QXchange Integration with SugarCRM

Overview
QXchange is a powerful and easy to use data integration tool to access, integrate and manage large volumes of data from various systems. Extraction, transformation and loading of data are powered by QXchange with source and target database support.

QXchange helps organizations to bond together all enterprise data and ensures accuracy of data in a timely manner. QXchange is a simple stand-alone application that can be used by novice users with ease.

QXchange can quickly and easily transfer data between many standard data formats and applications, including MS Access, Excel, Comma delimited flat file, MS SQL Server, QuickBooks, Salesforce.com and others. It allows simple and clear setup of extraction, transformation and loading instructions to exchange data between different formats. 

SugarCRM, is a customer relationship management solution, used to manage global sales and marketing lifecycles and enhance the productivity of enterprise sales, marketing and service professionals. It has various editions such as Sugar Professional, Sugar Enterprise, Sugar Ultimate and SugarCRM Community Edition (installable version and open source). SugarCRM also supports 3rd party applications integration. 

Technology  
SugarCRM, supplies Web services, a pool of API calls for building applications and integrating with SugarCRM objects. This set of APIs allows you to create and retrieve data from SugarCRM accounts. The API ensures that

• The third-party software complies with security access to the data
• Provides strong error recovery and data logging to make sure data is protected
• Provides standardization across various upgrades of SugarCRM 

QXchange uses the SugarCRM API to access SugarCRM account and the data objects contained in the platform. Once connected through the API securely, the data will be extracted or loaded as per the profile settings created by the user. 

Authentication and Authorization 
QXchange uses sign-on information provided by the individual customer to identify itself while communicating through the SugarCRM web service. An existing user id and password along with the SOAP end point can be used. The login information is encrypted and stored locally on the user machines. The application and login information is presented to the SugarCRM authentication system to allow access to the QXchange application. 

Use of the login information allows SugarCRM to enforce access to various data objects based on the same security profile used within the application for direct access. 

Data Access Plug-in 
QXchange integration engine uses Data Access Plug-ins (DAPs) for individual application and data format integration. All the DAPs are called using a standard Application Program Interface (API). The SugarCRM API is wrapped inside one of these DAPs. This allows for a smooth and standard operation across all the various DAPs. 

QXchange is installed locally at the customer site so that customer data is directly loaded between customer machines and the SugarCRM site without any other intervening web sites. QXchange sends a message request to SugarCRM and SugarCRM sends back a response message; the communication is managed synchronously.

Using QXchange

The QXchange engine works the same for all different DAPs. Every data transfer is set up as a profile, with a source and target data file, which can be of different data formats. Data transfer between specific objects and the mapping of source to target fields are also set up in the profile.

The profile can be executed directly or can be scheduled to be executed later. The process can be run on a local desktop or on a server.

Source Data

Salesforce.com can be defined as source data and the various objects can be accessed. Field level data from the objects can be extracted and mapped to destination objects and fields in different data formats. Data from multiple objects can be extracted. Multiple profiles can be set up to extract data from various objects. Source data can also be filtered using various expressions. Prior to executing extract the source data can be viewed to make sure the right records are getting selected.

Target Data

Salesforce.com can be defined as target data and the various objects can be updated. Data can be updated to multiple objects. In some cases update may have to affect multiple data objects at the same time, for example: Invoice Header and Line.

Data can be updated in various modes: Insert, Update and Upsert. Insert expects the record being updated to be new and unique. Update expects the record to already exist. Upsert, tries to insert first and if that fails tries to update.

Scenarios

The QXchange ability to integrate Salesforce.com allows many uses. Certain limitations in Salesforce.com reporting can be exceeded with this tool. This allows many different scenarios: