Scribe Software Blog

Make your data better with Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Need to improve your CRM data but too busy to do it yourself? Here's a trick that is cheap and easy. Amazon has a service called the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace. I'll refer to it as AMT for short. It is defined as a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. More specifically, it is a simple way to deal with small tasks that are tedious and time consuming. When you have simple tasks that require human involvement you upload your tasks/HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) to the Turk and someone, somewhere will do them for an amount that you agree to pay per hit. In my real world example that I am doing as I write this I am using the AMT to classify my CRM account records by industry. It took me about a half hour to set this up and is costing me $.10 per record. Pretty cheap, right? Here are the steps I had to take to make this happen:

• Create an account with Amazon Mechanical Turk (this can use your existing Amazon.com account)

• Design the web form that the person doing your HITs will use to do them (see below)

  • Note that my form gives very detailed instructions on what the person needs to do. In this example, I am showing the person a company name and a web URL and am asking the person to go to the URL, read about the company, write a description (in their own words) of what the company does and then select an industry from a list of industries which I coded into the form using basic HTML. Note that I asked them to write the description in their own words because this ensures that they actually spend time on each task and make sure they get it right. Plus, it makes spot checking the results easier for me.

• Export the CRM data from the CRM system. In my example I had to export company name, URL and account ID. I need account ID so that I will be able to update the records back into my CRM when the work is done

• Import that CRM data into the Amazon Mechanical Turk

  • Note on the form screen shot that the ${AccountName} is a variable that will be replaced by my actual data. The worker will see the same form for each HIT but with a different Company Name and URL for each record from my CRM system
• Set a bid amount for each HIT

• Publish the HITs and watch live on screen while people do them. Below is a screen shot of the job progress. It updates real time if I want to watch it but, of course, I don't need to. I can simply come back later and see how much has been done. From here I can review and export the completed HIT for re-import back into my CRM

As of right now my job of 1,614 records is 23% complete and I am paying the equivalent of $1.46 per hour based on how long it has taken so far. I set my job up so that multiple people can work on it at the same time and I bid $.10 per record so my total was 1,614 x .10 plus a ~$16 fee for Amazon. In total I paid $178.80 to get industries assigned to these 1,614 accounts. In reviewing the results including the descriptions I asked the worker(s) to write and the classifications they have chosen I can tell that I am getting very good work. Below you can see an example of a record where the worker correctly identified that the Dobla BV is a producer of chocolate and, thus, belonged in the Manufacturing – Food and Beverage industry category.

What is fascinating is that I do not know, or care, if my worker(s) is/are housewives in Houston or college students in Calcutta. And, at the end of my job, I can spot check the results and accept or reject individual results.

Try it sometime and see what you think. I've done it three times now for various tasks and it has worked well each time. I have learned to include very detailed instructions (with an example) on my forms and I believe that is important.

Q4 promotion on the Scribe Adapter for Web Services

Save $300 through December 31, 2009

Due to popular demand we have extended our Web Services Adapter Promo through 12/31 - you can save $300 on the purchase of the Adapter and pay just $995 instead of the regular price $1,295.

Did you miss the Scribe Adapter for Web Services product launch webinar held in May?  Topics included:

		Deep dive on the functionality of the v1.0 Web Services Adapter
		Discussion of adapter roadmap/futures
		Demonstration of integrations to Dynamics AX and SharePoint using the Web Services Adapter
		Demonstration of the use of the Web Service adapter to connect to a 3rd party commercial web service

Take a moment to view the recorded webinar now.

If you have any questions about this promotion, or the Adapter for Web Services, please contact your Scribe Partner, or you may contact Scribe Sales directly at 1.603.622.5109 or sales@scribesoft.com. 

The Microsoft Adapter or Scribe Insight: It’s as Plain as Trains and Automobiles

Microsoft recently released their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 that allows Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP to share data across a common set of integration points including customers, products, orders, and invoices. Since a large number of our customers use Scribe Insight for the same purpose, we are being asked to compare and contrast the two solutions. At the risk of oversimplification and with deference to the two late, great Johns, Candy and Hughes, this blog attempts to use a comparison of trains and automobiles to explain the difference.

