Scribe Software Blog

User Conference Session: Deep Dive on the Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics AX

I'm looking forward to presenting a session on our adapter for Dynamics AX at our first (hopefully annual) user conference coming up this September. Since this is a relatively new adapter this will be the first time I'll be discussing the adapter with our partners and I am therefore really excited about sharing some details and hearing some feedback.

For me, Dynamics AX always a fun topic to talk about because I think AX is Microsoft's most comprehensive and feature rich ERP offering. And while Microsoft claims to love all of their children equally, this is the ERP application that seems to be getting the most of their attention these days. When compared to the other ERP applications in the Dynamics family of product, AX also has a much more robust CRM module. This means that our core CRM to ERP scenario is a bit less compelling with AX users. With this in mind the use cases I will be presenting in this session will demonstrate Scribe's value outside of the context of CRM to ERP integration. This will also let me demonstrate some of my other favorite Scribe Insight features such as our Web Service adapter and our new multi-target functionality that we just delivered with Insight 7.0.

Like all Scribe adapters, our adapter for Dynamics AX exposes the data and functionality of AX in the same easy to use manner that you are probably accustomed to from using our other adapters. So while I will demonstrate most of that base line functionality my session will focus on the technology we use to communicate with AX, the AX specific details that you need to know to get our AX adapter properly configured and running and also how to make the most of the adapter by extending it to call custom AX code.

Here are the specific topics I'll be covering:

• An architectural walkthrough - a behind the scenes tour of the adapter and explanation some of our design decisions
• Installation & Configuration – I'll show the audience how to get the adapter up and running in minutes
• AX as a source and target – I'll show typical Scribe adapter functionality by walking through a DTS that has AX as both a source and target
• Consuming AX Events – I'll show the typical Scribe publisher functionality
• Leveraging custom AX code - I'll show how our AX adapter can be extended by calling custom AX code

This is scheduled to be a one–hour session, but I love to talk about technology, especially love to talk about our products and want to include plenty of time for Q&A so I expect that I'm going to need to move along at a pretty good pace to get all this content in.

I hope you can find your way to New England this September, enjoy some leaf peeping, and join us at our conference.

 

 

 

 

User Conference Session: Troubleshooting

 The troubleshooting session will be hosted by myself, Joshua Solomon, and Paul Marceau. Experienced Scribe customers and partners will recognize Paul as one of our current talented Technical Support Analysts. As for myself I have been a part of the Scribe family for 10 years and you may also recognize me as a former senior Technical Support Engineer. Currently I develop adapters for Scribe Development.

This session will outline the proper paths to take when migrations and integrations are not working as expected. Items covered will include security, interpretation of trace files, registry settings and impact, and a case study or two illustrating troubleshooting techniques. Learn how Scribe support diagnoses and fixes the most complex integration challenges.

Here's a list of some of the topics we will cover.

• Security for Scribe Insight
  As an experienced Scribe user, you probably have realized that understanding security is a large part of your implementation process. We will cover some areas that are commonly overlooked or not well understood.
• Registry Settings
  We will discuss some little known registry settings that can be adjusted to improve performance and also completely change the way some features work. Making changes here can help underlying issues that are difficult to identify.
• Trace Files
  The beginning of any troubleshooting effort starts with tracing. We will dissect a trace file or two and discuss the major items that we see. Scribe veterans will recognize that there are sometimes a few red herrings in a trace file as well as some confusing error messages that need to be interpreted carefully.
• A case study from our support archives
  Paul and I will review a case or two from our files to illustrate some troubleshooting techniques.
  

After the presentation of the case study, Paul and myself will have a short Q&A session to address any of your concerns.

See you in September!

Joshua Solomon &  Paul Marceau

User Conference Session: Scribe Adapter for Salesforce - may the force be with you!

