THE COMPANY
Founded in 1968, Winson Group is an Australian owned and operated manufacturing group of companies with purpose-built offices and production facilities in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Townsville. It is a holding company for two trading businesses: Signet and insignia. Signet is one of Australia’s leading manufacturers and distributors of packaging materials, safety supplies and industrial marking products. insignia is a leader in labeling and coding solutions, as well as thermal printing, scanning and mobility products. By 2020, Winson Group aims to replace the current integration system in place between Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online as well as integrate Microsoft Dynamics NAV/BC with Magento Enterprise (also known as Magento Commerce On-Premises) and deploy the latter.
Target:
- Replace current integration solution between Dynamics NAV & Dynamics 365
- Set up integration between Dynamics NAV/BC and Magento Enterprise
Challenge:
- Solution must be simple to implement
- Continuous integration requires reliability and no downtime
- Solution must work with the specific intricacies of Magento
Required SSIS Integration Toolkit:
I am happy to say that KingswaySoft has met and surpassed my expectations. All my engagements with KingswaySoft have been positive, and they have been very responsive when I have had urgent questions. I see improvements in every release of their solutions, and they do not just look to add functionality to bloat the package. They are very considered in their approach and offer excellent guidance if there is an easy way to complete a task with existing functionality.
~Alan Webster
General Manager of Information Technology
Winson Group
THE CHALLENGE
Concerning the most challenging of the two projects, the Magento integration, Winson Group is working with a Magento partner on a complicated solution and a new website. Before the integration project, the company successfully used SQL replication on its existing website with minimal downtime. The new site needs to be just as dependable, and therefore, it is critical that data continuously flow to and from Microsoft Dynamics NAV/BC ensuring the Magento-based website remains up to date. Magento’s API has a wealth of functionalities, including posting to multiple entities in one statement, nested data in a single field, custom extension, extensive search retrieval, retrieval of multiple entities in one request, and updating header and child records in one statement. These functionalities are complicated and time-consuming to code without having excellent REST source and destination components.
As for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration, the company’s incumbent solution would not support its move to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central. Winson Group needs an integration solution that would be easy to set up and reliable that it could run for well into the foreseeable future.
MAGENTO API FUNCTIONALITIES
- Posting to multiple entities in one statement
- Nested data in a single field
- Custom extension
- Extensive search retrieval
- Retrieval of multiple entities in one request
- Updating header and child records in one statement
THE SOLUTION
SSIS Integration Toolkit:
Having tried, tested and compared with more than a handful of SSIS add-ons and another major Microsoft Dynamics integration vendor, KingswaySoft’s suite of SSIS Integration Toolkits came on top thanks to its set of unique features and excellent support services. With the Ultimate Edition on hand, Winson Group has access to every toolkit produced by KingswaySoft, all through a single license. Utilizing the SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics 365, the SSIS Integration Toolkit for Magento, and the SSIS Productivity Pack, the Winson Group team successfully implemented the Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration and are well on their way to achieving their Magento integration milestones.
Unique features within KingswaySoft’s SSIS Integration Toolkits have translated into cost-effective and time-saving solutions for Winson Group. Features include the ability to continue a data flow after a destination component has been used and carrying the data forward into multiple update steps without having to develop complex packages.
Additionally, features in the SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics 365 allow for performing real-time lookups during the CRUD statements, which was extremely beneficial for efficient designing. Similarly, the Premium Derived Column component in the SSIS Productivity Pack was a gold mine of features that allowed for powerful data transformation in one easy to use component.
THE RESULTS
Over three months, KingswaySoft’s toolkits have replaced 60 integration packages. Over the last four months, more than two million rows of data have moved between Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 with zero downtime and no errors beyond data integrity issues within the endpoints, which were quickly identified and resolved.
Winson Group reached out to the KingswaySoft Support team on several occasions for questions and suggestions for the software, particularly the SSIS Integration Toolkit for Magento. Recommendations made to help improve developers’ performance and efficiency were shared with KingswaySoft, which led to the deployment of new functionalities. The KingswaySoft team provided general guidance throughout the project and suggested best practices to achieve efficient outcomes with the components.
KingswaySoft’s early adoption and support of Microsoft Azure SSIS IR was also an essential factor in Winson Group’s selection process as having a serverless environment offering high availability while operating on top of the Microsoft stack was critical for its needs.
Replaced 60 Integration Packages
Zero Downtime and Errors
2M Rows of Data Moved to Date