(You can find a more detailed technical comparison here.)

Think of the Microsoft Adapter like taking the express train. If your destination (i.e. integration need) is close to one of the pre-defined stops along the route, then the Adapter is right for you. Because the outcome has been engineered into the solution, taking the train is easy, inexpensive, and requires no special training. Getting there has already been figured out for you. The Microsoft Adapter is provided free to customers with current support plans and is a purpose-built solution that provides "out of the box" integration capabilities between the latest versions of Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP. There is a graphical utility that enables some customization to the pre-set mapping and transformation of fields, but for the most part, your end solution is relatively fixed.

Taking the train analogy one step further, you can reach destinations that are close to the stops on your route, by taking a bus or a taxi. These options involve greater cost and complexity and become quite impractical the further you deviate from the route. Microsoft plans to offer an SDK in the coming months where the solution could be expanded to incorporate additional objects and process logic through custom code. Like the taxi or bus, the SDK will allow for simple extensions, but significantly expanding the scope of your integration will be highly impractical.

Scribe Insight on the other hand is like driving a car. Once you made the initial investment and learn how to drive it, it enables to reach any destination you wish. You can even change your destination as often as you wish in the middle of the journey. Scribe Insight is an open integration platform that enables technical folks to quickly create integration processes across two or more applications without the need to write custom code. The depth of the product allows companies to configure these integration processes precisely to their business needs all within the Insight user interface. Since these integration processes are metadata driven, they can be modified and changed quickly and easily as business needs change. Insight also allows you to easily incorporate any of your other business applications or data stores into your integration processes.

In addition to Insight, Scribe also offers Adapters for common applications including Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP, along with Scribe's template for integrating Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP. This template is used by many companies as a jumping off point for a solution that works exactly the way that they do. At the risk of taking the car analogy too far (I fear it may already be too late), you can think of these Adapters and Templates like a navigation system. These Adapters make it a lot easier to navigate around these business applications, taking a lot of the guess work out of the process. And the templates provide you with a suggested route that you can choose to use, or not.

The important message here is that like trains and automobiles, both the Microsoft Adapter and Scribe Insight are excellent solutions depending on your specific needs. The key is choosing the right one. So if the Adapter gives you what you want, then hop on the Microsoft express and enjoy the ride. If you need to plot your own route, then fire up Scribe Insight, it will get you where you want to go.

Promoting CRM User Adoption through Data Integration

As Director of Sales here at Scribe, throughout the course of any one year I probably do 5 to 7 presentations at partner or end user events promoting Scribe products for data migration and data integration. I do try to make these presentations less of an advertisement for Scribe and more of an informative session. I generally start these sessions with a few questions to get to know my audience – it goes something like this –

(The following are actual numbers from a recent end-user presentation with approximately 50 audience members – most of whom are currently using Dynamics CRM, or planning to soon implement Dynamics CRM)

Question 1: How many in the audience today are using an ERP system? A CRM system?

All raise their hand for ERP, about 35 people raise their hand for CRM.

Question 2: OK – since we have seen through numerous studies in the past that 60% of all CRM implementations eventually fail – primarily due to lack of user adoption – how many would say that they have experienced some 'push back' issues when trying to implement their CRM system?

About 35 people raise their hand. No, I didn't accidentally repeat Answer 1, the same 35 people responded.

Question 3: How many companies in the audience today have some sort of 'web presence' – say a web site where you gather leads or an ecommerce site where you take orders for your product or service?

50% of the audience - about 25 people - raise their hands.

Question 4: How many of you then actually capture and use data from your site – either manually, or in some automated fashion?

Surprisingly, only 20 of those 25 members of the audience raise their hand.

Question 5: OK – how many of you actually capture this data, either leads or orders, and feed that information automatically into your CRM or ERP system?

One.

Yes One!

One out of twenty-five!

