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IBM Datacap Accelerator Integrations - Part 3

By Sunanda Rao posted Wed March 31, 2021 12:44 AM

  
Generally, business process workflows are created by integrating various software applications. One of the tools which provides seamless integration of applications is IBM App Connect.
 
App Connect is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution which provides integration platform to integrate applications, connect business data, and build API’s. It's a no-code user friendly solution that provides list of built-in applications to connect to.
 
In Datacap accelerator, by leveraging the capability of creating the custom actions, one can integrate Datacap with other applications.
 
A prototype was developed by creating a custom action library to send the digitized data from Datacap to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system through a integration software, App connect using prebuilt, security-rich intelligent connectors enabling you to connect applications on premises or in the cloud. IBM App Connect supports a wide range of data formats, application infrastructures and integration styles.

Check out this link - https://www.ibm.com/in-en/cloud/app-connect , to know more about IBM App Connect.


Integration with App Connect to connect to the ERP system.

A prototype was built by creating a custom action library in Datacap to integrate with app connect.

Refer to - "Deploying custom action library" section in this to know about how to deploy the custom actions library and to - "Datacap workflow" section in this on using it in the workflow. 

The generic custom action library built takes in - two parameters - one, configuration file path and the other, export JSON file generated from Datacap which contains the KVP’s extracted by Datacap.

Configuration file

The configuration file contains the endpoint to which the Datacap needs to be connected to along with the authorization details/credentials. This generic action library could be used to integrate Datacap with other applications.

From Datacap, when the custom action library is invoked, it parses the configuration file gets the endpoint URL and the authorization details. It includes the JSON file content in the request body and adds the authentication details in the request header, while making a POST request to App connect. App connect internally triggers a workflow defined to connect to the ERP system - Salesforce.

Creating basic flow in app connect.

To post the digitized data from Datacap to app connect, first the fields must be added in app connect. To do so, a basic flow must be created for API to connect to the ERP system like Salesforce for further downstream processing.

Steps to create a basic flow,

1.Add the fields – In the properties panel on the app connect dashboard, fields that would be sent from Datacap are added.

2.Select the application – From the list of applications whose API’s are enclosed with app connect, select the application to integrate with. In this case, Salesforce was selected.

3.Entity definition – In the selected application, entities are defined to which the Datacap fields sent are mapped to.

Once the basic flow is defined, API is created, and API key is generated. This API and the API key are used while sending a request from Datacap to the ERP system. Thereby eliminating the manual entry of data to the system.

To create a basic flow in App connect, watch this video.


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