If your organization has functioning ecommerce website with shopping cart, price list and credit card processing and your Corporate ERP application is Microsoft Dynamics GP - you are probably favoring the idea of ecommerce integration on the level of connectors and custom scripts, versus implementing ecommerce website from scratch on new ecommerce off-the-shelf product
If this is the case - our small publication should give you orientation session,
that should be applicable to both ecommerce B2B and B2C scenarios:
1. Dynamics GP eCommerce integration tools and methods. The most simple tool is GP Integration Manager, where you setup integration to push ecommerce shopping cart to GP Sales Order Processing Invoice or Sales Order. IM is very simple if you do not need real time integration and ready to launch integration by IM operator. Second tool to consider is GP eConnect SDK, where you program ecommerce integration in C#, or VB.Net. The third possible way is to do direct SQL scripting, more likely Stored Procedures, this method may seem to be natural and simple, however in our opinion eConnect would save you more time at the end of the way, as in SQL custom stored procedures you will have to come through very long learning curve and data repair. The fourth method is to deploy proven integration scripts and code fragments from specializing Dynamics GP ecommerce ISV partner, where all you need to do is to tune the scripts to your specific requirements. Let's describe each method is additional details
2. Dynamics GP Integration Manager as ecommerce integration tool. Integration itself could be setup by end user, if you are small organization without dedicated IT. If you are OK to just lunch integration manually one time per day - then IM is definitely the way to consider. Plus, in IM you can have good field for custom events handling in VBA scripts and even more - you can base IM Queries on Advanced ODBC, where you can look into SQL Cross Platform Views, joining data from your MS SQL or non Microsoft databases: Oracle, MySQL/PHP, Lotus Notes, and others. And if you have IT department with programming enthusiasts - you can even schedule IM integration to run every, say 20 minutes, by Windows Macro (or better consider shareware Macro application to launch IM integration)
3. eConnect programming. If you are Microsoft Visual Studio programmer with C# or VB experience and reasonably knowledge of SQL and XML - eConnect should be very friendly for you. Plus in web project you can do bidirectional integration, as eConnect allows you not only to push or update objects in Dynamics GP, but also retrieve and synchronize them in eCommerce front end, if required. eConnect was initially dedicated to eCommerce developers, who plan to deploy Dynamics GP as accounting back end for ecommerce application, so feel free to review and practice eConnect programming in ecommerce
4. SQL Direct Scripting. If you believe that your ecommerce integration is really primitive, then try to create targeted object, such as SOP Invoice via GP user interface and review how records are distributed in the company SQL database tables. If distribution looks simple, try to imitate it in SQL Stored Procedure, be ready to multiple iterations, do your experiment in the test database (you can create test company via GP Utilities)
5. eCommerce proven integration scripts. We recommend you to consider our scripts, deployed in ecommerce production integration environments for multiple Dynamics GP customers. We have these scripts and code fragments ready for tuning. They should allow you to save time on unnecessary learning curve and avoid complex debugging and potential data repair and recovery exercises
6. eCommerce eConnect Automatic Batch Posting add-on. eConnect doesn't have batch posting methods, but there is no need to reinvent the bicycle. We have Posting Server, which does just that - give us a call
7. eCommerce and older Dynamics GP Great Plains versions. Integration Manager should work with all the versions of Great Plains Dynamics GP: 10.0, 9.0, 8.0, 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0, including Great Plains on Pervasive SQL Server 2000/Btrieve or Ctree. eConnect in our opinion achieved its maturity for Dynamics GP version 9.0, so if you plan to program eConnect and your version is earlier than 9.0, consider GP version update to 9.0 or better to 10.0. If you are on older version of GP on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and you have reasons to stay on your current version - we have SQL Stored Procedures based product - Order Connector, which should do good work of eCommerce shopping cart to Sales Order Processing transaction integration
