Scribe Online’s Text Connector now supports files located on Dropbox shared locations! In addition, you can use your Scribe Cloud Agent for both Source and Target Text connections to Dropbox. When you open a Text Connector and choose Dropbox, the first step is to click the Authenticate button, which will open a new browser window and allow you to sign in to your Dropbox account. This connection method is called OAuth, and allows Scribe Online access to your Dropbox account on your behalf. You may have seen this authentication method before if you used the Scribe Online GoTo Webinar Connector or signed into websites using your personal Facebook or Twitter accounts. Once you sign in to Dropbox in the new browser window, you will be prompted to allow Scribe to access your Dropbox: Once allowed, you’ll see that Scribe received the token from your login – OAuth token received. Ready to verify. At this point, you can enter a directory path if desired, and verify the connection: After you’ve verified your connection, continue to configure your text file as desired. Once you’re done with the configuration, click Test Connection before saving your settings.
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Dropbox support for the Scribe Online Text Connector
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#CRMtrending “Interrupting Business as Usual: What’s Next for the Cloud?”
Interrupting Business as Usual: What’s Next for the Cloud? By Lou Guercia (@LouGuercia). Four months into the Cloud Leaders series, Scribe’s own CEO, Lou Guercia, shares his takeaways from some of the top contributors to the program. Based on insights from Clint Oram, Dana Gardner, Donald Farmer, Matt Quinn and Umberto Milletti, the article describes the cloud as a force that is blurring lines at the C-level, moving companies towards disposable software, transitioning information models to data on demand, increasing the focus on business outcomes and turning cloud services into commodities. As Lou writes, the cloud is “not only empowering line-of-business executives to take on a bigger role in a company’s IT direction, but also elevating the role of CIO to a strategic function, while highlighting the need to break down data siloes – both technology and culturally related – for ubiquitous data access.” The cloud is acting as a major transformative force, and businesses will need to adapt to the continually increasing speed of technology. Read the full article at Wired.com!
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#CRMtrending “CRM Crystal Ball: 6 Predictions for 2014”
CRM Crystal Ball: 6 Predictions for 2014, By Adam Honig (@adamhonig). CRM luminary Adam Honig gives us his six CRM predictions for 2014, including the need for linking configuration, pricing and quoting, the growth in adoption of self-service portals, and field force managers adopting CRM-driven field force tools to improve scheduling efficiency, increase automated inventory review and management, simplify problem escalation and emergency scheduling, and tap the field force to help marketing teams generate more leads. Additionally, Adam predicts that Siebel will continue losing relevance and that mobility will become a must have where “the best results will come not just from routing data to mobile devices, but also from actually designing custom applications that deliver essential features in a user interface and are tailored to employees’ precise needs.” Lastly, Adam believes that in 2014 reaching customers across the internet of things will become more important. Ultimately, the importance of CRM will continue to grow as the nature of CRM and customer needs continues to evolve. Read the full article at CustomerThink.com!
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#CRMtrending “2013: Where Are We At With CRM, Customer Experience and Customer-Centricity?”
2013: Where Are We At With CRM, Customer Experience and Customer-Centricity? By Maz Iqbal (@thecustomerblog). Maz takes readers through the Havas Media findings regarding the need for creating meaningful brands, and the failure of brands to meet customer needs thus far. CRM should play an important role in enhancing the customer experience of meaningful brands, but many companies that invest heavily in CRM have yet to reap the full benefits of a single customer view. While failure to integrate data systems is one barrier, Maz brings up the fact that companies have implemented CRM to automate the existing way of doing things as another barrier to improving the end results. Rather than bridging gaps to deliver a unified customer experience, company departments continue operating in siloes. To fix this, companies must implement CRM from a different point of “being” rather than the point of “doing” they’ve been focused on. In essence, “excellence in CRM and Customer Experience requires a transformation in the character (being) of organisations (and the people in the organisations especially the Tops) not just a change of clothes to project a more ‘customer friendly’ personality.” Until then, regardless of technology advances, companies will never be able to deliver a meaningful brand through exception customer experiences. Read the full article at Business2Community.com!