It's at this point in the presentation that I ask myself if what I am about to say is going to go right over their heads! I am now left with 50 minutes in my hour timeslot and since I can't dance, I decide to move forward with my presentation. You see, what I am about to tell this audience will save them time and a whole bunch of money in the future – and it will put them on the path to accelerated user adoption of their CRM system. And folks, it's not rocket science either. It's data integration. So I continue my presentation…

Webster's dictionary defines 'integration' as 'blending into a functional or unified whole' – and isn't that what all companies would like to do with their important data? In my presentations, I like to break down the act of integrating data into 3 subcategories – Data Replication, Data Synchronization, and Process Integration.

Let's take Data Replication – nothing more than moving data from one place to another. This is the simplest and least interdependent type of integration – sometimes it's even 'view only' – but the value can be huge when 'automated'. Take questions 3, 4, and 5 above for example. Based on the answers given in this session, the results are that 1 company out of 25 has made the effort to get the 'value' of prospect or customer information directly to their knowledge workers with no manual intervention. What about the other 24 companies? Example A - Company A says they have a sales admin that receives email messages which include lead data for each prospect that hits their website. That admin then types the lead data into their CRM system, looks up who might be the appropriate sales rep, and then assigns that lead to that person in the system. Three manual processes – all fertile ground for data entry errors…… to say nothing of the possible sales opportunities lost if the sales admin is out on vacation for two weeks and these leads don't get addressed until they return! Example B - Company B states that they get their customer orders right off of their website. When I ask how they do this – they say an XML order message is emailed to their accounting clerk, that person then manually inputs the order data into Dynamics GP, and then calls the sales rep to let them know the order has been placed by their customer. The sales rep then updates his account and opportunity in his CRM system. Uggggh! The truth is, 9 out of 10 small to midsize companies operate this way – and they all spend way too much time and effort on manual data replication!

Moving up the evolutionary chain of data integration we come to Data Synchronization – maintaining the same set of customer information in multiple systems. This really strikes at the core of companies wanting to 'blend their data into a functional or unified whole'. Most small to mid-size companies cannot afford to embark on a high level strategy of 'master data management' across departments or functional groups – but can certainly afford to ensure that Customer A in their ERP system is the same Customer A that appears in their CRM system. Will that happen with the scenario painted in Example B above? Two different people in two different functional groups inputting the same order data into two disparate systems – now I can't speak for accountants, but I know first-hand that sales reps are typically 'one finger' (albeit fast one finger) typists – so again we find ourselves at that 'fertile ground for data entry errors'…. Account names, bill to and ship to addresses, and contacts are just a few of the many, many pieces of customer data that can and should be automatically kept in sync across various groups and systems within a company, providing great value and a very efficient consistency of data.

If you really want your company's functional groups 'blending into a unified whole' and operating as a well-oiled machine, move on up to Process Integration – where data is shared from one system to the next based on each systems role. Probably the easiest way to demonstrate this category of data integration is with the following chart, which outlines one of the most common processes in most companies – Quote to Order. Having data that is both 'replicated' and 'synchronized' where appropriate can then allow companies to manage that data to a specific workflow. As one progresses through Step 1 to Step 6 of the process, you can see that the 'data' may be owned by or moved to or from systems as needed to allow users on either side of the aisle (ERP system or CRM system) to work seamlessly within their own system, not having to jump from one application to another – or jump from their seat to run down the hall to accounting to confirm an order or shipment. (Our accounting folks never seem to run down the hall to me – unless of course, one of my customers is at day 31 past due!)

As you can gather from the chart, a company's Product Catalogue would be 'owned' by the ERP system, but can be viewed at any time by a sales rep for product availability and pricing. A sales rep can then generate a quote and submit it to the ERP system right from his CRM system for demand planning, and so on. By moving to Process Integration, that is, a combination of replicating and synchronizing 'interdependent' data not only across disparate systems and functional groups, but throughout a defined company process, a true 'blending into a unified whole' can be realized.

