Connect 2.1.1
Welcome ...3
Introduction ...3
What’s new in 2.1...3
Technical Requirements ...4
How does Connect work?...5
Application Connectors ...5
Connect Sage 50 Features ...5
Connect Sage 200 Features ...6
Connect Sage Act! Features ...6
Data Transports ...6 HTTP Web Transport ...6 FTP Transport ...6 Email Transport ...7 ConnectWise CRM ...7 HTTP/FTP Transport ...7 File Transport ...7 Salesforce Transport ...7
Secure Trading Transport ...7
PayPal Transport...7
Installing Connect ...8
Activating your Licence...9
Running Connect ...10
Placing an order on the demo site...10
Downloading Orders from the Demo site ...10
Using Connect with your own Sage data ...12
Uploading Data ...14
Scheduling Connect...15
Checking your schedule is running ...16
Advanced Options ...17
Receiving Email Notifications...17
Formatting Options...18
General options...18
Upgrading or Registering Connect ...19
Next Step - Integrate Connect with your own website, CRM or other applications...20
Simple example using Connect XML to download a customer ...20
Existing Integrations ...20
Internetware Certified Integrations ...20
Getting Help + Support ...22
Welcome
Introduction
First of all, some good news - you’ve made the right choice! Connect is the UK’s leading sage integration software for Sage 50, Sage 200 and Sage Act!
Connect is used by hundreds of Sage users all over the UK as well as further afield and it lets you easily import and export data from your accounting or CRM system
Connect will save you hours of time, reduce costs and eliminate re-keying of data completely.
We are constantly developing Connect and adding new features and functionality to ensure compatibility with the most up to date versions of Sage software.
What’s new in 2.1.1
We’ve added hundreds of new features and enhancements in our Spring 2009 release • Support for ConnectWise CRM
• Support for Salesforce CRM
• Integration with SecureTrading payment gateway • Integration with PayPal payment gateway
• Integration with Autotask CRM • Support for Magento Ecommerce • New FTP transfer
• Support for dynamic transports and dynamic connectors
• Custom Transformers to convert from other XML formats and CSV to Connect XML • Improved XML Validation to make importing data much quicker and easier
• Sage Demo data pre-installed for developers to use for testing and demo purposes
• Sage 50 New Features
o Export Currencies
o Allows you to specify the default carriage nominal code o Option to default to using a default stock code
o Checkbox to only upload "publish to web" products o Facility to page uploaded records
• Sage Act New Features
o Support for Custom Field Import and Export
o Support for importing and exporting Company + Contacts o Support for Act Criteria Filters when exporting data • Sage 200 New Features
o Export Price books o Import Customers
o Import Transactions + Allocations o Export Styles (Sage Retail) o Export Inventory (Sage Retail) o Checkbox to upload "publish to web" o Facility to page uploaded records o Optional carriage line
o Default carriage SKU
Technical Requirements
Before you begin, you will need to confirm you have all the required software installed and fulfil the other prerequisites.
1. A PC running Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 Server or Windows 2008 Server.
2. Any of the following supported applications
a. Sage 50 Accounts V11, V12, 2007, 2008, 2009 b. Sage 200 V5.1 or Sage 200 V6 2009
c. Sage Act! 2007, 2008 or 2009
3. A Compatible web browser (Internet explorer, Firefox, Opera)
How does Connect work?
Connect goes beyond traditional data integration and database mapping tools and provides
true business integration.
Connect uses the correct business rules to talks intelligently to your Accounting software following all the correct logic for posting, extracting and allocating transactions, orders and invoices and forms an integral part of your business.
Application Connectors
Connect ships with 3 native connectors for Sage 50, 200 and Act, supporting the latest versions of these programmes. Please note: Demo versions are enabled with ALL features. Connect Sage 50 Features
Connect supports Sage 50 versions 11, 12, 2007, 2008 and 2009 and comes in 3 editions and the features included depend on the edition you have purchased.