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#CRMtrending “5 Things You Should Know Before Talking to Sales about the Buyer’s Journey”
5 Things You Should Know Before Talking to Sales about the Buyer’s Journey, By Scott Gillum (@sgillum). This article for marketers covers the “new” buyer’s journey, along with five key factors to consider before informing sales that buyers are now in control. First, the new buyer’s journey isn’t exactly new, as educated buyers have been engaging with sales late in the process for years. Second, suggesting that sales doesn’t meet the needs of their prospects can be seen as threatening. Third, the buyer’s journey is no longer linear, and understanding channel preference is crucial for marketers. Fourth, the good sales reps already understand that buyers’ needs have shifted, and are interested in how marketing can help them sell more effectively. Lastly, marketing needs a plan to address this new dynamic rather than simply telling sales they’re no longer in the driver’s seat. In addressing the buyer’s journey, marketing and sales must partner to understand and communicate personal value to the educated buyer. Scott closes with the following advice to marketers: “sales might be losing control over the buying process, but they know how to connect with individuals making the purchase decision on a personal level. Use that insight to your advantage.” Read the full article at Forbes.com!
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#CRMtrending “2014 Forecast for Cloud Computing”
2014 Forecast for Cloud Computing, By Sharon Florentine (@MyShar0na), Thor Olavsrud (@ThorOlavsrud). With the cloud democratizing enterprise technology, 2014 will see continued pressure put on the CIO to transform IT. John Considine, CTO of Verizon Terremark, believes that “the two roles of the CIO and IT function will be thrown into increasingly sharp relief: the CIO and IT organization as an operations arm on the one hand and the IT organization as innovator that delivers new solutions and technologies on the other.” Ten cloud predictions from Tony DiBenedetto, founder of Tribridge, include further cloud segmentation and education, HR and marketing taking control of tech innovation, the CIO undertaking the role of cloud enabler, small businesses accessing big software through the cloud, and a shift to application-centric software development. Additionally, Tony predicts that IT will increasingly decentralize in the coming year, cloud providers will deliver software on tap, providers will add gravity to the cloud, the cloud will get intelligent with data manipulation on its servers, and machine-to-machine learning will come into its own. Read the full article at IDG.no!
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#CRMtrending “5 Things You Should Know Before Talking to Sales about the Buyer’s Journey”
A Short Cautionary Tale About the Misuse of Customer Data, By Adrian Swinscoe (@adrianswinscoe). Adrian’s article on customer data deals with potential problems that arise when a company analyzes minimal data to extrapolate a larger trend. In the example Adrian uses, a Gartner analyst had a single particularly good call with his bank, and rated them highly for their customer service on that transaction even though he didn’t enjoy the customer experience overall. In response, “the bank started sending messages to Mike believing that he (was) now a ‘9 out of 10’ customer, happy with his bank and primed to recommend the bank to his friends, family and all people in between.” Because the analyst did not in fact love his bank, these messages hurt more than helped their cause. Customer data is crucial for successful customer relations programs, and this situation highlights the importance of relying on comprehensive data rather than a single point. Ultimately, such data requires a system like CRM to act as the hub of customer information, informing customized marketing and sales initiatives like that which the bank attempted with the analyst. Read the full article at Forbes.com!
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#CRMtrending “Cloud Adoption Hits C-Level Resistance”
Cloud Adoption Hits C-Level Resistance, By Glen Schrank (@EccentexCEO). The benefits of cloud computing are now understood by employees everywhere, and the shift towards cloud solutions is gaining steam. However, cloud adoption is being hindered by cautious C-level leadership, which often prefers to continue with the on-premise software they know over the new cloud software employees seek. A recent survey by Eccentex found that although 84 percent of respondents want to work remotely, 70 percent of them lack the proper mobile tools – i.e. cloud access – to do so. While cloud usage continues to permeate the businesses, for now employees have embraced cloud technology ahead of enterprise leadership. The C-level must work to understand and implement cloud technology to keep pace with the flexibility that enhances worker productivity in our constantly moving business world. Read the full article at DestinationCRM.com!
