magento 2 erp integration best practices: microsoft dynamics

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Magento 2 ERP Integration Best Practices: Microsoft Dynamics


Joshua WarrenCEO, Creatuity@JoshuaSWarren / #MageTitansUSA

Introductions


• Family of ERP systems

• Dynamics AX• Dynamics GP• Dynamics NAV• Dynamics SL• Dynamics C5

Microsoft Dynamics


• Manages finance, manufacturing, CRM, supply chain and inventory for medium-sized enterprises

Microsoft Dynamics NAV


• Needs no introduction

Magento Commerce


• Business processes such as fulfillment and inventory management become highly automated

• Employees don’t waste time manually entering data

• Focus on delivering unique value – not just doing the things a computer could do

Magento Commerce + Dynamics NAV


• Stable, scalable integration

• Simple to maintain, low cost of ownership – no one wants to spend their budget on ERP integrations

• Easy to support – no one wants to answer tickets about an ERP integration

Project Goals


• Import basic product & inventory data from Dynamics (no PIM)

• Export customers and orders from Magento into Dynamics

• Import shipment data from Dynamics

• Don’t break the Dynamics-powered POS deployed in 30+ stores –this is a real-world deployment, not a theoretical project

Business Goals


• Eliminate dependence on third-party encrypted ERP connectors

A Corporate Mission


• Much of this integration was designed and written by an excellent long-time member of our development team, Scott

A Special Thanks

Integration Architecture


• Base module for all of our integrations

• Provides a common set of logging, reporting and UI components

• Ensures all of our integrations have a merchant-friendly admin management page

Base Module


• RabbitMQ, scalable messaging queue

• Magento 2 has native support for communicating with Rabbit

• Rabbit libraries for PHP, Java, .NET, Python, Javascript, Ruby & Go so ERP developers can use the language of their choice

RabbitMQ


• Creatuity writes the module necessary to publish and consume Rabbit messages in Magento

• ERP integrator or client’s in-house ERP team writes the code to publish and consume Rabbit messages for the ERP

RabbitMQ – In General


• Creatuity also supports the client’s Microsoft Dynamics instance, so we’re writing both ends of the connection

• Continuing to develop best practices around where to host the ERP-specific code in this case – another Magentomodule or a separate script

RabbitMQ – Microsoft Dynamics


• Does the ERP have an existing PHP library?

• If not, what language is the ERP’s library written in?

RabbitMQ – Architecture Questions


• Best case – ERP’s library is written in PHP, merchant is using Magento Commerce Cloud

• Worst case – client’s ERP utilizes an antiquated language and is hosted behind a strict firewall

RabbitMQ – Architecture Questions


• Sometimes RabbitMQ is more than a smaller site needs

• “Cron mode” enables direct communication from Magento to Dynamics using Magento’s cron system for scheduled tasks

• Works well in this case as we are responsible for both the Magento code and the ERP integration code

Rabbit Alternative - Cron Mode


• Task Layer

• Service Layer

• Data Layer

• Connection Layer

Layers


• Product update, shipment update and order update are each tasks

• Easily add new tasks in the future

• Cron and RabbitMQ level tasks occur here

Task Layer


• Used to perform requests to Microsoft Dynamics

• Executes and parses requests

Service Layer


• Contains all logic related to processing both Magento and Microsoft Dynamics data

Data Layer


• Performs and manages the actual connection to Microsoft Dynamics

• Encapsulates all connection logic so remaining code doesn’t care how the connection works or if it changes

Connection Layer

Integration Implementation


• Extract data from a source

• Process, map and transform that data

• Deliver it to the destination

Basic Concepts


• Designed as a single Magento module

• Module is broken down into 10 main models to implement our layers

• Some of the models then break down into smaller components

Structure


• Keeps code clean & easy to maintain

Structure


• Manager that manages the overall data transformation process

• Extractor pulls data from source, uses a Mapper to map fields to a standard format

• Transform class performs basic transformations

Data Layer


• Processor class processes changes in Magento that need to happen based on data from the ERP

• Allows us to utilize core Magento functions for making these changes

• DI & architecture of Magento 2 makes this simple

• For instance – we use the core StockRegistryInterface API

Data Layer - Processor


$stockItem = $this->stockRegistry->getStockItem($productData->getId());

$stockItem->setQty($intermediateData->getQty())->setIsInStock($intermediateData->getIsInStock());

$this->stockRegistry->updateStockItemBySku($productData->getSku(), $stockItem);

Updating Magento Stocks from ERP


• Microsoft Dynamics NAV can be customized – field names can be changed

• Don’t hard-code field names

• Separate out implementation-specific code from platform-specific code

Lessons Learned


• 150 hours of development work and QA

• 10 hours of documentation

• Deploying this integration for future Microsoft Dynamics clients could be a 5-10 hour process

Implementation Effort

End User Experience


• Customers on the site aren’t aware the ERP exists – which is our goal

• Their orders are fulfilled quickly and they receive a tracking number soon after placing their order

• If the customer experience is impacted by your ERP, there’s room to improve that integration

Customer-Facing Experience


• Warehouse staff fulfill orders out of Microsoft Dynamics as they always have – no need to login to a separate system

• Customer service representatives can view up-to-date product inventory and order status information in Magento, no need to login to Dynamics

• If a sync encounters an issue, detailed information is available in the Magento admin panel for easy troubleshooting and resolution

Admin User Experience


• Previous off-the-shelf connector required a developer to SSH to the server any time the sync failed.

• Encrypted code made debugging impossible

• No stable base for feature enhancements

Developer Experience

Future Improvements


• Refactoring code to allow other members of the Microsoft Dynamics family to easily integrate with Magento

• Developing new adapters based on other integration methods (i.e., CSV files)

• Expanding to connect with other ERPs as well

Adapters


• One consistent system for all integrations, lowering maintenance costs and time to implement

• Open source? Collaboration?

Vision

Results


• Restocked products go live on Magento much more quickly

• Errors importing one order no longer stops all other orders from importing

• It just works – no longer have to think about the ERP integration

Faster, More Reliable Syncing


• This integration would’ve taken substantially longer if not for the design patterns and architecture of Magento 2

• Code is cleaner, easier to maintain and more robust thanks to following the Magento 2 architecture

Impact of Magento 2

@JoshuaSWarren / Creatuity.com

Questions?

magento 2 erp integration best practices: microsoft dynamics

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