Erp2web Manual

ERP 2 WEB Manual v1.1


Table of Contents ERP2WEB ......................................................................................................................... 3

Structure ....................................................................................................................... 3

Operation ...................................................................................................................... 3

Type of data .................................................................................................................. 3

Type of synchronization ..................................................................................................... 4

Revision number. ........................................................................................................... 4

Mark of synchronized records ......................................................................................... 4

A step by step guide to setup an ERP2WEB synchronizer ..................................................... 5

Preparing the connections to the backoffice ........................................................................ 6

Preparing the connections to the web site ......................................................................... 8

Preparing the entities… ................................................................................................... 10

Let’s prepare a download Entity. ...................................................................................... 15

Preparing the Attachments… ............................................................................................ 16


ERP2WEB

Structure

ERP2WEB is a middleware between the company’s ERP and the Website. It consists of three independent but fully cooperated components

The backoffice-specific module

In general, it handles xml files or database tables, but there are also “engines” for specific ERP’s that manages the data fully automated.

o Transforms the data from the ERP in a specific structure and prepares them

to upload o Imports the orders from the e-commerce module, to the ERP.

The core ERP2WEB engine

Upload the data from the company’s server to the web and downloads the data from the web to the company’s server. It “knows” when it should send or receive data,

and what data to exchange. The e-commerce specific module

All data that uploaded to the website must update the website’s database. There are

a number of webservices that are executed and updates the relevant tables,

according to the e-commerce module that it is used.

Operation At specific user defined time, different for each entity, the backoffice module prepares the data that has to be uploaded, and the e-commerce specific module prepares the data that

has to be downloaded.

Every xx seconds the core engine transfer the data and execute all the updates. Everything that has been prepared during the previous step, is finalized. All database tables either in the

backoffice or in the website are updated.

Type of data Any type of data can be transferred between any backoffice and any website database. Data from database tables can update any website database

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Files of any kind (pdf, jpg, doc, xls, etc) can be uploaded and keep synchronized with the backoffice.

Type of synchronization There are two types of data that have to be copied from the backoffice to the website. Data that have to be synchronized, because the big amount of them, and the frequent

change, prevents the full upload every time. Such data are “Products”.

On the other hand, there are data that are not changed frequently and amount of them is not

big. Such data are Product Categories.

Both types are supported. The first one needs a mechanism to “understand” when a product

must update the website, instead the second one, when all data are uploaded every time.

Two Mechanisms are supported.

One, relies on the existence of “revision number” and the other one relies on the “mark” of

transferred data.

Revision number. Every time a record is inserted or changed, increase the value of a field of the database table.

If we keep the value of this field at the end of each synchronization, it is very easy to know

which records has changed, the next time we have to synchronize. These are the records that have bigger revision number.

In the ERP2WEB application, there are “counters” where we keep the last revision number for

each entity.

We can change these “counters” from the relative button in the ribbon.

Mark of synchronized records Every time a record is inserted or changed, the value of a Boolean field is flagged. At the end of a synchronization process, the application clears the flag. So, when a new synchronization

process is about to start, looks for records that are properly flagged.


A step by step guide to setup an ERP2WEB synchronizer

Install the package you download from our website.

Run the program. The following options appear

Picture 1 : General menu items

Picture 2 : Settings menu options

Lets begin from the easy ones. Select a different skin if you like !!

Click on the Parameters icon to start working…

! Remember to save your work before closing the window


Preparing the connections to the backoffice

First we must select the backoffice we use.

We can select either a specific ERP (for

example SingularLogic Enterprise) either an Oracle connection or a SQL Server

connection.

Pressing Connection Properties and

according to our selection, a window appears, in which we must declare the

connection properties, so the connection to the database will be established.

Obviously, you should know the username and the password to the database,

otherwise you will not establish any connection.

Pressing you will receive a positive message, if everything is OK

Finally press and your configuration settings will be saved.