 Fellow Scribers - I’ve been a Technical Pre-sales Engineer here for the past 3.5 years, and am thrilled we’re holding our very first 2010 Scribe User Conference here in Bedford, NH on September 23^rd and 24^th.  If you’ve ever visited New England in late September or early October, you know that this is our “leaf peeping” season where one will be in awe of nature’s brilliant crimsons and golds of fall.  All of us here at Scribe will be as energized as the foliage colors, and look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. 

And now the rest of the story…

Has there been a time when you purchased a product, loaded with all the bells and whistles, and soon came to realize you only use a small subset of the total feature set available?  It’s not that you didn’t need all those features, but you have just become more at ease with the some more than others, right?  If you resemble this description, as I do, it’s time to travel over to the other side to the pathway of many abilities!  Journey with me and learn how you can leverage these robust “diamond in the rough” features to deliver even more value than you are currently experiencing.

In our session covering the Scribe Adapter for Salesforce, we will be discussing the detail of available features that are sometimes overlooked.  Features that can be very performance strategic when designing a migration project to populate your Salesforce deployment.  Features that will allow your integration processes to run more efficiently and at the same time minimizing your hit count against the Force.com web service.  We all know the results of maxing out on your available API hits, don’t we?

We will also be demonstrating a few use case scenarios (migration and integration) where you will see the Scribe Adapter for Salesforce in action.  Below is a sneak preview of our planned coming attractions:

1.    Support for multi-record “Upsert” operations to maximize performance.

2.    Support of data compression and multi-record bulk operations to maximize performance.

3.    Publishing data out of Salesforce by using Outbound Messaging.  This feature not only improves performance but also minimizes API hit count due to the fact that data is pushed out of SFDC, not pulled.

We feel that our session will be of significant and compelling content from which you can walk away feeling the force is with you.   Until we speak again, remember… A Scriber gains power through understanding!

User Conference session: Designing Scribe Integrations for the Fastest Performance

Well here we are, July, only more or less 2 months away from our very first User Conference! Now, I know mid-summer is tough where your mind might be somewhere other than work (pool, beach, pick your poison), BUT I wanted to share with you all some tidbits about what I will be talking about during our upcoming conference!

As you might have guessed from my blog post title, I'm going to be talking about Performance with Scribe Insight. Now, before I tell you what I will be…telling you…a little about me.

I've been at Scribe roughly four years now, and have grown from a Tier 1 technical support analyst to the Team Lead of the Services department. What that means is that I handle mainly support calls that are of a very complex nature, but I also lend a hand on other projects, such as developing and delivering training (you may remember me from such Scribe Training vBooks as Server Training, GP Training, and others), and developing and maintaining our internal Scribe integrations. (Yes folks that's right, we actually USE Scribe Insight in the barn!). Given this background I have at Scribe, I'm uniquely placed to deliver to you some of the tricks I have learned over the years to get the most out of your Scribe implementation.

Now I do not want to give TOO much away here, but I want to make sure you know what you will be getting when you sign up for our user conference.

The general theme of this session is getting the best performance possible out of Scribe based integrations, but I want to make sure we take the best possible approach to this. We're going to start with some discussion about designing a DTS file the right way, not just the easy way. Let's face it; anything worth doing is worth doing right. I'll go over some pros and cons about specific features such as DBLOOKUP, SQLQUERY, and other lookup functions. I'll also go pretty deep on step control, and how to cut corners without damaging data.

Next I'll dive squarely into the console to review the best way to set up your integrations. This will be a very in depth focus on utilizing multi-threading within Scribe and some data to back up why this really is the way to go. Topics will range from how multi-threading can get your data from system A to system B in real time, how to make the most out of query publishers and application publishers, and when one or the other makes the most sense. I'll also give you some pointers on pro-active techniques to make sure your integration is running tip top.

Lastly I'll impart upon you some methods I use to take an integration that is currently running a little subpar, and boost it up to let it operate at its full potential. This will range from some common mistakes made when planning out your implementation to low impact tweaks that can be made without affecting your current business process or delaying your integrations.