Feature Basic Standard Pro
Import Customers Import Invoices Import Suppliers Import Products Import Sales Orders Import Purchase Orders Import Transactions Import Stock Transactions Export Tax Rates
Export Products Export Product Images Export Price Lists Export Suppliers Export Customers
Connect Sage 200 Features
Connect supports Sage 200 V5.1 and Sage 200 6.0 (aka 2009)
Feature Basic Standard Pro
Import Customers Import Sales Orders Import Products Import Sales Orders Import Transactions Export Products Export Product Images Export Price Lists Export Suppliers Export Customers Export Styles (Retail) Export Inventory (Retail) Connect Sage Act! Features
Supports Act version 2007, 2008, 2009 – it supports Act criteria and filters so you can define exactly what data you wish to export to the external system or website and also Custom field import and export allowing you to perform quite complex integrations with Act between your website or external applications
Feature Basic Standard
Import Companies Import Contacts Import Custom Fields Import Products Export Companies Export Contacts Export Custom Fields Custom Criteria Filters Create Follow-up Activity Assign to Group on Import
Data Transports
Data transports handle the movement of data between the remote system and Connect and ships with the following transports. We can develop custom transports for any application however, if it is a bespoke application it is more economical to write scripts in ASP, PHP or other scripting languges and using the HTTP Web transport
HTTP Web Transport
Handles XML data transfer over HTTP (unsecure) or HTTPS (secure) with or without HTTP authenticiation (password requester)
FTP Transport
Email Transport
Allows you to pull data into Connect via an XML attachment or XML within the body of an email.
ConnectWise CRM New
A transport designed for customers of Connectwise CRM HTTP/FTP Transport
This transport is a Hybrid transport for moving images via FTP and data over HTTPS this is used generally in a hosted environment where the size of data you can send to your website is limited by your hosting provider.
File Transport
This is a simple file based transport for pulling and pushing data from a local or networked file system. You can also use this with drive mapping tools. It handles renaming of processed files and supports 3 directories; data in, out and notifications
Salesforce Transport New
The Salesforce transport is a custom transport for moving data between the Salesforce.com CRM platform and Sage 50 or Sage 200. It should be used in conjunction with the
Internetware Connect AppExchange package for Salesforce.com and required Salesforce.com Professional Edition with API, Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition. Please contact your Salesforce account manager for further information
Secure Trading Transport New
The secure trading transport downloads transactional data from Secure Trading payment gateway into Sage 50 or Sage 200 as Sales Receipts. It will also allocate inbound Sales receipts to their matching invoice by Sales ledger Account and Reference
PayPal Transport New
Installing Connect
Download Connect and run the setup.exe program and follow the standard installation routine unless you have been requested to install it in another location.
Activating your Licence
The first time you run Connect it will ask for your license key, click Activate to enter the key you received via Email or Post.
Enter your key and click Activate. Connect will then contact its servers to retrieve your licence and will confirm it has been activated.
If you don’t yet have a license key then go to www.getconnect.co.uk and request your free trial – click on the Buy button and choose Free trial
Troubleshooting: If you have any problems activating your license if could be because you
Running Connect
The demonstration version of Connect is setup to download Customers and Sales Orders or
Invoices from a demonstration website. If you wish to trial Connect with Sage 200 or Sage
Act please contact us.
Connect will display the following screen, along with the Demo Profile that we ship which is connected to a Sage demonstration company
Placing an order on the demo site
You need to place a test order on our test ecommerce site, visit
http://demo.getconnect.co.uk and place an order for any of the products on the website.
If you place orders on our test website Choose the “Cash on delivery” option for payment do not enter any credit card details as this is just a test website and it is not set up for secure transactions.
Downloading Orders from the Demo site
You should see a single Customer and a Sales order come down into Connect
You can examine the data that has come down by double clicking the record, you can also change the values prior to importing to Sage.
Next, click on the Save All Data button – Connect will then import the customers and sales orders that are in Connect and notify the website that the download was successful so the orders are not downloaded again
TIP: Most people run Connect using the build in Windows Scheduler so imports and
Using Connect without Sage
If you don’t yet own Sage accounts or you are a developer and you do not have access to the clients own Sage installation for testing then you can use Connect in detached mode where it works with its own local Sage Demo database rather than clients live data.
You will need to download and install the a free Sage runtime license from the website at http://www.getconnect.co.uk/downloads/SDO/sdoengine150.exe
Note: Do not install this patch if you already have Sage installed
Using Connect with your own Sage data
As previously mentioned, the data in the Demo Profile is saved to a local Sage database rather than your actual live Sage database.
