Scribe Software Blog

Scribe Online Tips and Tricks: Using Escape Characters with Scribe Online Synchronization Service

The Scribe technical team has been working to compile a useful list of technical tips and tricks to help users get the most out of the system. We'll be offering these to you as blog posts and tutorial videos posted online. For this one, we'll be talking about formatting data and using escape characters within formulas.

During the mapping of data between different endpoints, there may be some formatting transformation that needs to occur; the example we're going to use here is writing address data to Salesforce.com. Salesforce addresses are basically 3 rows of data separated by carriage return/line feeds, all stored within 1 text field. In order to mimic this formatting we must concatenate several fields together along with escape characters to allow the carriage return/line feed to be added between our 3 concatenated fields.

We are able to accomplish this with SYS as these escape characters are able to be used within a formula, but, there is a caveat. You must first declare that you are going to be using these characters in the next segment of text. This is done by using the $ character prior to the text string with the escape characters. To explain what this means, we'll use a real example. We have three Address fields in our source data, Line1, Line2, and Line 3. They contain the following data

If we were to simply concatenate these fields together as seen in the formula below



our resulting value would look like this:

Obviously we can do better than this. Instead of simply concatenating them together, we'll use our escape characters. The formula seen below is designed to use these escape characters and will allow our data to be written to Salesforce.com with the proper formatting.



Here you can see the result of our formula, where our data is represented with the proper syntax and formatting.

By concatenating our escape characters \r and \n we were able to put a carriage return/line feeds between each field, resulting in the formatting we needed to bring that address properly into Salesforce. To illustrate the importance of declaring these special characters, I have removed the $ from the formula we used before



The resulting data in Saleforce.com would appear as it is seen here

So you can see that without our $ declaration, it's interpreted as plain text. There are many escape characters that can be used to assist you within formulas, we have outlined some in our online help, and you can also simply look these up online to get some definition around what is and is not possible.

Hopefully this will help you as you begin to use the Scribe Online Synchronization Service. Keep an eye out for more tips and tricks coming from our technical team here at Scribe Let us know if you have any comments about things you would like to see explained.

The Five Capabilities of a Collaborative Integration Platform – 5. Expandability

In my last installment I spoke of the need for Supportability in your integration solution once you have put it into production. In this final post, I will discuss the need to expand your integration solution with the demands of your business.

To coin the old adage, there is only one thing in business that is constant and that is change. What happens if you identify some other touch points that need to be integrated? What is the impact of adding a new business application that is integral to your business processes into the mix? What happens if you make significant changes to the way your people interact with customers? How do you deal with the replacement of one of the applications involved? What if you acquire another company with different business systems and processes? These things occur frequently and should account in your integration strategy.

A common mistake with data integration is trying to do too much the first time. Seeking to integrate any and all touch points that you can envision up front can weigh a project down and significantly increase risk. A smart approach is to prioritize the different integration processes, particularly those things that will drive CRM user adoption in the initial phase, and then tackle a manageable number at the first phase. Additional integration processes can then be added over time.

This need for expandability requires that we think strategically and implement tactically when it comes to integration. It is important that the tools and approaches you utilize are nimble enough to meet your short-term needs without busting the budget while forming a strong foundation where future expansion can be easily accommodated.

Thanks for reading these posts and remember these five essential elements for successful data integration; reusability, flexibility, transferability, supportability, and expandability. And as I mentioned when introducing this topic, these elements should shed some light on the capabilities of our new integration platform, Scribe Online, as well as some of the continued investments we will be making in Scribe Insight.

Happy New Year 2012!

As we close out 2011, we want to thank our partners and our customers for doing business with Scribe. We've had a big year with the launch of new products, Replication and Synchronization Services, on our Scribe Online cloud integration platform. We're equally excited about our upcoming release of Insight 7.5 this week. This version will allow our partners and customers to integrate wherever they are world-wide, and we're looking forward to working with new partners and customers in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe.