So that's all I have for all of you out there in Scribe land, I can't wait to see and meet you all at the conference and make sure that you have the knowledge to get the most out of Scribe Insight, because as they say, "Knowing is half the battle.

User Conference Session: Feature Highlights Including Underused Features and Multi-Target

Everyone at Scribe is excited about hosting our first user conference and we have a lot of information to share with you. For those of you that attend, it should be an excellent opportunity to learn more about Scribe, our software, and to meet all the people that make it happen.

As a 14 year Scribe employee, I've picked up a number of tricks over the years and I want to share some of them with you. As I'm responsible for training and documentation, I read the product forums and check in with our Support team about the cases they've been working on, looking for information we could add to training, documentation, or a workshop. I find that there are features that are overlooked and use cases that don't have an obvious solution. What I have planned for this session is to shed some light on some of those features and solutions that might not be so obvious to people, but can be quite helpful once you add them to your integration design.

I've built a list of these features and use cases, and I will give you an overview of them in a one-hour session, leaving time for Q&A. I will also highlight a few uses cases for the new multi-target capability in Insight 7 to give you an idea of how multi-target expands the capability of Insight.

Here's a list of some of the topics I will cover.

• How to save time and typing by copying steps and copying links.
• How to update multiple source fields by re-using your source connection with the multi-target capability.
• How to track two sets of primary IDs in the key cross reference table using the multi-target capability.
• How you can use a third party Web service to enhance your data in-process as you move it to the target.
• Why you should know how to purge messages from the system dead letter queue and how to do it.
• Why target variables are so important and how you can use them to carry a value from one step to another.
• How to use a XML as a target to put messages in a queue, for a one-time export to a queue, instead of using a publisher.
• How to optimize your step design to capture meaningful error messages.

Since this will only be a one-hour session including time for Q&A, I will give you a nice overview of each of these topics and try to fit in a few more if time allows.

I'm looking forward to seeing you here in Bedford in September.

Scribe User Conference Session Blogs – Coming Soon!

Our User Conference is all about the content. We know your time is valuable, so our presenters will provide you with a day and a half of sessions filled with deep content that will make beginning users aware of the possibilities of using Scribe, while giving advanced users concrete ideas and examples of how to get more out of Scribe products.

Our presenters will spend the next two weeks blogging additional detail about their sessions, so either bookmark http://blog.scribesoft.com/user-conference or just follow us on Twitter and tag #Scribe10 to get the latest tweets once the blogs are posted.

 

Scribe User Conference: Recorded Webcast and Additional Materials

The Scribe User Conference Scheduled for September 23^rd and 24^th in Bedford, NH is approaching the end of early bird ticket sales.  The early bird registration price of $425 will increase to $575 after April 10.

Today the Scribe executive team held a webcast to provide details and answer questions regarding the user conference.  The presentation slides from the webcast are available here.

The event site the user conference can be accessed at http://scribesoft.eventbrite.com and provides full conference details as well as registration.

Unfortunately the Live Meeting webcast service experienced technical difficulties during today's webcast so the recording has about a minute of technical difficulties in the beginning.  However, you may access the recorded webcast here and, in doing so, you may want to skip ahead during the part where there are audio issues.

SAVE THE DATE for the First Annual Scribe User Conference: September 23-24

SAVE THE DATE for the first annual Scribe User Conference this fall in New Hampshire.  We will be offering a day and a half of learning, networking, and sessions for all levels of Scribe Insight users. Experience interesting & complex integration case studies, hands on labs, Tips n' Tricks, meet Scribe's Development Team, Support Team, and more!

After the day and a half of learning, take advantage of the gorgeous fall views in New Hampshire and spend the weekend leaf-peeping, hiking, golfing, shopping… Whether it's indoors or out this will be the perfect time to enjoy New England in the fall.

WHEN: Thursday, 9/23 and 1/2 day Friday 9/24
WHERE: Bedford, NH
WHAT'S NEXT: Watch your email and this blog for an upcoming announcement in the next couple of weeks with early bird pricing and more details