Overview of connectors for Acumatica

Audience and purpose

This document series outlines the integration elements included in the Optimizely B2B Commerce (ISC) connector for Acumatica ERP. It identifies and defines the default integration points, along with the necessary details, including the field mapping and high-level technical processes. While these integration points and jobs cover a majority of the integration requirements with Acumatica, there may be customer-specific requirements that you need to incorporate into a customer's B2B implementation.

Optimizely's Acumatica connector uses standard integration mechanisms between Acumatica and B2B via the Generic Inquiry and standard Web Service Endpoints. This document focuses on Optimizely customers implementing a version of B2B and integrating it with Acumatica, with implementation assistance from Optimizely partners.

Connector requirements

Optimizely based this integration on the following:

  • Versions Supported: API version 18.200.001
  • Cloud Implementation The Optimizely Windows Integration Service application on a local Windows machine is NOT required for this version of InsiteConnect
  • Payment Gateways: The Order Submit job assumes you use Authorize.net with Acumatica
  • Tax Calculators: B2B can call Avalara, which returns tax amounts

Complete the following pre-requisites before attempting this integration:

  • A user must be created in Acumatica for B2B Commerce to access Generic Inquiries and Web Service Endpoints.
    • We recommend setting this user up with the BI, Internal User, and Portal User rights. Other rights may be necessary in your instance.
  • If your instance of Acumatica is multi-tenant, the tenant must be added to each individual job.
  • Install the set of default Generic Inquiries in your Acumatica instance.

Business issues/considerations

Many portions of this document refer to tables or objects within Acumatica. See Acumatica documentation for definitions of those tables and potential values.

Some instances of Acumatica may not have all of the default fields pulled in our Generic Inquiries

Technical issues

ISC relies heavily on the Odata functionality and APIs, so Optimizely assumes the these endpoints are responsive. Any issues with the speed of the APIs may require an ERP expert to assist, as Optimizely does not have the resources or expertise to troubleshoot standard ERP APIs.

Known limitations

Acumatica's current endpoints do not provide adequate responses for sets of items/and or warehouses for real-time pricing. Because of this, one of the default integration jobs is to create a price matrix with pricing from Acumatica. These jobs assume that all customer-specific pricing resides in the price records being imported.

Overview of integration jobs

The integration tasks between Acumatica ERP and B2B Commerce are separated by the source and destination of the datasets and the mechanism used to implement the integration. The three types of integration tasks are designated as Refresh (Pull data in batch via Odata), Submit (Push a transaction) or RealTime (direct calls to the APIs).

Refresh (Pull): B2B Commerce relies on Acumatica to provide product, customer, order history, and invoice data. Refresh tasks are typically run at scheduled intervals to synchronize new or updated data with ISC. Generic Inquires exposed via Odata are used for refreshes.

Direct API Calls (Real-Time): Direct calls to the exposed Acumatica API are made for inventory.

Submit (Push): B2B Commerce relies on the Acumatica APIs for functions like order submissions that require data to be submitted to the ERP.

Refresh mapping

Refreshes use the Field Map capability of the B2B integration architecture. When we construct a connector, we create a series of job definitions that encode these mapping rules for refresh jobs. The mapping documents below call out the standard connector logic and it is up to the implementation partner or customer to adjust as needed for their particular project needs.

For example, by default, the product length/width/height are not visible in the Admin Console, and therefore are not available in the Field Mapper. The Acumatica connector query will retrieve this data from the ERP, but it will not be in the standard field map tool to populate the B2B database. If the field is configured to be available via the application dictionary, it must be added to the field mapper in order for the data to flow into ISC.

Deletion strategy

For each entity being refreshed, there must be a strategy on how to handle records that are not in the dataset retrieved from the source tables. The B2B options are to Ignore, Delete or Set a field such as IsActive or DeactivateOn. These strategies will depend on several factors, including:

  • Are there child collection considerations? (Records that relate to a parent, such as invoice history lines being children to the invoice history header table)
  • Are we retrieving the data in separate queries? (Such as Customer Bill-Tos and Ship-Tos.)

Each refresh will define the standard deletion strategy being used.

API list

The following is the list of standard APIs used for integration:

  • Inventory Availability: InventoryAllocationInquiry
  • Order Submit: SalesOrder