Syspro - Office Business application bridges gaps
Office Business application bridges gaps
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Company Overview
Syspro’s fully-integrated business software provides control over the planning and management of all facets of business. It sought to extend and streamline access to its line-of-business (LOB) applications to improve productivity and increase the use and value of the data and processes managed by its applications. Thanks to the power and flexibility of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Syspro developed an Office Business Application (OBA) to expand and improve access to its LOB applications.
Business Challenge
Since its inception in 1978, Syspro has delivered state-of-the-art business solutions to many of the world's leading companies. As a global leader in the production of world-class ERP software, the company now caters to the specialised needs of 12,000 licensed companies in more than 60 countries worldwide. It is marketed globally through regional territory distribution centres and a global reseller network in the US, Canada, Africa, Asia Pacific, Australia and the UK.
Syspro is a fully-integrated business software solution that provides complete control over the planning and management of all facets of business, including accounting, manufacturing, and distribution operations in a variety of industries. Its line-of-business (LOB) applications offer many benefits to its customers, and as part of its ongoing functionality and technology improvements, it has sought to extend and streamline access to its LOB applications. These improvements include:
External business partners and customers of companies using a Syspro LOB application have previously been unable to access information from within the database, such as outstanding sales orders, jobs, or stock levels as up until now, for these customers to access this information, a fully-licensed user has been required.
Accessing the data within Syspro has previously required a fully-licensed, trained worker and thus, the data in Syspro was not easily accessible to workers whose level of use did not warrant the cost of licensing. This situation has now changed.
Information workers at businesses have previously had to install a Syspro client application to access any Syspro information. This provided some of the required integration with Microsoft Office programmes. For example, it provided exports and imports to and from Microsoft Office applications. However, this process has not been seamless and has often required end users to cut, copy, and paste to interact with Microsoft Office applications.
Interaction with Syspro LOB applications previously required workers to leave the context of the business at hand, this being in many cases within a Microsoft Office environment, to obtain the data they needed. This data was then required to be transported into their current business activity, creating a gap in the business process, and at times making the process vulnerable to errors and interruptions.
Solution
With the decision to build an Office Business Application (OBA) to expand and improve access to its LOB applications, Syspro leveraged the power and flexibility of the 2007 Microsoft Office system to develop Syspro Office Integration (SOI), an Office Business Application (OBA). SOI extends the functionality and value of the company’s LOB applications by providing secure, seamless integration with the Syspro database from within Microsoft Office applications, using Web services, delivered from the “cloud” or on premise. By so leveraging this combined power of software + services (S+S), SOI allows workers to make decisions and take action without leaving the context of the business at hand or the familiar Microsoft Office environment.
Phil Duff, CEO of Syspro, says, “This functionality, normally associated with Tier-1 products, has been developed using standard Microsoft technology that makes information available to the enterprise using secure web services. SOI also enables our customers to make their company information visible to their customers and suppliers in an easy and secure manner.”
The purpose of SOI is to enable any user in the enterprise, whether Syspro is installed on the client machine or not, to access information directly from the Syspro database within a Microsoft Office application such as Microsoft Office Word, Excel, or Outlook and to do this securely. Furthermore, once the information has been displayed it can be inserted directly into the current document either as simple text or as a table. Thus, information workers gain the advantages of both the services by which the data is delivered from the “cloud” and the power of the Microsoft Office applications on their desktops. And, regardless of whether the Syspro services are delivered on-premise or from the “cloud,” the experience for the information worker is the same.
According to Russell Hollick, Research Director, "Microsoft Office products have become de facto standard applications, and Syspro Office Integration continues the SYSPRO goal of making its software easy to use, easy to deploy and easy to maintain."
To accomplish the required integration, SOI uses secure Web services to communicate between the Office product and the Syspro application server. This allows users to access Syspro information remotely and securely. Because SOI is a stand-alone module, it can be used to provide external business partners with real-time access to relevant information.