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#CRMtrending “5 Things You Should Know Before Talking to Sales about the Buyer’s Journey”
A Short Cautionary Tale About the Misuse of Customer Data, By Adrian Swinscoe (@adrianswinscoe). Adrian’s article on customer data deals with potential problems that arise when a company analyzes minimal data to extrapolate a larger trend. In the example Adrian uses, a Gartner analyst had a single particularly good call with his bank, and rated them highly for their customer service on that transaction even though he didn’t enjoy the customer experience overall. In response, “the bank started sending messages to Mike believing that he (was) now a ‘9 out of 10’ customer, happy with his bank and primed to recommend the bank to his friends, family and all people in between.” Because the analyst did not in fact love his bank, these messages hurt more than helped their cause. Customer data is crucial for successful customer relations programs, and this situation highlights the importance of relying on comprehensive data rather than a single point. Ultimately, such data requires a system like CRM to act as the hub of customer information, informing customized marketing and sales initiatives like that which the bank attempted with the analyst. Read the full article at Forbes.com!
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#CRMtrending “Cloud Adoption Hits C-Level Resistance”
Cloud Adoption Hits C-Level Resistance, By Glen Schrank (@EccentexCEO). The benefits of cloud computing are now understood by employees everywhere, and the shift towards cloud solutions is gaining steam. However, cloud adoption is being hindered by cautious C-level leadership, which often prefers to continue with the on-premise software they know over the new cloud software employees seek. A recent survey by Eccentex found that although 84 percent of respondents want to work remotely, 70 percent of them lack the proper mobile tools – i.e. cloud access – to do so. While cloud usage continues to permeate the businesses, for now employees have embraced cloud technology ahead of enterprise leadership. The C-level must work to understand and implement cloud technology to keep pace with the flexibility that enhances worker productivity in our constantly moving business world. Read the full article at DestinationCRM.com!
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Understanding Scribe Online’s Batch processing
A great way to improve your integration or migration performance is to use batch processing. Relative to Scribe Online, batch processing allows Agents to process a set of source data into a batch (or group) before sending that data to the Target Connector. Once that Target Connector received the batch, the operation is committed using the target endpoint’s API’s method for bulk, batch, or asynchronous processing. For Connectors that support batch processing, such as Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM and Salesforce®, performance is improved because their APIs accept operations sent asynchronously or as an array, thus processing the data set much faster. Batch processing with Scribe Online does… Amortize the cost of the operations when there are a large number of source rows to process. Reduce the number of round-trips between Scribe and the target application. More efficiently use the API quota on target applications (such as Salesforce). Batch processing with Scribe Online does not… Work atomically against your target application (that is, individual records can succeed and fail using batch). Perform faster lookups. Reduce the number of records processed. Configuring your Batch Not all Connectors support batch processing, but for those that do, you’ll be able to create batches for Insert, Update, Delete, and Upsert operations. For example: You can determine the batch size when you configure a Scribe Online Connection. The default size of the batch is 2,000 source records, however, different applications have different limits, as follows: Salesforce SOAP API – limit of 200 records per batch (more details here). Salesforce Bulk API – limit of 10,000 records per batch (more details here). Dynamics CRM API – no hard limit, recommended 2,000 – 3,000 max batch size. Marketo API – limit of 100 records per batch. ExactTarget API – no hard limit, recommended 100 max batch size. If you configure a batch size limit to be larger than your target application permits, most Connectors will correct the batch to the largest possible size accepted by the API during processing. For example: if you have 2,000 source rows with an Upsert operation set to a batch size of 2,000 to Salesforce SOAP API, Scribe will send 10 batches of 200 rows. How it works Each Scribe Online map starts the same way. The Agent will start by creating the connections needed in the map, and then run the query specified by the user. The results of the query are returned and cycled through each operation top-down, one source row at a time. When batch is enabled, the Agent does not send the data directly to the Connector to be committed to the endpoint. Instead, the Agent holds (batches) a set of records until the batch size is reached. The batch size is evaluated per operation, on each source row. This high level diagram describes how the Agent processes a map definition that includes a batch operation. Lookups Performance testing reveals that including a Lookup operation in a map designed for batch processing will greatly decrease the performance boost expected. This decrease in performance will depend on where the Lookup is taking place (that is, a web service will likely be much slower than a local SQL API lookup). While the Agent can process field mappings, If/Else statements, functions, and so on, very