However, expanding around the globe is a bit more than software enhancements! We're making investments throughout Scribe to support your integration needs such as:

• The EMEA office will be expanding to a team of 5 and adding a dedicated pre-sales engineer. This includes relocating Linda Johnson, who many of you have worked with for the past five years. So, you will be hearing from Linda as well as seeing her more!
• Starting in January, Enterprise customers and Elite partners will have access to 24x7 Support for critical support issues.
• With the addition of Roger Hodskins, Vice President of Strategic Alliances, and more of my focus, we continue to deepen relationships with the global system integrators with whom we partner, such as Ciber, Columbus IT, Hitachi Consulting and Logica.
• You'll be hearing more about how multi-national Scribe customers and partners solve interesting challenges and reap the benefits of providing superior service to their customers, decrease costs, and increase operational efficiencies.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a sincere "Thank You!" for your support and business throughout 2011. Stay tuned for more in 2012!

Partnering for Cloud Success

The advent of Cloud computing and the availability of cloud based business applications is dramatically changing the IT environment for companies of all sizes. The Cloud offers simplification…simplification of the user experience and simplification for those responsible for managing the application deployments. It enables companies to get to value faster with their IT investments, allowing them to focus less on technology issues and place more attention on redefining and streamlining their business processes.

At the same time, the rapid adoption of the cloud, including the accelerating use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, has resulted in an explosion of new data coming at companies from all directions, including from employees, customers, vendors, partners, and other market influencers. Companies that can integrate, assimilate, and make sense of that information across the enterprise will be the winners. Being in the data integration business, this is really good news for our organization. To take advantage of this opportunity, however, will require us to work closely with the hundreds of implementation partners we rely on to deliver our products in order to meet the changing economic model of the Cloud.

A number of our partners are responding quickly to this changing landscape. They are transforming large portions of their practices from being technology integrators to becoming higher level solution providers. Many of these partners have built large portions of their business on doing traditional "systems integration", helping their customers make sense of many layers of the technology stack. With much of that work being collapsed by these new cloud services, these partners are moving towards creating industry or vertical market solutions that establish a new differentiation for their companies in the marketplace. Not only do these solutions offer built in application functionality inherent to the industry but also include pre-defined integration processes to a number of different Cloud and premised based endpoints.

Responding to these changes is having a profound effect on the businesses of ISVs as well as implementation partners. The most obvious is the profit and cash flow impact of the subscription model versus the old software and maintenance model. It certainly does not stop there however. How do implementation partners re-work the skills and talents of their work force to meet the new demands of our customers? How do we provide better tools to support these new demands? How do implementation partners become adept at creating and packaging IP? How do both ISVs and implementation partners look beyond selling software to the delivering an entire end to end user experience? How do we address the operational issues around upgrading and supporting solutions? I could go on and on.

On November 7^th, 2011, I will be participating in a panel at the Cloud Channel Summit entitled "Building Effective Cloud Channels: What's Working and What's Not". This should be a very lively and informative discussion as each of the panelists is wrestling with this question in their own business. While each of the panelists will bring their own insights and ideas around how to build these channels, the broader macro level issues outlined above will be the lens by which they should be evaluated. Addressing this important issue of collaboration between ISVs and implementation partners is critical to the broader adoption of Cloud services. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and hearing the ideas of my contemporaries.

Scribe Online Adds SIs and VARs into the Cloud Equation – an IT Business Edge Article

Recently I had an interview with Loraine Lawson, Editor at IT Business Edge, on the ever-changing landscape that our Partners, both Vars and Sis, will be required to navigate, and how the Scribe Online platform will help them not only maintain their business, but be able to provide additional opportunities for growth. I've excerpted just a bit of the article, so take a moment to read below or visit the full article on their site: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/community/features/interviews/blog/scribe-online-adds-sis-and-vars-into-the-cloud-equation/?cs=47026

"You have to bring together the people, the processes and all of the apps and data. I think that's really where we're headed with Scribe Online."

Lawson: First could you answer: Are you continuing with the Microsoft focus as you go with Scribe Online or how do you expand it?
Guercia: Initially, we are. We're turning to the channel that we've had great success in, right, but the mission of Scribe Online is really to go and extend beyond just the Microsoft channel.