The deployment of SOI is a simple installation on the client machine (2 MB). The full Syspro client (600 MB) does not need to be installed on the client machine. The administrator then installs the SOI web services on the web server so that it can connect to the Syspro application server.
To protect the data from unauthorised access the user needs to define his/her credentials to SOI once only. The credentials define the name of the operator and the company to access within Syspro. Once logged in, SOI uses Syspro’s business objects to derive data which is securely protected using the company’s own security rules. Any security changes made within Syspro automatically apply to SOI usage.
Users can search the Syspro database on a number of key fields (customers, contacts, stock codes and so on) and enter the search criteria (search by ‘name’ fragment for example) to return a list of matched rows. They can then drill down for more information by clicking on a row. The search results are shown in a series of collapsible task panels which are configurable by the user.
As an S+S solution, any information returned in the Search results can then be inserted directly into a current working document without leaving the context of the business at hand. Text can be inserted as text for a single piece of data, such as a customer name, or as a row or table in the case of a data grid into a Word document. Similarly, data can be inserted directly into an Excel spreadsheet as well.
SOI uses 192-bit encryption for its web services to connect from the Microsoft Office product to the Syspro application. This not only provides secure access to the data but allows users to work remotely. Because of the built-in security, use of secure web services, and free licensing, SOI can be very easily and effectively deployed across an enterprise, extending to external business partners and customers by providing integration between the Microsoft Office applications already on their desktops with services from the "cloud" or on-premise.
SOI provides views of Syspro data out-of-the-box, but all views can be configured by the user, empowering users to decide not only what level of information is shown, but also how it is shown. Because so much CRM work occurs within Microsoft Outlook, Syspro developed a way for information workers to interact with Syspro without leaving Outlook and without requiring a full installation of Syspro on their machine. Now when a worker is sending or receiving e-mail, that event and the data around that event can draw upon data in the Syspro CRM database and update that information automatically. Users can also manually select e-mails to be integrated, and synchronisation with the Outlook calendar is seamless and transparent to the user. SOI also allows users to define the Syspro information that is displayed within Outlook, such as contact details, invoices, and inventory. And, the administrator can easily prevent users from accessing sensitive information by applying ‘roles’ to operators.
To empower workers to easily integrate with data in Syspro without having to leave the familiar Office Outlook environment, Syspro developed a customised Outlook toolbar. The custom SOI Outlook UI contains four key items: Status: Connected/Disconnected – this informs the users whether or not they are currently connected to the Syspro web service; Syspro Credentials – this allow the user to specify his/her Syspro credentials as well as some additional options; Syspro Activities – this allows the user to record the e-mail as an activity within the Syspro database; Syspro Company – this allows the user to change to a different company.
Within the Outlook Inbox, Syspro added a user-defined field which contains a checkbox to identify whether any new mail is from a sender known to the database or not. This gives the user a visual indication that he needs to take action with this e-mail as it is a known contact within Syspro. At this point, the user can select the e-mail and choose to record the e-mail as an activity. When he has done this, the checkbox in the Syspro user-defined property will be checked, indicating to the user that the e-mail has been recorded in Syspro.
Syspro leveraged the functionality of Outlook Form Regions to allow users to insert additional information about the e-mail, such as if they want the e-mail to be recorded by checking the record activity in Syspro. Users can also set up a follow-up flag and can insert some “regarding” and “result” values. And, when the send button is clicked, the e-mail will be sent and recorded in Syspro.
SOI was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) and the company’s business objects to deliver a state-of-the-art office integration module. SOI uses Syspro e.net solutions XML schemas to derive the Syspro data. Therefore, the data is protected using Syspro security rules, and the information returned can be configured as required.
Using VSTO, Syspro was able to easily leverage the current Web services to provide permission-based access to back-end data from the “cloud” or on premise, without leaving the context of Microsoft Office applications.
