Five Essential Steps to Data Integration
If you’re considering or currently administering a salesforce.com account, this article may help you explore how to integrate your CRM data between salesforce.com and legacy applications such as for example MS Dynamics NAV or AX. Here are five essential steps to how to succeed with your data integration project without having to study salesforce.com APIs and writing, debugging, and maintaining custom code.
Five essential steps
1. Explore your overall integration goals
Before any data migration starts, you should clarify the goals of the on-coming salesforce.com integration. You should have a good idea about exactly what data should be extracted and what data tables/fields should be considered as targets. Also, ask yourself, do I need to integrate salesforce.com with one single database or multiple data sources? Is it enough to perform a one-time migration, or do I need an ongoing synchronization? Do I need to have salesforce.com data backed up? Do I have enough experience to do manual coding, or should I ask an data integration solution provider to do the job?
Create a list of the questions related to your integration project and then try to stick to the answers.
In case you are still considering manual coding, don’t forget about the time and effort required to learn APIs, provide connectivity to both the source and the target, write transformation logic, and, most importantly, the tasks related to debugging, reporting, and future maintenance of the integration and the related metadata.
The more clearly you set the goals, the more accurate your salesforce.com integration will be. Sometimes you may need to join data; sometimes it’s all about eliminating duplications; and sometimes the data should be validated or filtered first. Try to set your goals properly.
2. Provide connection to data sources
To start reading and writing data, you need to establish connections to the sources. In other words, you need to gain access to data tables, data structures, data types, and data records. This is where data integration actually begins. With RapidiOnline you can do it without having to write a single line of a code. Inside the configuration interface of RapidiOnline you just configure the necessary connections and enter salesforce.com credentials. To get the actual access to the legacy database, you just need to install a small windows service that we here at RapidiOnline call the RapidiConnector.
3. Map data sources together
According to The Gartner Group, corporate developers spend approximately 65 percent of their effort building bridges between applications. Luckily, RapidiOnline's data integration service allows data to be linked even by non-technical users. Easily a non technical person can built the mapping inside RapidiOnline to exchange data between i.e. Microsoft Dynamics NAV and salesforce.com, all without coding.
Now that you have all data destinations configured, map appropriate source and target connectors to start joining the tables.
Why is the mapping so critical?
- You need to point where the source of data is and where the target is.
- Sometimes you need to transform source table formats to salesforce.com table formats. For instance, you have Time or Binary objects at the source and need to save them as text at the target.
With mapping, you tell your data integration tool what you want to do and where exactly you want this to be done. Otherwise, the source information will not correspond with the target information. Before the era of visual data integration tools, all these operations required at least one skilled, highly-paid database developer. Nowadays people like RapidiOnline will help you in defining the correct mapping and will assure that the integration is done correctly.
5. Run the transformation job
Finally, run the transformation, and let your salesforce.com accounts be populated. If all initial settings and mappings were accomplished accurately, you may now just sit back and relax. The data integration service will do the integration and you will be having access to all your critical business data from within one single place in this case salesforce.com.
Want to learn more about RapidiOnline's data integration services?