I mentioned at the beginning of this article that historically 60% of all CRM implementations fail with the number one reason being lack of adoption – the second most reason is 'biting off more than one can chew' – trying to implement too much too soon. Most successful CRM implementations are the result of a 'phased' approach during implementation. This 'success' rule applies as well to data integration deployments. Trying to go from a scenario of having no data integration directly to implementing full Process Integration could be quite onerous. As a partner or end user it is best to:

1. Understand the company needs in terms of data replication, data synchronization, and process integration

2. Weigh the risks (from an implementation, support, and especially, an organizational perspective)

3. Start with a simple data replication project, move then to a data synchronization project, building momentum and support with each success along the way, then move to process integration.

So what does all of this have to do with promoting CRM user adoption? Look at it this way:

1. Would your sales reps be more inclined to want to use a CRM system if each morning when they logged in they had 5-10 'fresh' leads waiting for them because they were automatically routed to them directly from the company website?

2. Would the sales team be able to close more deals faster if they are able to monitor the credit history of each customer and their ability to pay – from the comfort of their CRM seat?

3. The ability to see product availability real time and provide their customer immediate order delivery dates can provide for a more robust personalization of the customer experience for the sales rep – building customer loyalty.

These are just a few examples, but when a sales team can realize this type of real 'added value' in their CRM system – so much more than just accounts, opportunities, contacts, and the sales process workflow designed to prod them along in their sales process – the barrier to user adoption drops like a lead balloon!

I hope that you have found this article to be helpful in some way. One of our company founders here at Scribe – Peter Chase – has written a white paper on this subject entitled Success Model for CRM Implementation. It's got a few more fancy charts and graphs and provides additional insight on this subject for our partners or end users.

Are you planning to attend Direction 2009 in Austin, TX?

If so, don’t miss out on a great opportunity to get to know Scribe Insight and the myriad of migration and integration possibilities made possible by Scribe’s application adapter for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV.

 

Scribe will be hosting training that will get you well on your way to becoming Scribe Certified.  Class size is limited, so get in touch with your Scribe Regional Business Manager or our sales department here at Scribe Software to reserve your seat.

 

We will provide a day and a half of ROBUST core product training, combining our Level 1 and an abbreviated Level 2 Training on the Scribe Workbench and Scribe Server.  This training includes:

 

- Deep level training on Workbench and Server

- All you need to know about how to use the Scribe Insight product

- Best practices on Scribe Insight, Workbench and Server

- Server Exam required as part of your Scribe Certification

 

Also included in this special offer, is one Adapter (can be Dynamics NAV, GP, CRM, or SFDC) training, to be taken online.  NOTE: in order to become certified, you will need to take the Adapter training, then, pass all certification tests online.

 

 

Who:  Training will be conducted by David Baker – Technical Pre-Sales Engineer with Scribe

 

What:  Hybrid deep dive Scribe Workbench and Server training

 

When:  November 10th, 1-8 P.M. and continuing on November 11th, 8:30 A.M. – Noon - Pizza and beer on us after day one.  Breakfast items the morning of the 11^th

 

Where:  Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort & Spa (same as Direction 2009)

 

How:  Be in touch with your Scribe RBM or call Scribe at +1 (603) 622-5109 or email us at sales@scribesoft.com

 

Why:  No better time to get Scribe certified!

 

 

See you in Austin!

Tips and tricks for working with Scribe trace files

As a former technical support manager at Scribe, I had the opportunity to work with a number of partners and customers on reading trace files. Now as I focus on developing training and documentation, I'd like to share with you what I've learned about Scribe Insight tracing. I'll start off with an explanation of how tracing works then give you some tips and tricks for reading trace files.

The two types of Scribe Insight trace files

There are two types of trace files. There is what I call the main trace file and there are trace files for each message processor.

Main trace file -- This file captures the activity when you run a DTS file from the Scribe Workbench. It also captures the activity initiated by the Scribe services running on the Insight server. For example, when a monitor runs its query, that activity is written to the trace file. You determine the name of the main trace file when you turn on tracing in the Workbench. On the View menu, click Options. Then on the Application Options window, select Tracing Enabled.

