Dynamics Gp Ecommerce Integration Programming Notes

If you are working in IT department and now you are facing ecommerce web application integration project with your Corporate ERP, we would like to offer you several options to consider with their pluses and minuses. This small article is based on Great Plains ecommerce integration technology, however we are trying to discuss such universal options, as real time versus quasi real time or batch mode ecommerce integration, so you may find it useful for other Small Business ERP applications, such as SAP Business One. Ecommerce is reflecting your unique business processes, so you should not expect custom programming to be something unusual:

1.Product versus Solution. If you can find existing ecommerce extension for your accounting and logistic application - this is great news. Typically - this means that you have to redeploy your working ecommerce web application on the base of that new product. This approach may not look to encouraging to you, as you might be original ecommerce application developer or you simply want to preserve your company historical investments. Solution is generic term, meaning programming tools, connectors, or deployment of proven programming codes. Solutions allows you to keep existing ecommerce application and integrate it with Dynamics GP ERP in several phases. Both product and solution might be open to software bugs. Product might be more beta tested comparing to solution, however you should request references from your prospecting Dynamics GP ISV ecommerce partner

2.Ecommerce integration specifications. Ideally you would like to see your ecommerce originated sales invoices in your accounting systems the same minute, if technology permits. However, the technology itself might be the place, where you would like to stop and review. Here we are reviewing Real Time, Quasi Real Time and Batch mode integration. In the frames of Microsoft Dynamics GP technology - real time ecommerce integration requires either eConnect or SQL Stored Procedures programming. Quasi real time (every five, ten, twenty minutes) could be realized via Integration Manger scheduled integration. And in turn, batch mode integration could be called on demand by Great Plains user - typically Integration Manager


3.eConnect ecommerce programming. This tool allows you to realize real time integration. eConnect is pretty friendly tool for Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB .Net programmers. If you are part of the GP ecommerce development team in your organization, we recommend you to invest your time into eConnect training. The ground level of eConnect technology stack is the set of encrypted SQL Server Stored procedures, where most of the Great Plains master records, setups, and work transactions are exposed via eConnect methods. In the case of SAP B1 you have SDK which is similar in its capacity to eConnect

4.Integration Manager. Here you are about batch mode or quasi real time integration. If you are OK to export your ecommerce transactions to tab or coma delimited text files and then import them into Great Plains through Integration Manager - this method is very reliable (it validates business logic of Dynamics GP ERP), however it is not real time compliant. You may try to schedule Integration to run every twenty minutes by deploying Windows macros or third party Macro programs. For SAP Business One you should review Data Transfer Workbench as analog to Integration Manager

5.Master and Slave application. You should decide which application is master (where most of your cards or master records are originated: inventory Items, Prices). Dynamics GP or SB1 are better suited to be masters, as all the back office business logic is already there, versus custom ecommerce application, where you have to program all the cards from scratch. If Corporate ERP is chosen to be the master - Items, Prices and promotion campaigns are pushed to ecommerce from there. Typically you make one exception from this rule - customers are created in ecommerce and pushed back to your ERP system