Recently Cast Iron released their latest update, 4.0.5 to both the Cast Iron appliance and the Cast Iron studio. If you are a current customer, there are a few compelling reasons to upgrade.
- WSDL Support is improved for your web service based projects
- Download TIPs and PIPs from Cast Iron, these are predefined projects which can help jump-start your integration work.
- Native Netsuite Connector now exists to make it even easier to connect to their platform
If you are a current client and would like to get the latest updates for your Cast Iron appliance, simply email support@customware.net and our team will advise you on the recommended upgrade path and ship you a copy of the update to you on a CD along with all the instructions you need to get it running. The good thing about dealing with CustomWare here is we understand all the small changes so we can best advise you what update is relevant for your environment.
Over at Channel 9, the MSDN Portal from Microsoft, John O'Donnell a Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist has a new video up which goes through connecting Microsoft CRM and Microsoft Great Plains (GP) using a Cast Iron Integration solution.
If you would like more information on how CustomWare can help you integrate with your Microsoft Dynamics products, contact us via our Feedback Form
At Customware we love Atlassian products! We use Confluence to collaborate, JIRA for issue tracking and Crowd for single sign-on among our internal systems. When our new Microsoft Dynamics CRM was implemented recently we knew integration was crucial to its business value.
As a first phase we have completed these interfaces
1. Leads Created in CRM from the Website: When users inquire about our services or products on the public website, the details that they enter are sent to an internal email account. Cast Iron polls this email account, receives the email, parses the content and creates the leads in the CRM.
2. Feedback Created in CRM from Website: When users provide feedback in our public website, the details are sent to an internal email account. Cast Iron polls this email account, receives the email and parses the content. It then checks if that particular contact already exists in CRM, if they do the feedback is attached with the contact. If the contact does not exist in CRM a new contact is created and the feedback attached to it.
3. Contact Details Synchronized from Crowd to CRM: The Crowd instance enables sign-on to our applications for both internal and external users. Crowd has a list of users and their latest details (contact info, login credentials etc). Periodically Cast Iron uses Crowds Web Service interface to get the all the contact information and synchronize it with our CRM Contacts.
Note: All interaction to the CRM is done via the inbuilt web service that it provides. Part of the our expertise in this area is we are very strong at using these interfaces, as you may know, its one thing to access a web service interface, its another to know how to use it correctly.
These three are technically straightforward solutions using Cast Iron but they deliver big business value to CustomWare
1. We don't need a support person to manually enter the leads or feedback into the CRM.
2. Before Cast Iron, contacts in CRM were not synced with our master single sign on solution.
3. The actual development time for these interfaces combined was less than a week.
If you would like more information about our work integrating with with Atlassian products or Microsoft CRM contact us on the Cast Iron feedback form
Pradeep Selvaraj and Louis Zezeran - 6th March 2009
Yesterday evening I attended the Sydney chapter of the Salesforce.com CRM User Group up in the Salesforce offices looking over Darling Harbour.
Glenn Elliot from Myriad Minds gave a great presentation covering the latest changes in the Spring 09 release as well as some of the lesser known but very useful features of the tool.
If you want to join us at the next Sydney User Group, follow the page at http://usergroups.salesforce.com/sydney/
It was great to meet so many Salesforce.com customers and implementers, these meeting are very valuable to understanding the pulse of the industry.
Hope to see you all at the next event!
Here at CustomWare we strive to share our knowledge. As part of this, I have migrated about 45 (and more to follow) FAQs from our internal wiki to the Cast Iron public wiki.
Here are some of them:
- How to configure Cast Iron with LDAP server?
- How to provide a WSDL to a client calling a Web Service in Cast Iron?
- How to test web services with OxygenXML?
- What is the roadmap for custom connectors or JCA support?
- How to insert records into an ODBC database?
Click here for more FAQs.
A small write up of a Cast Iron orchestration connecting Cast Iron to Atlassian Crowd via Webservices - see Connecting Cast Iron to Atlassian Crowd
Cast Iron Systems' iA3000
EAI-In-A-Box Simplifies Data Integration
This is a somewhat old review, but still valid:
http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183702691
Attn Cast Iron Registered Users: Greetings for December2008!
This email is to update you on news and events in the CustomWare CI community since the last bulletin from Oct 20th. Also, we want to hear from you - if you have questions, concerns or any other feedback about your Cast Iron experience, please write to matt.wennersten at customware.net.
The end of November brings with it the end of the Cast Iron financial year. Next month, we hope to give you an update on the many new customers who have joined our community world-wide. Also, since the last bulletin, Cast Iron have extended version 4.0 with the release of update 4.0.1.5 of the Cast Iron Integration Appliance.
There are also new options for provisioning the appliance run-time:
1. Dedicated appliance - our normalhardware/software integrated unit
2. Virtual machine - a VM version of the Cast Iron Appliance that can run as an instance in a VM server farm for customers who have a virtual server infrastructure
3. Cloud - a hosted version of the Appliance run-time running in a Cast Iron provided hosted data centre, primarily for integration patterns outside of the firewall (e.g. FTP to SaaS)
Key new features in 4.0.1.5 include:
- Download pre-packagedintegration patterns (PIPS) from CastIron.com (pre-builtorchestrations for common scenarios, e.g. SAP to Salesforce.com)
- Enhanced ability to copy and paste activities in Studio
- Improved on-board database activities
- Enhanced connector support (e.g.. JDEdwards 8.12)
For assistance in obtaining PIPS or upgrading to 4.x, please contact CustomWare technical support. Thank you.
Cheers, and happy integrating,
Matt Wennersten, Cast Iron Practice Manager