If the backoffice is a database in general, we must select the type that an order will be saved. In XML files or in Database tables.

If we select XML files, we must declare the folder we prefer to be saved.

If we want to update database tables, we can create these tables, according to a predefined

definition. Select the definition file, and press the button In the database you selected in the previous step, will be created the necessary tables.


Preparing the connections to the web site

In FTP Credentials write exactly what you see in the

left, replacing the www.mysite.com with the

name of your site.

In a Joomla site is the

username and password of the Control Panel

In Webservice Credentials

write the …..

In a Joomla site is the

username and password of the Administrator

From this part, we can start or stop the synchronization

process, selecting the Enabled check box

The application will run in

tray, if we select the

appropriate check box.

The folder in “FTP upload folder” is the place where

all files are stored before

they uploaded in the website.

The upload process runs

every xx seconds. Make your selection.

Usually, in e-commerce customer module, there are

three fields for the name of the customer.

A name, a middle name and

the last name. in the other hand, in ERPs usually there

is only one field for the name of the customer.

In this part, you can select

http://www.mysite.com/


the way that the three fields will concatenate.

When you finish, don’t forget to save !!.


Preparing the entities… Any data we want to upload or download from the website is an entity

There are four types of entities

Upload Download

Update Status

Mass import Execute Command

Upload

We use this entity to describe any data we want to upload.

Download

We use this entity to describe any data we want to download.

Update Status We use this entity to update/change the value of a field in the website, according to changes

made in the backoffice.

Mass import

With this type of entity, we execute in the website a command that makes a mass import of uploaded data to the relevant table.

Execute Command

With this type of entity, we can execute in the website any command we like

Describing an entity in the ERP2WEB, is not difficult but it must be done carefully.

Let’s do it….

From the Tab “General” select the option “Management”

A list with all defined entities appear.

In this list there are four columns

The name of the entity, the folder where it is saved, an enable/disable check and the

Type of the entity.

The Name can be any familiar description to you.

We suggest to save all Entities in a single place, properly structured. We suggest to put this folders in your backup schedule.

Of course, only Enabled entities are working.

The Type of the entity is just for information.

Let’s prepare an upload Entity.


Click in an empty line, and fill the name you want. Then select the folder to store this definition, and finally select the type “upload” from the drop down list.

Save this entry pressing the button v as we indicate in the red circle in the following

screenshot. These buttons are in the down left corner of the screen

If you want to delete an entry, press the button X in the same button collection.

Press the button before proceed.

Press the button “Manage” in the top of the list. A new Tab appears with the name you entered.

There are four Tabs.

Query

We prepare the query that brinks the data we would like to upload. Pressing the button Execute or the function key F9, the query we have prepared is executed, and we can see the

data in the grid below. Messages or errors displayed in the Messages box below the grid.


Settings


In the “Table name” we write the table name in the website database. Consider the following :

If the table does not exist, the application creates this table with the fields declared in the next step.

If the table exists, like “products”, the table just updated with the data.

In the “Packet size” we declare the number of records (packet) that is uploaded.

For minimum upload time, it is better to zip the file, so check the “Zip files before upload”.

In case of use of “revision number” in ERP table, in this place we write the query statement

that give us the maximum revision number of the table.

Finally, any statement we write in the “Execute command after query runs” will be executed at the end of any upload process.

Press the button before proceed. Field Mapping

In this Tab we must make the mapping between the field names of the query we prepared before and the field names in the website database.

By pressing the button all field names of the query we prepared before, are loaded in the drop down list of the first column named “Backoffice fields”, so we can select

from this list.


In the next column named “Webshop Field” we write the field name of the relevant table in

the website database, without the table name. We need only the field name.

In the next column named “Type” select from the drop down list the type of the field.

In the next column named “Length” write the length of the field.

In the next column named “Comments” write anything as a reminder or comments.

If you want to skip a field during the operation, you can check the next column.