According to Kevin Dherman, Systems Architect, “When writing code for the Office add-in you have access to all the .NET namespaces, so any developer can write an Office add-in because it is similar to writing a .NET windows application. The learning curve is small, and this is especially valuable when you have a small to medium size development team.”
He continues, “One advantage was the install that Visual Studio created in the solution. We only had to make a few tweaks like checking PIA’s, registry, entries and, of course, trusting the assembly.” He adds, “The object model using VSTO was more intuitive than normal COM add-ins, allowing us to interact easily with any of the Office products using code.”
To interact with the database, Syspro created a Web service referenced from within the Office add-in. If at any point, data needs to be read or written to the Syspro database, the solution makes a call to the relevant web methods. Dherman explains, “This took only about 3-4 days of development time because we could leverage off our existing web services.”
Dherman comments, “We also wanted to support both Office 2003 and Office 2007 products, so we developed a set of User Controls for both. This took us about three weeks of development time considering that we only had one developer assigned to the project. We then created two different solutions - one for Word 2003 and another for Word 2007. A number of event handlers were added to each solution, the controls and web service were referenced and we made just a few minor tweaks to the code to allow for both 2003 and 2007 compatibility.”
“One of the main challenges,” Dherman explains, “was to secure the transmission of sensitive data across the internet. We used the ‘System.Security.Crytography.TripleDes’ namespace. This enabled the encryption of data transmitted to and from the Web service. Another challenge was to have the same functionality with Office 2007. We created a set of controls containing all the relevant logic and code. We then created two solutions - one for an Office 2003 product and another for the Office 2007 product. We then referenced those controls, added a few event handlers, and now have a solution for both Office 2003 and Office 2007 products. The object model does differ in some cases, but we were able to work around it very easily.”
Business Benefits
According to Dherman: “We expect that SOI will significantly expand the adoption of Syspro applications and the use of Syspro information across our customers’ enterprises. This will not only improve the productivity of their workers and business processes, but will increase the value they place on our applications.”
By capitalising on the ability to provide services from the "cloud" or on-premise, and deliver these through the Office system as an Office Business Application, Syspro expects SOI to empower information workers across customers’ enterprises to leverage both the power of the software on their desktops (Microsoft Office applications) and secure Web services through which they can interact with data within the database.
Thanks to its power to deliver services from the “cloud” to software on the desktop, SOI gives businesses the ability to offer their partners and customers free, easy, secure, real-time access to data vital to the specific business relationship. This improved engagement with business partners is expected to both strengthen business ties and reduce the demand on fully-licensed Syspro users to provide the same data.
With SOI providing free, secure access, the information within Syspro LOB applications is now available to every worker according to their role, but regardless of their level of need. Thus, the value of that information will be multiplied as the number of workers leveraging that data increases.
SOI bridges the gap between front-end Microsoft Office applications and back-end LOB data, allowing workers to perform business activities without leaving the context of the business at hand or the familiar Office environment. Streamlined integration, often transparent to the user, also eliminates errors from previous, more manual integration.
By providing another level of interaction with its LOB applications, Syspro has provided customers a more cost-effective way to approach licensing and a way for customers to additionally leverage the power of their Microsoft Office software.
By developing an Office Business Application on the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Syspro developers experienced the following benefits:
According to Dherman, “VSTO really accelerated the development process because we could focus on the functionality instead of the plumbing of Office.”
The installation was provided by Visual Studio, thus the company did not need to create its own.
Dherman states: “Thanks to a consistent environment, we were able to get code out a lot quicker and were able to re-use code, especially when developing solutions compatible with both the 2003 and 2007 versions of Microsoft Office. Thanks to the extensible Ribbon UI, Syspro was able to customise the UI to meet specific business requirements without having to write any code. Extending the Ribbon is really made easy! We were able to reference all of the existing Ribbon items (ie fonts, formatting, etc) and create our own items with zero lines of code!”