Let me explain why that's the case. Firms like Boomi, Cast Iron and Informatica have largely focused on cloud-to-cloud integration through some form of designer widgets, right? They basically went after what was a very practical opportunity to get data integration between various cloud services, [which] I think was a very practical and smart thing to do.

We will do some of that, but really our differentiation is we're focused on cloud-to-premise-based integration. I think the era that we're in now is really one where companies understand that cloud or on-demand services — which have come in typically through the line of business whether it's in a sales area or marketing or HR — they really need to be mainstreamed with all of the apps and all of the data that's run behind the firewall. I think that this is particularly true in the midmarket…. More in the full article.

Lawson: So are you working primarily with the VARs and the SIs or will you sell directly to the end-user companies?
Guercia: Our strategy is really this: If we're selling or developing business with cloud providers, we're going to be cultivating a portfolio of cloud companies that want to write to our connectors.

So what we give them is not only some level of cloud-to-cloud integration, but we open up markets for them if they want to extend beyond cloud-to-cloud to get into cloud-to-premise….

What Scribe offers them is when they write a connector to Scribe Online, they instantly get access to all Microsoft CRM 2011 users, and they would also be able to get access to SQL, so they can take data from SQL databases and run it through their service and as we add new connectors, they would get access to those services as well.

But what we give them initially is access into a Microsoft Dynamics market that they never had and then a channel of partners that can now use their technology to go build BI solutions. Now, they can spend literally a month of one developer's time writing to our connector development kit, which will be out in July…. More in the full article.

Lawson: There's been discussion about how cloud will impact systems integrations and VARs, particularly in terms of whether or not they'll even be necessary as more companies move to the cloud. Do you find that is something they're concerned about?
Guercia: Well, it truly is because if you think about what's happening, the cloud in some extent, right, is disintermediating the integrator, because they can get an on-demand application. I mean, I understand that very well. I've been in this industry for 10 years, so I get that. …

What the SIs need to do is re-invent themselves and really be relevant in integrating hybrid environments. Just relying on doing SAP and Oracle implementations and not figuring out how to integrate to these cloud services, I think, would be a death nail for those larger players…. More in the full article.

Lawson: I know some cloud integration companies offer pre-packaged integration solutions. I'm having a hard time understanding how your offering is different from other pre-packaged solutions, except for you're adding VARs and system integrations.
Guercia: Here's the thing, and it's a rhetorical question: Do you think that either the SaaS providers or the IT organizations by themselves will have the tools and the wherewithal to really harness all of the applications that run behind the firewall and all of the cloud services that they have today and tomorrow into an integrated application-centric solution for their company? I don't believe they will. I think they're going to need help…. More in the full article.  

Lawson: How do you think that your offering this service to SIs and VARs will impact end-user organizations?
Guercia: We've come out of just a dreadful economic period, right? Fortunately we're seeing the light of day now, things are getting a little bit better, but I do think there was some element of cause-and-effect relative to the growth of these SaaS apps during a period when the economy was terrible. The businesses had less money to do things and they had fewer resources to make things happen, especially on the IT side.  

I think we're in a period where companies are saying, all right, how do I bring this together? How do I make this an IT function rather than having all these different execs purchasing their apps for their particular department? How do I pull all of this together?... More in the full article.

   

 

Scribe’s Agent Technology for Scribe Online

In building the Scribe Online solution, a key goal was to create a system that could operate seamlessly in the hybrid world, reflecting our belief that increasingly customers and partners will face the challenge of integrating applications that sit within a customer's firewall with cloud-delivered applications combined with other web service-based sources for data improvement and data enrichment. Scribe's agent-based technology is a key facet of delivering solutions in the hybrid world. In this blog post I wanted to talk about the Scribe agent, explain several aspects of its architecture and discuss why we architected the solution the way we did.

