful in the development of my backend to have a managed sandbox, like a development environment without having to set up a separate database. To be more specific I'm using Postgresql and Node.js, but I doubt that makes a difference.
So my question is, how do services such as PayPal commonly implement a "sandbox" for developers who use their API to play with that is separate from their real data? In my case all that I want is a database sandbox that operates separately from the main database for the backend developers. My first idea on this is to tag every row with their specific sandbox or production id, but that seems inefficient. Is there another way to implement this idea?
I'm trying to build an API which can be used to update some master data in my app. It contains various drop-downs for city, country etc. Whenever I add new data in these drop-downs, I need the apps to hit this API once a day and get the latest data. Also, if the API is requested older data (from older apps), it should be able to return such data based on some date query parameter.
What's the best way to create such an API?
Also, the API needs to be RESTful and will be exposed to Android/iOS environments.
API should be able to return so based on some date query parameter.
You can use two columns created_at and updated_at in you tables schema. So how can this will useful for your situation:
Whenever some one hitting api without date parameter, you are return all data which are created before current time.
Whenever some one hitting api with date parameter then you can return data which are created before value of date parameter.
Obviously you have to write complete logic for this at server side
end.
Please explore one of the Mobile Backend as a Service (mBaaS) products for your long term needs.
Here are some players:
BaasBox: Open source backend
Backendless: Allows
developers to have an instant backend without writing server-side
code.
Apigee App Services: provides a lot of free storage, push notification, analytics etc.
Appcelerator: An BaaS targeted at the Enterprise audience.
For the short run you may want to try https://www.webscript.io/ to embed some quick javascript code to return the JSON response for you.
I would put a spin on #Santanu's suggestion of using BaaS. I would recommend using a BaaS during the development phase of your project.
When the iPhone and Android Apps have been developed and tested, replace the Baas-based server components with a in-house built RESTful server.
This approach has a couple of benefits. It lets you divide the effort into two distinct parts: the client changes to your product, and the building of your server component.
I assume your company's current expertise lies in App development, so it should be easier for you all to upgrade your applications to use the BaaS-based APIs.
It will also be much easier to reiterate and refine your data components and models using a mature BaaS server.
With Apps using data requests to populate the drop-downs from a BaaS-based RESTful API, and stable working data models and data sets hosted in the BaaS servers, it will be much faster to start building your own RESTful service.
When you run into issues, you will be confident they are in the server side code. You can run A/B tests with the same Apps against two versions of the server and ensure the client experience is the same.
You could continue to use the BaaS Server for rapid prototyping and developing API extensions.