uConnector

Case: Pernille Corydon and E-conomic

About me

• Anders Lund• Manager at Lund & Andresen IT (LAIT)• Webdevelopment using Microsoft techs• Umbraco Certified Partner since 2008• uCommerce Partner since 2010• uCommerce Gold Partner since 2012• Focus: Since 2008 solely Umbraco as CMS,

since 2010 solely uCommerce for e-commerce

About Pernille Corydon

• Succesfull designer and creator of jewellery• From pernillecorydon.com:

”After years of massive success in Denmark, Pernille Corydon has now made her international breakthrough. Today her jewellery is sold through more than 200 retailers in several countries and in cosmopolitan cities such as Helsinki, London, Berlin and Tokyo.”

About E-conomic

• Standard webbased ”software-as-a-service” ERP-system

• Pretty simple. Most use it for products, debtors, invoicing, bookkeeping and simple reporting. Simple and easy to use

• Very popular in Denmark. 167.000 customers worldwide

• In this case ”standard” is in fact ”standard” – you can’t tweek much

The challenge

• With 200 international retailers and approx. 800 SKU’s (and counting): B2B e-commerce is a must have

• Build me a new platform: Website combined with login and B2B-shopping.

• Download section for press• Platform should be ready for international B2C

business as well• E-conomic is our ERP – we need integration

General architechture

The uConnector

General things about the uConnector

• Important: The general idea is that the uConnecter will always initiate datatransfer

• The uConnector is a service running on the operating system

• Data-transfers (=tasks) are carried out at a schedule configurated in a file (CRON-jobs)

• You can build any reciever, transformer or sender• What I expect to get in the future: Reusability in

our integration-projects

What we did

• Our partner, Bureau 117, did the graphic design, identity, photos, catalogs etc.

• We did the technical implementation• Umbraco v. 6. Extensive use of the MVC-pattern• uCommerce PRO with a uConnector. We need the

PRO version because of multiple languages and currencies. In the future (B2C is coming) the Marketing Foundation will make us happy

How does it look?

No – much better here…

• www.pernillecorydon.com• www.bureau117.dk• My collegue’s blog-post about using the MVC-

pattern in Umbraco-based solutions: http://ndesoft.dk/2013/08/10/real-mvc-app-using-umbraco-revisited/

Specific ”Corydon-implementation” of the uConnector

• E-conomic product-reciever. XML-webservice (wrapped in a .NET API) reciever (reusable!)• uCommerce product-sender (reusable)• Specific ”Corydon” callback to index-rebuild-service (we are using a Lucene index for the

productcatalog)• Specific ”Corydon” product-transformer – this is where we map the specific datafields

• uCommerce order-reciever (reusable!)• E-conomic order-sender (reusable!)• uCommerce/E-conomic order-transformer (reusable!)

• E-conomic debtor-reciever (reusable!)• Specific ”Corydon” debtor-sender (might be reusable)• Specific E-conomic/”Corydon” debtor-transformer (might be reusable)

• E-conomic ATT-reciever (reusable!)• Umbraco member-sender (reusable!)• E-conomic ATT / Umbraco member-transformer (reusable!)

How it works – the flow• Collect products in E-conomic. Transform to uCommerce products• Rebuilds the Lucene-index• uCommerce PIM: Product-enrichment (work for the editor)• Collect Debtors and ATT-persons: ATT-persons = Umbraco members = login

account• Every ATT-person are connected to one or more debtors. If more debtors the

ATT is a sales agent, select desired debtor and shop on behalf of that debtor• ATT-persons buy stuff. uCommerce sends the orderconfirmation• The orders are collected in uCommerce, transformed and put in E-conomic

(as an order from the debtor)• The simple solution from here: Handle the rest in E-conomic.• The Future: Send the orders back to uCommerce to make them available for

the users

The numbers and the future

• My guess: A lot of recivers, transformers and senders will be coded.

• My advice: Make them reusable and share• Our building blocks from this project will be shared• Challenge: +800 products, +250 debtors, +100 ATT-

persons. Takes about 75 minutes to complete an update of all data. Neither the E-conomic API or the uCommerce API performs very well. The same story for many other ERP’s

Comments, questions etc.?

Feel free to contact me: http://anders.lait.dk

Thanks for coming!