You can also turn on tracing in the Console under the Administration node in Site Settings. If you want to change the name of the trace file, you can only do that in the Workbench.

Note: The Scribe services check to see if they should trace only when they start up. The services need to be restarted to recognize that tracing was turned on or turned off.

Message processor trace files -- There is one message processor, number 00, which is dedicated to running DTS files for all file, time, and query based integration processes. There are multiple message processors, numbers 01-nn, that run the DTS files for queue based integration processes. Each message processor operates independently of the other message processors and for that reason they need their own trace file. If all message processors wrote to the same trace file, you would not be able to make sense of the trace file and understand which actions in the trace came from what message processor and associated DTS file

The file names of the trace files start with the main trace file name and finish with the processor number appended to it. For example, if the name you set for the trace file is Trace.txt, the name of the message processor traces files will be Trace_Proc_00.txt, Trace_Proc_01.txt, Trace_Proc_02.txt, and so on.

Key words and phrases in trace files

Here is a list of words and phrases that you will commonly see in a trace file. These can be used as identifiers to help pinpoint an error in and to understand what the software was doing at point in time.

Resuming trace for ScribeInternal_MS -- This signals the start of a new trace session. If tracing is turned off and on several times with the same trace file in place, you will see this in the trace file where the new trace session started.

ERROR! -- Most errors have this key word before them. Be aware that some errors in the trace are trivial and can be ignored. For example, you can usually ignore "Data source label SOURCE not found."

INSERT INTO SCRIBE.EXECUTIONLOG -- Shows the action where the start time for the DTS file is written to the execution log. This happens after the source and target connections have been made, the schemas have been validated, and before the steps are processed. If this statement is not in the trace it is probably because there was a problem connecting to the source or target, or that there was a problem validating the schemas saved in the DTS when compared to the schemas in the live connection.

UPDATE SCRIBE.EXECUTIONLOG SET "ENDTIME" -- Shows the action where the end time of the DTS is written to the execution log. If you are working with a trace file that has multiple DTS files in it, you can use the INSERT INTO SCRIBE.EXECUTIONLOG and UPDATE SCRIBE.EXECUTIONLOG SET "ENDTIME" statements to know where tracing for that run of that DTS begins and ends.

Executing step - n (source row n) -- This tells you what step is being attempted for what source row. You can substitute the step number and the row number for your situation. This can be helpful when trying to find out exactly what action was attempted preceding the error.

LOOKUP -- This keyword tells you that either a lookup link or lookup function, such as DBLOOKUP, was used. Just after this keyword, you will see the value used in the lookup.

User error: -- This text precedes an error message set up in the Error field defined in step control. This is your clue that the error message was configured by the DTS designer as part of the step configuration.

Time stamp -- The trace file has time stamps in the MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS format, for example, 02/04/2009 15:52:25. You can use the timestamp for searching and for correlating events that are captured in the trace with other system events, such as the Windows Event Log.

Tips

• Tracing impacts performance and trace files can get large quickly. Turn off tracing if you won't be using it.
• If you can't predictably reproduce the error, you might need to leave tracing on until you can catch the error happening. Consider archiving the trace files periodically, and then clearing the trace files to recover the disk space.
• When you are working with DTS files run from the server, there will be multiple trace files. Be sure to review all of them.
• When configuring step control, anticipate the errors that could happen and enter a descriptive error message for each possible error condition. If these errors happen, they will show up in the transaction error log and in the trace file, preceded by "User error:"
• Reading the trace can help you understand what order the software does things.
• For example, when a DTS is opened and before it moves any data, it connects to source and target, and validates the schema information against the steps and links. Understanding the order can be a big help when trying to diagnose a problem.
• If a DTS file hangs while running, go to the end of the trace file to look for clues. See the last action written to the trace file. Sometimes what caused the DTS file to hang will not be in the trace, but you can figure out what that was by seeing the last successful action and anticipating what should happen next.
• One trick is to take one section of the trace that shows an error and compare it to another section where the trace shows the job working without the error. Compare the two sections of trace file side-by-side and find what's different about them leading up to the error.
• If you think you can make the problem happen again, you might try clearing the trace files to start new ones. That way you cut down on the file sizes and avoid having to scan through extraneous information.
• You may also want to view the Windows Event Viewer to go along with the trace files. Look for events that happened around the same time as the error shown in the trace. Sometimes you can find a correlation between something in Event Viewer and the trace.
• If you have a large trace file and you know about what time the error occurred, you can search by a time and date stamp to a point in the trace file where the error occurred. Then you can search up or down from that time stamp to find the error.
• The elapsed time information in the trace can be helpful if investigating slow performance, timeouts, or hanging.
• Be careful using Notepad to open large trace files because it might hang. Use a more robust editor that can handle large files. You might need to get a file splitting utility to manage very large files.

