5-Minute Quick Start

Introduction

This 5-minute quick guide will help you to use Connect iPaaS for creating your first business workflow. You can connect hundreds of leading CRM, ERP, HR, Supply Chain and other enterprise applications using it.

If you are a first-time user of Connect iPaaS this is a great place to begin. We will walk you through the basic steps and how to deploy a working business workflow. We also have detailed documentation if you want to go deeper into the concepts.

The key benefits of Connect iPaaS:

• Quick and Easy integration with CRM, ERP, SaaS and other enterprise applications that you may already be using

• No-Code platform designed to solve problems of business users without the need of writing code

• Create pre-defined integrations and workflows (also known as recipes), which results in a faster time to market and helps you streamline business workflows and processes

About Connect iPaaS

Connect iPaaS provides drag and drop integration capabilities for SaaS applications and cloud services including, but not limited to, Microsoft Dynamics 365, ServiceNow, ADP, Office 365, Salesforce and other leading CRM, Finance, Sales and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications.

To understand it simply, when something happens in one application (Trigger), do something in another application (Action). You can also add filters to selectively process events and map dynamic data fields sourced from the applications you are integrating in your data flow.

The end user can simply pick an event or activity happening in one system and wire multiple systems to respond to that event. An example could be notifying a Slack channel when a new ServiceNow incident is created. Or, create a task in ServiceNow in response to an order logged in Salesforce, enabling a “Service Order Fulfilment” use case.

Getting Started with Connect iPaaS

Before you can create workflows in Connect iPaaS, create a trial account. Creating a trial account on Connect is easy. Simply sign up on our signup page, and fill out some basic information, or breeze through signup with one of the OAuth providers – Google, Microsoft, or Azure account.

Figure 1. Connect iPaaS - Get Started

Creating a Workflow

Upon login, the user is taken to the dashboard. The following sections/tabs describe different UX elements on the application.

Design

This is where you start designing your business workflow.

Search for an application that will be the starting point of your workflow.

Figure 2. Connect iPaaS Dashboard

Applications

Connect iPaaS provides integrations for applications, which are software platforms that can be on the cloud or on-premise. Every application that is available to integrate requires a connection with Connect iPaaS which can be established using the credentials you use to access the application. Below are some examples of applications that are ready to integrate in Connect. We continue to add more and more applications with each quarterly release.

Figure 3-4. Connect iPaaS Apps

Workflows

Workflows are the processes users create with Event Triggers and Actions. A workflow consists of one trigger as the starting point of the workflow (when something happens in 1 application) and one or more actions that are executed in response to it (do something in 1 or more applications ). The user can setup workflow triggers and actions. All the workflows on Connect iPaaS could be managed at one place as shown in the screenshot below. Learn more about workflows here.

Figure 5. Connect iPaaS - Created Workflows by User

Triggers

Triggers answer the questions – “When should a workflow be started?” or “What events are we interested in taking actions on?”. Applications such as Salesforce, PagerDuty or Microsoft Dynamics emit Events when an activity or operation happens within that application. An example could be the creation of a new Incident in ServiceNow, a new order in Salesforce, or an invoice created in NetSuite. Triggers are the entry point of a workflow in Connect iPaaS. Learn more about Triggers here.

Below is an example of triggers from Salesforce.

Figure 6. Connect iPaaS - Salesforce Triggers

Actions

Actions answer the question “What action or operation should be done in another application in response to an event trigger in the source system?”. Applications such as Salesforce, PagerDuty, Microsoft Dynamics or Coupa allow a set of actions or operations that can be performed on their platforms. Examples include: create an opportunity in Salesforce, update an incident in PagerDuty, or remove a contact in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Learn more about Actions here.

Below is an example of actions available in Dynamics 365 CRM.

Figure 7. Connect iPaaS - Dynamics 365 CRM Actions

Filters

The user may not be interested in processing all possible trigger events in the workflow. Filters allow the user to control which events and messages they want to process as triggers for a particular workflow, based on the attributes and characteristics of the trigger event. Learn more about filters here.

The following is an example of filters applied on SalesForce "new object" trigger.

Figure 8. Connect iPaaS - Salesforce Event Filters

Data Mapping & Transformation

Data mapping, transformation and the ability to apply formulas and functions is an important part of application integration and business process definitions. Data mapping allows the user to map incoming event data to action parameters for performing operations on the target system. The user can use arithmetic, string and Excel style functions in their data mapping to create rich data transformations.

Below is an example of Data Mapping from a Salesforce event to a Dynamics 365 CRM action.

Figure 9. Connect iPaaS - Data Mapping and Transformation

Flow Deployment

Once a flow is designed using a trigger event and one or more actions to be performed on the target system, it can be deployed on the microservices-based event mesh running on RoboMQ cloud. Once deployed, the workflow is constantly running, waiting for events and processing them per the flow definition.

The Connect iPaaS dashboard will provide the status of the deployed flow. Each instance or event that is processed by the workflow is called a Task. Details of the tasks, their success, or processing status is available on the Event History tab

Observe Event Executions

Every workflow that a user deploys in Connect iPaaS is always on and ready to process events as they happen. After processing an instance of an event, Connect iPaaS keeps a log of the outcome of the event processing. Event Execution details for a workflow can answer questions like, did the action fail or succeed? If so, what happened, when was the event processed, and which actions got processed?

Below is the Events Execution Activity for workflows for a user in Connect iPaaS.

Figure 10. Connect iPaaS - Observe stats and event activity

Build a Workflow

Let’s take a real-world integration example of service incident management across supply chain when different vendors, or departments in a large organization, use different platforms for service fulfillment and incident management.

Business Use Case

A large retailer with a complex supply chain works with multiple vendors and suppliers to provide downstream products and services. When an incident is reported, often the resolution of the incident lies with a vendor or a supplier downstream.

For this use case, the retailer uses ServiceNow as the system of records for all incidents. The vendor or supplier uses a much simpler platform, PagerDuty, as its Incident Management platform for resolution of cases and engaging appropriate resources. When an incident is created in the retailer’s ServiceNow platform that meets certain criteria, a new incident should be created in the supplier’s PagerDuty platform for incident resolution.

ServiceNow to PagerDuty Integration

We will show you how to design a workflow for the above use case with just a few clicks.

Step 1: Select “New Incident” in ServiceNow as the starting point of the workflow

First, select the “New Incident” trigger that listens for new incidents that are created in ServiceNow.

Figure 11. Connect iPaaS - ServiceNow triggers

Step 2: Setup filters to select specific incidents of interest

Next, we will authorize Connect iPaaS to receive trigger events from the user’s ServiceNow account. Once done, we will setup a filter that selects trigger events that are urgent and are maintenance related. You could use any of the ServiceNow incident attributes to filter the incidents that will be processed by this workflow.

Figure 11. Connect iPaaS - ServiceNow Event Filters

Step 3: Create a new incident in supplier’s or vendor’s PagerDuty

For the action setup, we will configure creating an event in PagerDuty, as shown below.

Figure 12. Connect iPaaS - Create PagerDuty Actions

Step 4: Map data from ServiceNow to the PagerDuty Incident

For the action setup, we will configure creating an event in PagerDuty, as shown below.

Figure 12. Connect iPaaS - ServiceNow Data Mapping into PagerDuty

Step 5: Deploy and run the flow

Figure 12. Connect iPaaS - Deploy Workflow

Finally, we click the Deploy button to run the designed workflow. Now that the workflow is deployed, it is ready to process events from the retailer’s ServiceNow and create incidents in the supplier’s PagerDuty for resolution.

The workflow executes 24x7 in near real-time processing events as they come.