Integration Manager Fact Sheet - Bret A. Bennett



Integration Manager provides you with the safest and easiest way to import business data into Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains. You’ll find value in using Integration Manager for safely converting data into a new installation, or as an ongoing way to integrate data from your external business databases, e-commerce solutions and desktop applications with Microsoft Business Solutions.

Integration Manager’s intuitive user interface, combined with a tight integration to the Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains architecture, allows you to deliver integrations to all of your organization’s business applications in hours instead of days or months.

By tying data from across your business into your Microsoft Business Solutions application using Integration Manager, you can leverage the powerful reporting and querying tools of your business application to provide you with a comprehensive look into the economic health of your business.

Easily map external data fields to fields within Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains without any knowledge of data structures or tables.

Safely integrate data from throughout your organization

Integration Manager allows you to integrate data from virtually any database or desktop application. Integration Manager can import data from a variety of sources, including comma and tab-delimited text files, or most ODBC data sources. Since ODBC data sources represent the most consistent and widely used standard for accessing data, your options for integrating with database applications from throughout your organization are virtually limitless.

For instance, instead of rekeying data from spreadsheet applications you use to track department budgets, you can use Integration Manager to automatically load this data on a continuous basis into your application. Or, if you use a separate point-of-sale system to enter sales transactions from your web storefront, you can quickly define an integration that imports that data into sales transaction entry for processing on a daily basis.

To verify the accuracy and integrity of external data, Integration Manager encapsulates Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains complex business logic within a series of business objects. All external data you choose to import is processed through these business objects, ensuring that only data that meets processing criteria will be committed to the database.

All business objects are based upon the strong foundation of Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM) standard, providing you with a platform for quickly delivering additional business objects as the Microsoft Business Solutions product line grows.

Unlike database-level integrations, which are susceptible to changes in table structure during a product upgrade, integrations you define though Integration Manager will continue to work with each Microsoft Business Solutions product release. Each new version of Integration Manager is tightly integrated with pre-built business objects, and existing integrations will automatically work with updated business objects.

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Build integrations in hours, instead of days

Integration Manager saves you the countless hours you would normally spend researching and reviewing complex database queries, or navigating through massive data models trying to build an integration. Since Integration Manager interacts with business objects, no knowledge of the database structure is required.

The Integration Manager interface simplifies the integration process by presenting data objects from a level that is readily understandable. Fields in each business object have the same descriptive field names as the windows, giving users a familiar reference when defining an integration.

Once you define your data source, Integration Manager provides intuitive drag and drop tools that let you map fields in the business object with fields in the data source, validating data for accuracy. And, when specific business objects are needed within Integration Manager but are not available, additional import/export features within Integration Manager make importing and exporting data to and from tables possible with limited validation capabilities.

As part of each integration you define, Integration Manager automatically produces default data behaviors and processing rules for the best results. In addition, you have hundreds of user-defined rules you can apply to alter or modify data to conform to a specific business need.

Integration Manager’s Object Browser provides a system administrator quick access to all components of an integration, making ongoing maintenance a simple task. Extensive error checking and logging allows you to review the results of any integration quickly.

Fully automate and customize integrations

Once you’ve built an integration, you can launch the integration directly from the Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains environment, from a command line or from a batch file. In addition, Integration Manager supports any Windows NT-based scheduler for running integrations at specified times.

Integration Manager also supports the ability to define advanced SQL queries for more robust access to data. In addition, Microsoft’s VBScript is built directly into the Integration Manager environment, allowing you to define custom processing before, during or after an integration runs. This is especially useful for pre-processing source files from disparate systems automatically.

Using plain script, easily build rules and customizations into data integrations.

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© 2002 Microsoft Corporation and Great Plains Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Microsoft Business Solutions and Great Plains are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, Great Plains Software, Inc. or Microsoft Business Solutions Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Both, Great Plains Software Inc. and Microsoft Business Solutions Corporation are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Microsoft Corporation. Functionality described herein may not be available on all versions of Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains products. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Application Business Logic

Integration Manager allows you to tie into practically any application database or legacy system. Integration Manager’s business object layer verifies the integrity of external data before committing it to the SQL Server database.

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Microsoft Business Solutions Customization Tools–Great Plains

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