The Scribe Agent is a lightweight component that runs locally within your IT environment. The primary responsibility of the agent is to establish secure communications between premise-based applications, cloud-based applications and with Scribe Online. The agent architecture provides a number of key advantages, including: 

• The agent enables secure communications without the need for you to poke holes in your firewall.
• The agent allows you to fully control of your data. Unlike hub and spoke architectures, integrating a premise-based application with a cloud-based application with Scribe Online does not require that data flow through Scribe Online. You are in complete control of which data leave your firewall and where it goes.
• The agent operates semi-autonomously. The agent periodically communicates to the Scribe Online cloud to receive new commands (start, pause) and to communicate work performed – and the agent continues to work even if that communication is temporarily disrupted. For example, when Scribe released the Scribe Online April update, we scheduled a 60 minute maintenance window. During that period, even though Scribe Online was down for maintenance, agents continued to run and continued to process data; customers' mission critical integration services were entirely unaffected.
• The agent is a headless program which runs as a service – it has no user interface. All configuration of and interaction with the agent is performed via the Scribe Online user interface – which means that you and your partners can monitor, manage and administer your integration services regardless of whether you are working on premise or remotely, without the need for VPN access to the agent machine.
• The agent is lightweight – easy to install and easy to configure with minimal technical prerequisites. A design goal of Scribe Online is that a new user should be able to sign up for Scribe Online, install an agent, and configure the Scribe Online RS service in less than ten minutes. The download is less than 15MB and typically runs in less than 100MB of RAM.
• The agent is high performance. When you create a solution instance via the UI, Scribe Online compiles that solution and downloads the compiled executable to the agent behind the scenes. When your solution is running, its running compiled code – which means it is fast.
• Agents are disposable. All settings and process definitions reside in the cloud and are synchronized down to the agent as needed. For example, if you lose your agent machine due to a hard disk crash, simply download and install the agent on a new machine. The first thing the agent does upon establishing connectivity to the cloud is bring down process definitions and instructions – and in less than 10 minutes your integration is up and running again!
• The agent is low maintenance – effective with the upcoming May update of Scribe Online, agents update themselves so that you automatically take advantage of new features and bug fixes.
• Agents are architected for easy active-active clustering. You can install multiple agents today – and in the near future, you will be able to exercise fine-grained control over which solution instances run on which agents, including solution instances which run on multiple agents simultaneously. Thus, with a fraction of the effort required for existing clustered solutions, you are able to install and configure multiple agents working collaboratively for easy load balancing, high throughput, and easy high reliability.

Partners drive customer integration success, and we’re here to support their transition to the Cloud

With today's launch announcement of Scribe Online, our new Cloud based data integration platform, I want to bring our readers back to the roots of data integration and how Scribe has evolved into the leading Dynamics integration ISV. The hard work and innovative "application centric" data integration solutions built on Scribe technology have helped our partners add value to their customers' ability to access information and make better decisions. This is a great opportunity to give a thankful nod to our Scribe Partners, with almost 900 of them bringing Dynamics customers more value, more visibility, and more internal success with their CRM and ERP integrations.

The new Scribe Online platform is built on our 14 years of integration success, and specifically built with our partners and ISVs in mind, to enable them to create and manage multiple solutions and customers from one dashboard. This isn't technology for the future, this is technology for right now. And our customers and partners will experience the most success by embracing these technological changes, and walking down this new technology path with Scribe.

I look forward to seeing so many of our Dynamics customers and partners this week at Microsoft Convergence in Atlanta, and hope you'll stop in our booth (206) to say hi, and try a hands-on demo of Scribe Online Replication Services. This is just the beginning and we have a wonderful product roadmap to deliver value for our partners so they can package up their IP and attack new markets, by leveraging both Cloud and premise based data and applications. This is going to be fun!

Collaborative IT – People, Processes or Platforms?

Lately, you've probably seen or heard the buzzwords "collaborative IT" or "cloud IT". And like most buzzwords, those terms are open to a number of interpretations depending on who you talk to. "Collaborative IT" is certainly one of my favorite phrases when talking about Scribe Online. But what does it really mean for the data integration partner or customer? And why does it matter when planning for cloud applications or integrating them with your existing business environment?