quickly, a Lookup introduces a bottleneck that is reliant on the Lookup endpoint’s API returning the value of your Lookup in a timely fashion. The diagram below shows how, when introducing a Lookup against a target endpoint, Scribe needs to perform a round-trip call before fully preparing the batch. Alternatives to Lookups If you need to use Lookup(s), consider cross referencing the source and target key values to lower the number of Lookups required in everyday integrations. A small modification to the map above will check if a foreign key (from the Target end-point) on a source-side field. IF this source field is NULL, the Lookup will be performed, a non-batch operation will occur, and the target key will be updated on the source. ELSE, the batch update is prepared/sent to the target to update that record. By adding target keys to your source data, your Update steps will not require a Lookup, thus making use of true batch processing. In addition, fewer Lookups will provide fewer performance hits. Performance I’ve posted my results below for processing 20,000 records (and 300,000 where storage permitted) using the same maps, processing the same data, with batch enabled and disabled for contrast. Rows processed per second is calculated by: Rows Processed / Execution Time in Seconds = Records per Second When running non-batch operations, both Solutions ran under 10 records/second against Dynamics CRM Online and Salesforce.com. When the same maps made use of batch processing at their optimal sizes, performance was dramatically increased. These statistics will give you an idea of the boost batch processing will provide your integrations. However, please note these results are specific to my laptop, database configuration, and end-points. You may see better or worse performance depending on the wide variety of circumstances such as Indexes, Triggers/Workflows, network and Internet connection speed, etc. Both Salesforce and Dynamics CRM web services performed at about the same pace when batch was turned on with about 130 records processed per second. Typically when working with web services, there is lag time waiting for network traffic over HTTP(S) and waiting responses from the APIs. Unlike web services, connections to database APIs, such as Microsoft® SQL Server, are much faster – even if they’re over a network. The above chart shows batch processing with Scribe Online’s Dynamics CRM and Salesforce Connectors. The results from high data volumes yields performance that exceeds that of the same maps against a SQL Server target! Other Notes You cannot use the result fields from a batch operation because that operation may not have happened [yet] during the evaluation – therefore, result fields of batch operations are not exposed. Doing a huge initial sync and still want use batch processing? Since result fields are disabled [...]
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Improve CRM Data Quality – Correcting Badly Formatted Data In Saleforce.com Using Scribe Insight
The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) estimates that poor data quality costs U.S Business more than $600 billion a year in postage, printing, and staff overhead. Meager data quality affects customer and vendor relationships, results in poor decision making, missed opportunities, and quality downstream. Anyone engaged with users of ERP or CRM systems quickly recognizes the frantic need to have clean integrated data between systems. Without quality data users are frustrated, make mistakes, and customers are lost. This article will show you several of the classic data errors that contribute to this problem, and how Scribe can be used to supply clean data you CRM system users. Specifically, we will show how we can enforce data quality standards in a SalesForce.com system using Scribe Insight. The integration pattern we use for these types on data quality DTS files is to us the CRM system as both the Source and Target using the Record ID as the Lookup Value. Below is a lead that has incorrectly formatted Names and phone numbers. We will use the format formulas to correct these issues. Here are 2 tips to address the Data Quality issues. Looking first at the telephone numbers. Let’s build a few formulas to improve the Phone number formatting. Working with phone numbers you need to build formulas that deal with numbers coming in various formats. Sometimes one will expect area codes, and other time you won’t get that. 1-234-567-8901 1-234-567-8901 x1234 1-234-567-8901 ext1234 1 (234) 567-8901 1.234.567.8901 1/234/567/8901 12345678901 The fax number is 808-947-4198 and we want to add the appropriate bracket to match the desired phone formatting. The most common method is to use the Strip function to pull all the non-numbers out and then add the formatting by using the Format function. So the formula looks like: FORMAT( STRIP( S14, “N” ), “(###)###-####” ) This will change 808-947-4195 to (808)947-4198 There are many other use cases with phone numbers where one may have extensions included, or the need to add a missing area code or country code. Here are some links to other posts that address these challenges. Once you have settled on a good telephone format formula it is a great opportunity to utilize our User Formula feature. This is a big time saver as one would want to apply the formula for every time they integrate a phone number. The second formula is to use the PROPER command. This formula with properly case upper and lower cased text data. So ACME INC. turns into Acme Inc. In the test window one can see the results of the formulas. Now that we have a workbench file that can run to clean up the data it can be automated in the console to run on an ongoing basis to reach out to correct improperly formatted data.
