This article provides an introduction to Fusion CRM(FCRM) integration features/capabilities and insights on what is missing when compared to CRMOD Integrations. This should be helpful for beginners and people who have worked on CRMOD Integration projects and are now on a transit route to start with FCRM Integrations.
When ORACLE launched FCRM, like many we were excited to explore & learn the integration side of the story to see what it offers and how it is different from CRMOD. We got our opportunity in the form of our Fusion CRM Sales++ (R4) Internal Project Implementation to which our Sales team was on-boarded from CRMOD. Currently we are using FCRM R5 version and the application is getting more stabilized by every release.
My first cut feedback would be that “the technical architecture of FCRM is very well thought off and designed to suit the enterprise class CRM application”. When compared to CRMOD it provides extensive API support and offers most of the features offered by CRMOD integration with many really nice add-ins. Here is the quick look on some of the distinctive features of FCRM,
- FCRM Web Services are developed using ADF & JAX WS specification
- FCRM Web Services can be broadly classified as Transactional data access services, migration services & composite services
- Transactional data access Services are services that provide access to the ADF Business objects and provide Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) operations to these objects (e.g. Opportunity web service)
- Migration Services are used primarily for moving data from various systems into Fusion CRM (e.g. Bulk import web service)
- Composite Services represent end-to-end process flows that act on business events produced by the ADF services. Composite services are typically non-object based services that represent backend processing flows (e.g. Scheduling an order fulfillment, Converting marketing response to Lead/Opportunity Service)
- FCRM supports Stateless Session Pooling for session management. Big relief for the integration developers as the session pooling is managed by the server automatically. This frees the integration developers from maintaining the client side session pooling.
- FCRM WSDL Changes dynamically based on the data structure configured in FCRM App. Data Structure changes such as Parent Child Association & adding of new fields will reflect dynamically in the WSDL.
- Query/Read limit is 500 records per transaction.
- Provision to create Unlimited Custom Objects. The WSDL schema is dynamically generated at run time upon creation of Custom Objects.
- Apart from basic CRUD operation we could find many other operations (Ex. Convert Lead to Opportunity, Qualify Lead, Auto Opportunity Assignment, ..) under each of the object which could help to automate the business processes.
- Sync and Async Web Services Transactions are supported for every operation. This is another nice feature. As definition says, using Async Web Services we can initiate the web services transaction and proceed to perform the next transaction asynchronously without having to wait for the initial transactions to complete.
- Flexibility to create Index Fields on our own. Effectively using this feature in application design would help improve application performance significantly.
- No allotments & limiters imposed on FCRM Web Services Usage (at least not yet!)
- FCRM Supports a new field called Object Version Number Field which will be updated internally by FCRM on every transaction (record modification). Concurrent record modification use cases can be better handled using this feature.
- Generate Unique Sequence No. in your own format. We might have come across many use cases where customers have asked us to generate sequence no. in their own format. This is possible now with FCRM but only for Custom Object records.
- Support of Rich text data for notes. This is one another feature which is frequently asked by customers and is supported by FCRM.
- MTOM is supported for high volume(Attachments) & Rich Text data transfer. This should improve performance of web services transactions.
- CTI Integration Framework & Toolbar is supported. CRM user can perform Telephony operations within FCRM using CTI Toolbar. CTI Framework can be extended to integrate with any of the backend Telephony system.
- Outbound Message (Trigger External Web Services from FCRM), we can configure an object workflow to send an outbound message to a Web service at a specified endpoint URL. An endpoint URL is an external Web service that shares data with Oracle Fusion CRM. This feature can be a substitute for CRMOD Integration Event Queues.
Note: In FCRM, we can download/view WSDL only from OER (ORACLE Enterprise Repository), WSDL’s are not available within FCRM application. OER is the separate web site where Integration Assets of all Fusion Stack of Applications are listed. You need ORACLE account to access the OER.
Now let us see the key features of CRMOD that are missing in FCRM (as of Release 5).
- Web Services Utilization Monitoring
- Ability to use 20 record per transaction in Create/Update/Delete Operations. Currently most methods in FCRM supports one record per transaction for these operations
- Web Services for Pick Lists & Export/Import Configuration
- Mapping Services
As solutions addressing these short falls and many more add-ins are expected in upcoming releases, working with FCRM is truly going to be an enterprise class experience for all of FCRM System Integrators.
Prashanth N Reddy
Technical Manager, CRMIT Solutions.
Prashanth on Technology 