When we talk about collaborative IT, normally we're talking about a business application environment sourced with various pieces and parts that may not be in-house but delivered by different vendors, service providers, etc. to make this happen. For most businesses it's not cost-effective or efficient any longer to have everything "in-house". Cloud IT would be the SaaS or hybrid variant where businesses are knitting together various cloud services and platforms with existing infrastructure.

At Scribe, we've worked with partners for over a decade and the one thing we're seeing is no matter what the platform or delivery model, that integration is a collaborative process between multiple people. Rarely is an application integration project an "IT only" endeavor – especially when introducing a new application or implementing complex, large scale integrations. Application integration projects typically involve IT, business stakeholders, various consultants, partners and vendors. That's a number of different people working together to effect successful integration. As businesses continue to take advantage of the ever increasing type and number of applications, services and data, hiring experts for all of these is expensive and doesn't scale particularly well.

When Scribe talks about "collaborative IT" we're focusing on the people part of the collaboration – partners, customers, vendors, and other experts who work together to ensure the success of the integration project. Some of these may be long term relationships and others short term relationships. When we architected Scribe Online we thought carefully about the "collaborative" user experience of collaborative IT – how this disparate group of people work together via the integration platform itself. What's the best way to document and communicate changes through the lifetime of the integration? How do you maintain or implement an integration with a team of people who may be on-site or remote? How do you manage the changing roles of these various participants over the lifetime of the integration?

Scribe Online was designed to incorporate the "how" of collaborative IT from a people perspective. How partners and customers interact with each other during an integration project, and how to best leverage the platform to make those interactions truly collaborative. Collaborative IT is not only services and delivery platforms, it's also people.

 

Scribe Online – Onward and Upward

The results of our Technology Adoption Preview or TAP for the Scribe Online Replication Service are in. Although we have been working on the underlying Scribe Online platform for over a year now, this was the first time we had provided a functional service to users.

We had 40 participants in the TAP that configured 61 data replication solutions during December. During that time, the service replicated over 307 Million rows of data from Dynamics CRM Online 2011 to SQL Server. We had nearly universal feedback on how easy the service was to set-up and configure. We did uncover some issues; most of them around connecting to SQL and Dynamics CRM Online 2011. Many of these issues were resolved during the TAP. The most common enhancements requests were centered on usability and allowing for more configuration options. We would like to personally thank all of the TAP participants who really put the service through its paces.

We were thrilled with how well the underlying Scribe Online platform performed under its first real world use. We are also happy to report that the Azure service that Scribe Online runs on performed like a champ. We continue to be pleased with that platform decision.

We hit all of the exit criteria we had for the TAP and are releasing the Replication Service into Managed Beta today. If you are interested in participating in our Managed Beta, you can go to www.scribesoft.com/online and click the Pre-Release button on the right hand side of the page to apply.

We will see you in the Cloud.

Your invitation to the Scribe cloud

Over the past year, our engineering team here at Scribe has been busy developing a new cloud based integration service offering. As cloud services continue to expand, this cloud offering will enable our partners and customers to address the rapidly growing need to bridge the gap between online and on-premise applications. This industry-leading platform will uniquely support system integrators, solution partners and ISVs as they expand data integration options for customers. The platform will allow these partners to rapidly create solutions that can be easily deployed in the cloud.

Scribe is excited to introduce the first service on this new platform, code named Denali. This service will enable customers, with just a few minutes of set-up to replicate a Dynamics CRM 2011 Online database to a SQL Server instance for the purposes of more advanced BI and reporting. We will release an early version to a select group of Technology Adoption Preview (TAP) participants on December 1st. If you have experience and knowledge of Dynamics CRM Online and Scribe, you may be a good candidate to participate in this TAP. Being part of the TAP will require a commitment of between 2 and 4 hours per week for about 4 weeks. It will, however, provide a great opportunity to help us shape this new cloud offering.

You can find more information about this new cloud service and the TAP by going to www.scribesoft.com/denalitap. If you are interested in applying for the TAP, you can complete the form at the bottom of the page.

This journey into the cloud will be exciting for all of us. We look forward to embarking on it together.