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Improve CRM Data Quality – Updating Child Objects Using Scribe Online
A sure fire topic to pack a room at any CRM conference is ”Best Practices For Data Quality in a CRM” or “10 Tips to Improve Data Quality In SFDC”. That is certainly because it is constant source of irritation with users and administrators. The lack of data quality is easy to understand. It is the effect that comes by many means. As data comes into CRM from other systems, and by bad data entry from users. Other systems are pushing and pulling the data in and out the the CRM platform with little to no guidelines in the interface for how all of this data should behave. Which is why users are who are looking for contacts discover duplicates, or just plain incorrect information. When trying to find a phone number users will dial a contacts home number when intending to call the office. Incorrect e-mail addresses, bad fax numbers, and incorrect addresses are all common issues in even the best training. At best when users interact with systems like this they lose confidence in the accuracy of the data, at worst we are offending customers by communicating to them through the wrong phone numbers, or UPPERCASING their names and address. Nothing says “We are carefully listening, and care for you Mr. Customer” like when we send an e-mail that opens: There are 2 common methods developers use fix these problems. Plugin’s & CallOuts: These are server based solutions that upon commitment of data enrich or correct the data. For example if a new billing address is updated at the account level the new information cascades to the contact records. Java: Checking for bad data when entered. Like ALL CAPS, or invalid Phone formats, or checking for valid Postal Code – City – State combinations. Both of these methods require a developer to open Visual Studio. That is unless you are using Scribe Online or Scribe insight. This article will demonstrate how Scribe Online can cascade updated data to children records to keep the phone numbers correct on a Contact when an update is made to a Parent Account in Dynamics CRM. An upcoming article will address how Scribe Insight can be used to improve the quality of the formatted data that is at rest in Salesforce.com. First go to Scribe Online and Make a Connection to Dynamics CRM and in the Query Block choose the following Values: Account Entity Process only records updated since last run based on the ModifiedOn field Include Related Entitles choose: Contact | Choose the Contact_Customer_Accounts Child relationship. Contact | Choose the Account_Primary_Contact Parent relationship These values will choose any Accounts and all of the Children Contacts and the single Contact that is called the Primary contact. At this point you are ready to build the Scribe Online Stack. The source and the target are the same CRM system. You will need the following 4 blocks under the Query Block: For Each Result – as required for each map Update Contact - this will be for the Primary Contact For Each Child Loop Block – to loop through all of the Children Contact Records Update Contact - this is the actual update block for these Children Contact Records The first update block will be for the Primary contact. When doing updates one is required to provide matching criteria in order for the system to know what contact to update, set it to the Account.Account_Primary_Contact.Conactid. On the Fields Tab map the appropriate fields from the Account down to the Contact. In this example we are choosing to use the Address 1 Block to reflect the Business main address. So in this manner any changes to the Account will be pushed out to all the contacts. In order to update ALL of the child entities found one would place the For Each Child block next and then nested an Update Contact Block in that Loop. On the Update Contact one will use ContactID as the match on account.contact_customer_accounts.contactid . On this mapping one should use the same mapping the previous field maps. These mappings pull down the Account (parent) values to Contact (child) objects. It is suggested that all of the fields receiving data updates from the Account in the CRM interface be made “Read Only” to the users. This will also help improve quality of data for the users as they will not be entering data into fields that will later be updated by the engine. Now many are sure to ask. “Can’t this be done with the Dynamics CRM workflow engine? Why should we use a third party tool to make this work?” Although the Dynamics CRM workflow is very powerful there is no native function to to cascade field changes to ALL of the child entities. However, Scribe Online has the ability to loop through multiple child Objects without a single line of code. Finally, this solution takes about 30 minutes to test and deploy.