Other types of tracing

If you need more information than you can get from the Scribe trace files, there are other types of tracing that can be helpful when troubleshooting a problem.

Adapter tracing -- Some Scribe adapters have additional levels of tracing that can be optionally enabled. The Adapter for Dynamics CRM has XML logging that you enable in the Adapter Settings dialog box.

SQL Server tracing -- You can use SQL Server tracing to get information about what is going on at the database level with SQL Server. Note that SQL Server tracing can be verbose, and can be configured with filters.

ODBC tracing -- Tracing is available for some ODBC drivers. Availability of ODBC tracing is determined by the company that makes the driver.

The Health of your Scribe Insight system

Hi, my name is Joe Dotson and I'm the Software Development Manager here at Scribe. I've been on the dev team since Scribe's beginning, and I've seen and been involved in a lot of changes in the Insight products over the years. And with healthcare all abuzz in the news lately, I thought I'd tell you about a few of the Insight system "healthcare" features that have been added over the past few years.

Failover

Most recently, in Insight v6.5, Scribe has added support for Failover environments. Scribe Failover uses a two-node active/passive configuration of Microsoft's Clustering Services. In this configuration, Scribe services are installed on two nodes in the cluster, however only one is active at any given time. The Microsoft Cluster Server periodically checks the health of the active Scribe node. If, for some reason, the active node is unavailable, the passive Scribe node is made active. For seamless transition between the active and passive nodes, these nodes need to share information. The active and passive node solution concept is not a backup or snapshot strategy. Instead, both active and passive nodes share the same information. This information is managed by Microsoft's Clustering Services through its shared resources.

The Failover feature of Scribe Insight is only available with Enterprise licenses of Scribe Insight. The Failover feature is not available for non-Enterprise licenses. See the Scribe Insight Installation Guide to learn more about Scribe Failover.

Services Auto Recovery

In non-Failover configuration, the five Insight services (AdminServer, EventManager, MessageServer, MonitorServer and BridgeServer) have all been modified to check for the well-being of the connection to the Scribe Internal Database ("IDB"). This feature was added in Insight v6.0.9. As you probably know, the IDB contains, among other things, all of the metadata for Integration Processes, Monitors, Publishers/Bridges, Execution and Transaction Error information, licensing details, etc., that are the heart of the integration system. If the connection to the IDB, which each of the services maintains, is lost or interrupted due to a number of environmental issues (network and/or network traffic problems, SQL Server service failure, etc.), the Scribe services had previously gone into a tailspin and ultimately failed. Now, the services periodically check the health of the IDB connection and gracefully shutdown. And coupled with the fact that these services are now installed with auto-restart options configured, the services will attempt to restart in a repeating fashion until the connection to the IDB is available.

The services are installed and configured as follows:

• restart on first and second failure
• take no action on subsequent failures
• reset the failure count after one day and to wait 10 minutes before restarting.

The snapshot of the Windows Services Properties dialog for the AdminServer, included below, shows these default settings; the same settings are used for all 5 services. These properties can be changed in the Windows Services applet; you may want to review these settings and adjust them for your requirements.

