Why Alumio iPaaS Routes are essential to streamline integrations
Building data Routes in the Alumio iPaaS involves defining the specifics of HOW you want data to move between integrated applications, systems, or data sources. Each Route is a workflow that details the journey of data travelling from a data source (incoming configuration) to a target destination (outgoing configuration), via the Alumio iPaaS. As such, Routes help you simplify, optimize, and limitlessly customize your data integrations.
Let’s say you’re trying to connect your e-commerce store to your ERP to exchange specific data. The Alumio iPaaS provides Connectors to swiftly integrate key data entities (Orders, Pricing, Customers, Shipping etc.) between the two endpoints. However, suddenly, you’re confronted with a new set of crucial questions:
- “Should I send ALL the order data from the web shop, or just the new orders?”
- “How do I match the e-commerce data format with that of the ERP?”
- “Do I need to ensure this data is exchanged every minute, once every day, or just over the weekends?”
- “How do I ensure real-time synchronization for specific data entities such as Inventory or Prices?”
Route building within the Alumio iPaaS doesn’t just help you answer these questions, it’s designed to ensure that you effectively do so. Think of Routes as the translation, navigation, and traffic control system for your integrations, ensuring that the right data moves between applications in the right way, at the right time, and in the right format, via the Alumio iPaaS.
However, before understanding how Routes in Alumio help tackle key integration challenges, let’s understand what an Alumio Route is and how it works.
What is an integration Route in Alumio, and how does it work?
An Alumio Route is the workflow that you need to build to clearly define how you want data exchange to take place between two endpoints. It involves choosing how to import data in from a source application into Alumio, how to transform this data within the iPaaS as required, and how to export it to the target application. It also lets you schedule and transform each part of this workflow.
The key features of Route-building within Alumio:
1. Incoming configuration: Determines what and how data is retrieved from the source application (e.g., your e-commerce platform) into the Alumio iPaaS.
2. Outgoing configuration: This helps send the data that is retrieved and transformed within Alumio to the target system (e.g., your ERP).
3. Transformers: Alumio provides a vast array of Transformers that can be used to modify the data being exchanged. They can be used to filter, map, or enrich data to optimize integrations, map the correct format, type of data, and data structure to ensure compatibility between source and target systems.
4. Scheduler: This is essential to automate when and how often the Route runs, which could be weekly, once a day, every hour, or every minute. Or, you can also choose the option to run the Route in real-time!
5. Task management: Each unit of data that a Route successfully integrates between two endpoints is defined as a Task. For example, each Order sent from an e-commerce platform to an ERP via an Alumio Route counts as a Task.
5 integration roadblocks iPaaS Routes help bypass
Building effective integrations isn’t just about connecting systems, it’s about addressing key challenges that determine how well your data flows. These challenges present themselves in the form of crucial questions that need to be answered to streamline and maximize your integrations. Here are some of these crucial challenges that building Routes in Alumio ensures that integrators tackle before running integrations:
1. Define what specific data needs to be integrated
When integrating two or more applications, you mostly don’t need them to exchange all their data. For instance, you may only need to send new orders, not old ones, or you may want to exchange customer details, but just from specific regions. Alumio Routes allow you to apply Transformers on the Incoming configuration, which can be used to filter what specific data is being imported into Alumio. This helps improve data accuracy and prevents having to manually sort through data that’s unnecessary in certain contexts.
2. Map data formats between integrated endpoints
When building integrations, it is crucial to ensure that the data coming in from the source application is the same format as the target applications. For example, your e-commerce platform might send orders as JSON, but your ERP only speaks XML. Alumio Routes act as the multipoint bridge via which you can apply Alumio mappers, so data entering Alumio from the source application is reformatted and structured to match the target application.
3. Scheduled vs. real-time data exchange
When building Routes within Alumio, you can choose to enable data exchange in a scheduled manner and in batches, and you can also choose to enable real-time synchronization of certain data entities. Real-time integrations mean processing data exchange constantly to ensure immediate updates between apps. Scheduled integrations enable data integration to take place at pre-determined intervals and in measured batches.
Real-time integrations are great for when any changes in the data need to be reflected across applications at the same time, for example, when a payment is processed through an e-commerce platform. In such a case, it helps if the transaction details are instantly synced with the ERP. On the other hand, scheduled integrations are suited for data exchanges where data updates aren’t required immediately, for example, an end-of-day batch transfer of sales data from your POS to your accounting software. As such, both methods serve distinct purposes, and the Alumio iPaaS helps strategically combine both methods to optimize your workflows.
4. Scheduling integration frequency
The Route-builder within the Alumio provides a unique Scheduler that (like Alumio Transformers) can be applied in three ways: on the Incoming configuration, Outgoing configuration, and the Route itself. This means, for example, when integrating an e-commerce and ERP system, you can choose to retrieve new order data every 5 minutes from the web shop into the Alumio iPaaS. Alternatively, you can choose to schedule the outgoing configuration to send the order data within Alumio to the ERP system every 1 minute, using a Transformer on it to filter and send only new orders (to prevent duplications).
5. Transforming and modifying your integrations
Alumio provides a rich variety of Transformers that can be applied when building a Route to modify the data you’re integrating via the Alumio iPaaS. A few of the many crucial customizations that Transformers enable include:
Mapping fields: Transformers allow you to rename, remap, or restructure fields from the source application to match the target application’s format. For example, mapping the field “order ID” from your e-commerce system to “document number” in your ERP.
Filtering data: You can use Transformers to include only specific data. For instance, you might filter orders to send only those from a particular region or within a defined time frame.
Enriching data: Add or modify data fields before sending them to the destination system. For example, appending a “sales region” field to each order based on customer location.
Handling conditional logic: Transformers can apply conditions, such as sending customer data only when the total order value exceeds a certain threshold.
Build the right Route to future-proof integrations
Overall, building integrations with the Alumio iPaaS isn’t just about moving data — it’s about automating, transforming, and orchestrating the data. With Routes, you can track every data transaction (Tasks), catch errors before they cause issues, and adjust settings as needed. Without Routes, integrations can become a tangled mess of mismatched formats, missing data, and performance bottlenecks.
Alumio Routes take the guesswork out of data exchange, enabling you to think more comprehensively about how you can maximize your data integration. In summary, integrations are much more complicated than simply connecting application A to application B. The Alumio iPaaS helps make integrations simple and dynamic by enabling intelligent Route-building.
Want to experience how the Alumio iPaaS helps build effective Routes for data exchange between applications, first hand? Get a free demo of our platform →