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Integrating Microsoft Dynamics GP® and Microsoft Dynamics CRM® using Scribe Online IS
Scribe Online Integration Service (IS) offers a free downloadable SolutionPak that allows you the ability to integrate data between Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013® and either Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011® (On-Premise) or Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013® (Online or On-Premise). With this SolutionPak, you can easily integrate customer, address, product, sales order, and invoice data between Microsoft Dynamics GP and CRM keeping your customer and financial data both synchronized and accurate without manual intervention. To see the functionality of this particular SolutionPak in action as well as a brief overview of the Scribe Online design environment, please watch our video presentation. As with all our free Scribe Online SolutionPaks, they can be located on our forum.
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Demo Video for HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
Hi Everyone! I just put a new Scribe demo video together that highlights our new HubSpot connector for Scribe Online. In this recorded demonstration: I walk you through a integration between Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM and HubSpot that is based upon our SolutionPak, with a few extensions added to it. I leverage some of the HubSpot features to embed a couple of iFrames in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 to show data from HubSpot dynamically in CRM. If you want to have a look at how I put it together, I’ve provided the Microsoft Dynamics CRM unmanaged solution, as well as, the Scribe Online maps I used for this demo in our Scribe Online maps forum. Hopefully this demo will help shine some light on some interesting things you all can do with our new connector. Feel free to add a comment if you have a question about how I put this demonstration together. Brendan
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Video Demo :: Integration with ExactTarget and Salesforce using Scribe Online
If you are looking for a little more from your integration between Salesforce and ExactTarget that uses Scribe Online, this video might be of interest to you. Using Scribe Online, I can extend the existing integration between these two systems to do sends from ExactTarget and to get the metrics back into Salesforce. Normally you don’t have this capability between ExactTarget and Salesforce; if you want the tracking metrics, you have to do your sends from Salesforce. In the video, I take some custom object data that I want to send emails to, move it into ExactTarget for sending and personalization in email, then bring the tracking metrics from that send back to Salesforce.com and tie it to the custom object. If you want to check our our SolutionPak for ExactTarget and Salesforce integration, you can get the documentation on our OpenMind, and you can download this and other solutions. I hope you enjoy the video. If you have any comments or questions, you are welcome to add them as comments. Let me know if there are any systems you would like to see integrated, we’re always looking for new relevant integration to build for you all! Brendan
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Convergence, the ‘Community’ of People & SCRIBE – #CONV14
I attended Microsoft® Convergence 2014 - #CONV14 earlier this month where the Microsoft team highlighted some amazing public sector customer stories – specifically around the VA – Dept of Affairs (@DeptVetAffairs), the Illinois Dept of Corrections, and the Ohio Dept of Developmental Disabilities ‘Imagine’ project (@DODDohio). All SCRIBE customers, BTW! Often we get so caught up in our day-to-day delivery of technology & services that we don’t realize the full impact of those solutions on a company or organization. At its simplest, we connect CRM & ERP or Marketing Automation systems to help businesses achieve greater ROI, improve customer relationships & create loyalty. #1PlatformINFINITESolutions When it comes to the many federal, state, county & local government agencies, these solutions enable programs that truly make a difference in people’s lives. One of these state/county projects is in Ohio DODD & their ‘Imagine’ project. This one brings it all home for me. You may have seen our recent press release with our partners, McGladrey LLC, about our support of Imagine, but I’d like to share a more detailed glimpse into the project itself. ‘Imagine,’ in short, is a person centered program to help those with developmental disabilities become more self-sufficient while at the same time approaching the care of these individuals, not from a what can’t you do? standpoint, but from a what can you do? perspective. As I approached Bryant Young, CIO of Ohio DODD following his session – which BTW, not a dry eye in the place at the end – his first words to me were – “My gosh – you guys (Scribe) are the ‘data transport’ that makes Imagine possible!” It reminded me how Scribe & many of today’s technologies can have a very positive effect on our community of people – not just business. It made me feel good about the work that we do & inspired me to keep pushing for Scribe to deliver solutions that are not only technically sound, but that can have an impact on the community of people.
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Scribe Insight SQL Maintenance Script
Here is a quick video that relates to how to run the Scribe Insight Internal Database maintenance script. It shows how to run the script and what the effect the script has on the internal database tables. Our recommendation is to make this a part of your ongoing SQL maintenance plan. Running this scrip will reduce the size of the Scribe database, and improve the performance of the lookup functions in the Workbench application.