One of the fields, usually the code, must declared as Unique.

Finally, we can declare a default value for fields that have null values.


All the above parameters was set in order to press this button.

It prepares the definition that will be used from the webservice server in the website, to create the table and/or update the table with the data from the ERP.

So, at the end, press this button. The XML file will be saved in the Entities folder.

Either for demo or testing purposes, we would like to upload the data

From the “query” Tab, we can click on this button. It prepares a packet with these data ready

to upload.


Schedule

We describe the time and the interval this upload process should run.

Be careful : According this schedule, the application will prepare data to upload. The actual upload process happens according the schedule stated in Parameters Tab

In the left part “Day occurrence” we declare which days we would like to run. In the right part we declare the Time.

Consider that if we fill “specific time”, one or more values, the above schedule is cancelled.



Let’s prepare a download Entity.

The download entity needs to be more careful

Click in an empty line, and fill the name you want. Then select the folder to store this

definition, and finally select the type “download” from the drop down list.

Save this entry pressing the button v as we indicate in the red circle in the following

screenshot. These buttons are in the down left corner of the screen

If you want to delete an entry, press the button X in the same button collection.

Press the button “Manage” in the top of the list. A new Tab appears with the name you

entered.

There are three Tabs.

Field Mapping

In this Tab we must make the mapping between the field names of the website database and the database of the ERP for the data we need to download. Usually these data are Orders.

Each order, is prepared in the website as a single record, which has all information. Any field of this record could belong in one of the following entities :

OrderHeader, OrderDetail, OrderCharge, Customer, Address

In the first column, we must declare in which of the above entities the current field belongs.

In the next column, we declare the website field name.

In the next column, we declare the backoffice field name.

Between these two fields one of the following relations can exist :

1. The value from the website must be transferred identical to the backoffice. We don’t write anything in any of the rest columns.

2. The value from the website must update more than one fields on the backoffice In the column “backoffice field name” we write all field names separated with

comma.

3. There are fields in the backoffice that must have a default, value although there are no equivalent fields in the Website.

We leave empty the “Website field name”, we complete the “backoffice field name” and we put the default value in the column “Default”

4. The value from the website must be mapped to a value from a table in the backoffice

database. For example, in the website we have two Payment methods “VISA” and “Paypal”, but in the backoffice these values belongs to a table and in the Orders

table, we need to write the Payment ID. So we must find the appropriate ID for each payment method. It is very easy for someone who knows to build simple database


queries. First, in the Backoffice field we will put the “PaymentID” which is needed, and in the Action column we write something like this :

“ Select PaymentID from PaymentMethods where PaymentMethods.Description=’@FIELD@’ “. In the runtime, the @FIELD@ will be

replaced by the value “VISA” or “Paypal” and the query will return the actual ID.

Following the above rules, we can complete the Field Mapping for any Download Entity.

Settings

Suppose we want customers from the website to have a different coding. The preferred mask

can be declared in this field. If we write WS-????, means that these customers will have WS

in the beginning and four digit number increasing.

The rest fields contains default values for various entities, depending on the backoffice ERP.

Schedule

It works the same way as in the upload entity.

Preparing the Attachments… All websites has at least photos of the products that have to be uploaded to the website. In

addition PDF or Word documents may be also needed.

Click on the Attachments button in the ribbon. The following tab will appear


In the Folder, select the folder where the files are stored. In the FTP Folder, complete the full address of the folder in the website, where the files will

be copied. Declare which File types we prefer to transfer.

Enable or Disable this action.

Especially for the photos of the products, there is a special consideration.

The name of the photo must be the Product Code which is unique.

Any file existing in the folder, will be uploaded and then will be transferred in another folder,

thus the source folder will be empty.

Each new file we add there will be transferred in the website and will replace any existing with the same name.

With the procedure, it is very easy to have updated photos or other documents in the

website.

Erp2web Manual

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