To use Connect with your live company data or a test demo data database so you can see the data going into Sage, please follow these steps.
In the main Connect window Right click on the Demo Profile, the following screen will be displayed:
Click Next until you reach the Sage Settings screen, uncheck the Use Manual Location and choose your test company from the Company drop down list as shown below:
Clicking Next will display the location where Sage is requesting its data from
If your web developer has already integrated your website then you need to change the above URLs to the URLs supplied by your developer.
If you need to provide provide authentication tick the box and enter the details provided by your web developer
The Advanced option allows you to change the Content Type if you are using Java based server, the Proxy Settings if you are connecting to the website via a Proxy server and there is an option to Output the XML to the program directory for debugging purposes if your developer requests it.
Uploading Data
You can try uploading your own product database to the test website, but please note this demo website is reset every couple of hours and it is public so please be cautious of what you upload
Scheduling Connect
The final screen in the Connect Wizard is the scheduler; you can choose Never, One Time or Recurring – generally you will want to setup a recurring schedule
The options for recurring schedules are exactly the same as Windows Scheduler (Connect actually uses the Windows built in scheduler so that it can work on Windows Servers systems as well as desktop PCs)
Usually you would choose to sync every 15 minutes, starting at midnight and finishing at just before midnight and with no end date, but you can set it to run once per hour or even once per day.
Checking your schedule is running
Advanced Options
Receiving Email Notifications
Connect can be configured to send you email notifications for any data that is received by Connect and posted to your application.
Click on the Tools > Options on the Connect menu and tick the Receive Notifications and enter your Email address
You will also need to configure the SMTP settings so that Connect knows how to send its email
Formatting Options
The following options tend to fall under the need as required category.
Decimal precision applies to the VAT calculations, generally if you are getting issues with
values being a penny our then this option will correct that by rounding all item values to 4 decimal places.
Encoding type relates to XML coming into Connect that is in non UTF8 format, Connect can
be configured to convert the encoding type to the correct type. This usually happens if you are importing data with foreign characters that use alternative encodings such as ú (umlaut)
General options
Close window after completion simply closes the sync window and only applies to when the
application is being run in user mode.
Upgrading or Registering Connect
Once you have purchased connect you will need to upgrade your license by click on the Help > Upgrade License option, click on the Activate Now button and enter your full license key. You will need to restart Connect for changes to take effect.
Next Step - Integrate Connect with your own
website, CRM or other applications
Using Connect XML your application, website or ecommerce site easily be integrated with
ANY website or application using simple scripts and Connect’s generic XML which is
generated from your own database.
Simple example using Connect XML to download a customer <Customers>
<Customer>
<Id>2</Id>
<CompanyName>JBL Associates</CompanyName>
<AccountReference>JBL001</AccountReference> </Customer>
</Customers>
To find out more about Connect XML Click here
If you don’t understand the above example – don’t worry – show it to your developer and they will be able to confirm they can export data in this format.
Existing Integrations
Connect has a number of freely available scripts for popular ecommerce sites. Ask your developer what your website was developed with and if he answers with one of the following and if your requirements fit with the standard scripts then you could be up and running in just a few hours!
Please contact our support team for further information on [email protected] Internetware Certified Integrations
Application Website
OsCommerce www.oscommerce..com
ZenCart www.zencart.com
Cre-loaded www.creloaded.com
Cube Cart www.cubecart.com
Virtuemart www.ibexinternet.co.uk
Click Cart Pro www.clickcartpro.com
Yahoo Stores http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/
Connect Wise New www.connectwise.com
Salesforce New www.salesforce.com
Magento New www.magentocommerce.com
BT Fresca FCP New www.btfresca.com
PayPal New www.paypal.com
Google Checkout New www.google.com/checkout
Getting Help + Support
If you cannot find a resolution to your problem via our knowledge bases. Please submit a support case to our support team via email:
Knowledge Base http://www.getconnect.co.uk/support.asp Troubleshooting: http://docs.internetware.co.uk
Support Email: [email protected]
Full Telephone support is also available for customers who have purchased Connect, if you have a pre-sales technical enquiry please do call us on 0845 123 2920 between 9:00 and 17:30
Sending a diagnostic report
You may be requested to use the Send diagnostic report option to send a full dump of your connect system which is zipped and encrypted prior to being sent to us via email.