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Detecting Changed Data In SQL Using Last Run Date Time
A constant design challenge when building integration is answering the question, “What has changed in the Source System since the last time I checked?“, we refer to this as “Net New or Net Change”. It is a topic in which we address in detail in our Level 2 Training. One can download the section of the training here => CLICK Many applications provide us with a great way of checking this, typically it is a field on the record called Modified On Time Date, or Created On Time Date. Some records even contain both fields. These field establish half of the equation needed to determine the set of changed records. These values are most often maintained by the application layer within a system. As Scribe has two different platforms, Scribe Insight and Scribe Online, we have 2 different strategies to solve this question. In this article I will discuss how Scribe Insight uses this time based query to detect the Net New data by using a System Variable in the Source Query that keeps track of the last time the integration was run as the second half of the puzzle. To use this function one will select Variables from the Configure Source screen by using the :LastRunDateTime variable in the “Where” portion of the SQL Query. For Example: Select * From Source Where :LastRunDateTime <= Source.ModifiedOnTime This will return all the newest records since the last time the integration ran and returned any data. These functions are all pared with a UTC version of the function. This converts the date stored internally into a UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) equivalent. This is used when comparing to systems that store the Modified Dates in UTC which is increasingly common. The following time based Systems Variables are available for these queries: : LastRunDateTime — The most recent date and time (local) that this query was executed and returned any results. : LastRunDateTimeDTS — The most recent date and time (local) that the specified DTS was executed. : LastRunDateTimeUTC — The most recent date and time (in GMT/UTC) that this query was executed and returned any results. : LastRunDateTimeUTCDTS — The most recent date and time (in GMT/UTC) that the specified DTS was executed. : PrevRunDateTimeDTS — The second most recent date and time (local) that the specified DTS was executed. : PrevRunDateTimeUTCDTS — The second most recent date and time (in GMT/UTC) that the specified DTS was executed. : ThisRunDateTime — The date and time (local) that this query began execution. : ThisRunDateTimeUTC — The date and time (in GMT/UTC) that this query began execution. This pattern is subject to a few different reliability problems. This pattern requires that you build additional functionality to support the retry of rejected records. That is because the window for each record only comes around 1 time. So if that record does not make it to the target successfully it will be eternally orphaned, until it is modified again. So one will need to use the scribe rejected row function with another integration that helps manage the retry of theses rows. Additionally the source queries can get very complex if you are tracking changes to parent and child records. As modified stamped on both the parent and the child need to be checked. Finally, this pattern does not support deleted. As the record which is deleted is just not available the next time the query is run. So typically an additional integration needs to be built to check the target on a periodic basis to find orphaned records. Given these limits this pattern is still a very popular integration pattern for our users.
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Get it Together: Migrating Customer Data to Salesforce®
Today, data and information about customers is typically spread across several customer facing systems which makes leveraging all of this data in a unified fashion across all marketing and sales channels challenging for most companies. Each marketing channel & each customer facing systems platform has its own infrastructure, its own database, its own information management and, of course, its own text files. Integrating these various data sources to create a comprehensive picture of customer engagement can be costly and challenging for companies, yet it’s required to achieve optimal effectiveness in marketing and sales initiatives. Salesforce is one of the most popular choices for creating a central hub for customer data & at Scribe we’ve had a lot of experience migrating customer data to Salesforce from text files, other CRM systems & homegrown systems. The task, even when it’s a homegrown system, is not as daunting as you might think and critical for a successful deployment. Whether it’s getting your webinar attendee data consistently loaded into Salesforce from a text file, ensuring invoice details are immediately available or getting old CRM data into your new system, migrating your data into Salesforce can be done quickly, easily and consistently. To learn more, join my webinar, ‘Accelerate Access to Your Critical Customer Data with Simple Salesforce Data Migration,’ on April 1 & I’ll walk you through how to seamlessly transfer your customer data into Salesforce using Scribe. We’ll discuss text files, other CRM systems and homegrown systems as well as answer your questions. I hope you’ll join us. Live Webinar: Accelerate Access to Your Critical Customer Data with Simple Salesforce Data Migration. Register today! Tuesday, April 1, 2014 | 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM EDT Tuesday, April 1, 2014 | 3:30pm – 4:30pm EDT
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