Microsoft Dynamics GP eCommerce Quasi Real Time Integration Notes

To read this article you do not need to be experienced programmer, it should be understandable for IT managers or company CFO or Controller:
1. Existing ecommerce integration options.  Obviously, when you already made investments into existing ecommerce portal , you would like to preserve it and you do not accept (or try to resist) the idea to redeploy ecommerce website on out of the box Microsoft Dynamics GP ecommerce add-on.  Instead you likely would favor the idea to deploy custom ecommerce connectors to enable integration.  In the next paragraph we are reviewing quasi real time ecommerce integration methods
2. Quasi Real Time integration versus Batch Mode Integration.  Batch mode is likely to be once per day (usually overnight or after hours), often initiated by Dynamics GP user.  Quasi Real time integration is typically automated, meaning it is scheduled to run automatically every 20 minutes or maybe every hours or two hours.  Both methods are good candidate for Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Manager Integrations
3. Great Plains Integration Manager.  If you purchased GP Business Ready licenses Business Essential pack, you have Integration Manager conversion licenses (which will expire after reasonable Dynamics GP data conversion and migration from legacy accounting is complete) - in this case you need to purchase Integration Manager module license.  If you are on GP Business Ready Advanced Management - IM should be included (at least for Dynamics GP 10.0, we are not sure if GP 11.0 will follow the same pattern).  In Integration Manager ecommerce shopping cart typically transforms itself into Sales Order Processing Invoice (plus you may need to add new customers, if you sell on account in B2B ecommerce scenario).  IM integration is user friendly to compile and you can also run it on demand or schedule via Windows Macro add-ons (or you can purchase IM Integration scheduling module directly from Microsoft Business Solutions).  If you schedule IM integration to shut every half an hour - this should be good example of Quasi real time ecommerce shopping carts integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP Invoices
4. Real Time Integration.  Real time means instantly, of when customer picked his or her items into ecommerce shopping cart, submitted the order and paid via credit card.  You can program real time ecommerce integration to Dynamics GP with eConnect SDK in Microsoft Visual Studio C3 or VB .Net project.  eConnect is very friendly to experienced or even making first steps Microsoft Visual Studio programmer, who has reasonable exposure to C# or VB (to understand eConnect code samples), plus some exposure to XML and SQL Stored Procedures is recommended.  There are opinions that eConnect is faster than Dynamics GP Integration Manager, especially handling large scale integration set.  In our opinion it might be true, if we are talking about old Integration Manager OLE Server connectors.  For Integration Manager for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 you can deploy eConnect connectors, which should produce the same performance as if you are calling eConnect libraries directly from your ecommerce web project
5. SQL Stored Procedures approach in ecommerce to Dynamics GP real time integration.  We do not recommend you to program SQL stored procedures for ecommerce integration purposes, however you can deploy preprogrammed SQL Stored procedures set, such as Alba Spectrum Order Connector.  The reason why we do not recommend SQL Stored Procedures programming from scratch is simple - Dynamics GP business logic is quite complex and SQL insertion has high risk of data violation.  In fact, you will be reinventing the "wheel", as all or most of the SQL insertion stored procedures are already implemented in eConnect (as encrypted stored procedures)
6. Automatic Great Plains Batch Posting directly from eConnect web application.  As eConnect is restricted by business rules of Microsoft Dynamics GP Dexterity architecture, you cannot post batch directly from eConnect, as this routine is reserved to Dynamics GP user, who is supposed to review, approve and then post the batch.  Alba Spectrum Posting Server (also historically known as Autopost)  allows you to mark batch as ready for posting and Alba Spectrum Posting Server checks approved batches table every 20 seconds and new batch is found it initiates batch posting process