Process Auto Recovery

Another system health-related topic I'd like to share with you is the Auto Recovery feature for Integration Process, Monitors, Publishers and Bridges. This feature was also added in Insight v6.0.9. Settings for this feature are configured in the Insight Console: navigate to the Administration node, and then to the Site Settings node. You will notice a fifth tab on the far right – "Auto Recovery" – I've got it selected in this screenshot:

Here, there are 3 choices:

• No auto recovery
• Attempt auto recovery for N hours/minutes
• Attempt auto recovery indefinitely

No auto recovery – this is fairly straight-forward; Insight will not attempt any automatic recovery of the processes mentioned (IPs, Publishers, Monitors) beyond what you can already define for the specific processes (more on that exactly a bit later.)

Attempt auto recovery for N hours/minutes – here you can tell Insight how long you want the system to try to get those failed processes to work again. If a process fails for any reason (lost network connection, file not found, etc., there could be many reasons for process failure), Insight will try the process again after a pre-defined wait period, specifically, at increasing intervals of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 minutes, and every 60 minutes thereafter until it reaches the end of the user specified period. When the process is successfully run, the recovery interval will be reset to start at 1 minute on the next failure.

At each failed attempt, normal alerting for the process will occur as defined with the following exception: when recovery attempts have been tried without success for the user specified period, an alert will be raised indicating that no more recovery attempts will be made and that user intervention is required.

Attempt auto recovery indefinitely – this option is similar to the previous except that the recovery attempts do not end until success is achieved; ultimately, the system retries every 60 minutes.

These three system-level auto recovery settings can be enabled or overridden for each Integration Process, Publisher/Bridge, or Monitor defined in your system. In the Console, the "Activation" step in the each component's properties "dialog" contains 3 options for auto-recovery (for Integration Processes, go to "Step 4 – Activation"; for Publisher/Bridge and Monitor components, go to "Step 5 – Define the Activation Properties.")

The Auto Recovery settings determine how the process reacts if it encounters an error that prevents the process from running.

• Select No auto recovery to have the process go immediately into a failed state.
• Select Use system settings to use the auto recovery settings configured in Site Settings as described above.
• Select On schedule to have the process attempt recovery on the schedule defined for the process.

Note:  The Auto Recovery option is enabled for File, Time, and Query Integration Processes and disabled for Queue Integration Processes. Also, this option is enabled for Query Publishers and Email Bridges and is disabled for application publishers.

So What's Next

OK, so some of these features were added back in 2007 – "do you have anything new planned for me" you might be asking. Good question and the answer is yes. We are closely tracking new feature requests – we call them "Ideas" – in OpenMind. We encourage you to review existing Ideas, add your own Ideas, and vote for those that are most important to you. We are currently devoting the next release of Insight, codenamed "Steelhead", to the top vote-getters currently in OpenMind – so your Ideas and Votes definitely count!

Some of the Ideas we are working on in Steelhead:

• 7: Allow multiple target connections
• 66: Allow lookup into a database outside of the source, internal, or target.
• 142: Using Update Source with Custom Queries
• 156: Improve the update source functionality to not be so quirky
• 215: Update multiple source fields
• 249: Place "something" on the screen while Workbench is starting
• 280: Add support for Windows 7
• 306: Workbench Test Dialog should remember the current window state
• 239: Always create the MSMQs if they are not there when the MessageServer starts
• 139: Start new message processors only if a reasonable amount of system resources are available

And as for healthcare features, these are the Ideas we are considering for future releases:

• 315: SFDC Adapter - retry connection when it's down...
• 250: Enable email alert if Scribe loses communication with its internal database
• 192: Provide a error threshold to define when a DTS should stop executing
• 163: Support for failover on Windows 2008
• 152: Add more granularity to alerting notifications
• 94: System and Configuration Audit/Test
• 34: Get Insight to automatically reconnect DTS's after a SQL reboot where SQL is on a different box

That about wraps up my discussion on Insight system healthcare, so until next time - be well.

Comparison: Scribe Insight and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 (Integration Tool)

Microsoft recently released a tool that allows for simple integration between its Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Dynamics GP 10.0 applications. This document is intended to clarify the differences between Scribe’s Insight integration tool and Microsoft’s new offering.

While both the Microsoft Adapter and Scribe Insight may be categorized as integration tools they are extremely different offerings and, as such, direct comparison is not practical. To explain this statement it is necessary to define each offering in simple terms.

Microsoft Adapter: A purpose-built, point-to-point tool designed to keep a finite set of record types synchronized between US English Microsoft CRM 4.0 and US English Dynamics GP 10.0.

Scribe Insight: A general purpose integration tool capable of connecting any number of applications and data sources, executing complex integration processes, monitoring and alerting on business activity, reacting to a variety of events (e.g. detecting a file, listening to a message queue, etc), performing complex data transformation, communicating with web services and much more.

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I am calling it - Bing is better than Google (now help me fix a Bing bug please)

Take a look to your right and you'll see that we have implemented search on the Scribe blog. It is simple to do and both Bing and Google provide free ways to do it.  In going through the process of implementing search on the blog and our main web site I've decided to go with Bing.  Here are some of my reasons;

- The Bing search results box (which layers on top of the current page as opposed to taking you to another page - great!) looks much better than Google's
- With both Bing and Google you can create search engines to include multiple sites (here at Scribe we technically have three sites).  However, I had to pay to do this with Google (perhaps there is a free option but to get the ads off the search results page I had to pay)
- Unfortunately, there seems to be a Bing bug so I have not been able to successfully place both of my Bing search boxes on this blog (I have created one to search just the blog and another to search all our three sites).  When I place them both they freeze on page load with a 'loading' message.  The graphic to your right illustrates what happens. 
- With Google I was able to create a search box where the user could select which of our three sites they wanted to search; maybe someone can tell me if this is possible with Bing but I did not see how

And finally, and I really never thought I would say this...

- Bing search results are just flat-out better.  I did all the testing I needed to to do convince myself.  I think Bing is better

Now, it would be great if an industrious Microsoft person could show me how to add both my Bing Blog Search as well as my Bing multi-site search to this page without them freezing.  If you do this, I promise to remove the Google site search box which is now searching across all our sites.  Ideally, I would want the Bing multi-site search to include checkboxes so visitors can select any combination of our three sites to search.

Interested in implementing Bing search on your site?  It is easy; just go to http://www.bing.com/siteowner/welcome.aspx to get started.

Thinking outside the box – Supporting cross-company business processes with Scribe Insight

When thinking about Scribe, most partner or customers immediately think about integrating Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV, SL and AX with their CRM system or with some other legacy application. True enough, for the Dynamics applications the Scribe Adapters offer rarely found powerful interoperability. But customer’s needs are not limited to connecting their own business applications, cross-business process models are moving more and more to the center of attention as businesses are becoming more and more interconnected. Alignment between these business models needs to be supported by IT solutions. Because of its flexibility and wide range of connectivity (application adapters, XML, Web Services, CSV), Scribe Insight has the perfect potential to support these requirements thus providing greater value to customers.

Already, numerous third party and legacy solutions have been created to allow Dynamics ERP customers to send product catalog data and receive order data with a hosted web shop system, exchange electronic invoices with their business partners or pick up warehouse commissioning and shipment information provided by their logistic partners. Significant message standards were established in the 1990's both in the US and Europe. These standards were originally intended to support the processes of Enterprise companies. However, more and more medium size businesses, that typically run Dynamics ERP systems, are forced to support these standards in order to stay in business. These standards provide an ideal scenario for building Scribe Templates, which are easily extended as needed, to support interconnected businesses. There are other solutions available in the Marketplace. However, only Scribe Insight is designed to operate with Microsoft Dynamics applications and provide the additional capabilities that businesses need for integrating their internal legacy, CRM and other mission critical business applications- whether they're deployed on-premise, hosted or cloud-based. The Scribe Insight platform is uniquely designed to address this wide spectrum of interconnected processes, both internal and cross-business processes. So, what is your current strategy for connecting your customer's Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics SL or Dynamics AX systems to their trading partners? Does it include Scribe Insight?