Low-code 101 #3 – Spotlight on Integration

You can find this webinar, and the other episodes in the Low-code 101 series, here. A transcript of episode three, Low-code spotlight on integration, is laid out below.

Laura: Hello and welcome to our third webinar. I’m Laura Ritchie, a Marketing Communications Manager and today my co-presenter is Richard Kelly. In this “Low-code 101” series, we are talking through different aspects of Liberty Create, our low-code solution and today Richard will answer some of the integration questions you may have. Thanks for joining me today Richard…

Richard: My pleasure Laura and hello to everyone listening…

Legacy Tech

Laura: So, integration is a subject that many of our customers speak to us about. All businesses, including ours, have legacy systems or existing tech that needs to talk to each other to ensure end-to-end processes are efficient.

Richard: Yes, it’s a real headache when systems don’t work with each other – we often hear horror stories of lots of manual processes to bridge the gaps. We even hear of data being re-keyed between systems with all the problems and consistency issues that involves. The other big problem people have is that the same information quite often appears in multiple systems – for example customer details – and no one is quite sure which system is updated, when and who updated it!

Laura: So how can low-code help with these challenges?

Richard: Low-code allows businesses, which may or may not include the IT department, to rapidly develop the tools necessary to run their business without relying on spreadsheets! By saying the IT department is optional, I mean that, depending on the skills and resources available, IT may choose to provide the governance for the solution, with business managing the development of applications. Or, IT may also undertake the application development.

Laura: Let’s get into the specifics on system integration…

Here’s our plan for today’s session:

APIs and Enterprise Applications

Laura: So, Richard, are you often asked for a list of APIs – can you explain what Create can work with?

Richard: Create has a number of different system integration points, most of which you will find in the Data Exchange section of Build Studio. These cover the data file import and export capabilities you would expect – with text files and Excel workbooks supported.

We can configure data separators, header and footer lines and reformat rows or individual fields prior to processing them.

This proved handy recently when an export from one system produced a date in an unusual format, which needed to be amended before Create recognised it.

We have the ability to copy files to an SFTP (secure file transfer protocol) server or retrieve files from an SFTP server. Using rules can combine this with the data import capabilities and ingest the records.

The next integration point is between Create applications – providing read only access to data on one Create application from another. It’s great for reference data or Master Data.

This is known as Remote objects – with one Create application hosting data which can then be synchronised to one or more additional Create systems. We can even limit which properties and relationships can be exported.

The final means of integration is the use of APIs with a whole host of different options.

Laura: Can low-code integrate with enterprise applications to provide a complete solution?

Richard: Create has APIs for a number of regularly used applications built into the platform. These include Experian, Salesforce, Zendesk, Adobe eSign, Docusign and MS Dynamics.

However, these are only a small number of the systems our customers use, so we also provide a generic adaptor to allow integration with thousands of other solutions. This allows control, using the Create interface, over authentication, headers, data parameters and multiple different functions within an API.

There are a couple of very good documents on our community portal with details of setting up APIs, including a walk through of a real case with IBM Watson text translation, check the Feature Notes in the Resource Centre.

Let’s look at a simple demo of Create here, where I create an API connection, telling the system where we are going to communicate.

Server Data and Master Data

Laura: That covers Create accessing other systems, but what about other systems accessing Create?

Richard: Yes, we can configure Create to server data as well. Either for generic external systems or for other Create systems. The process is very similar to what we have just described. Set up an API endpoint and then set up the functions to be called.

Laura: We have started to touch on the concept of sharing data – can you expand a little further?

Richard: Master data is the core data that is essential to operations in a specific business or business unit. The kinds of information treated as master data varies from one industry to another and in companies within the same industry.

It is the capability of having just one “Source of Truth”. This means that we don’t need to replicate and update data in multiple places. Create and the API capabilities is most of the issue – one source of data. It’s now only legacy systems that don’t communicate well, that we need to worry about.

Authentication

Laura: With all the data in one place and accessible, what security measures need to be in place?

Richard: Every Create API access, inbound or outbound, can have a number of security measures in place. In most cases, these would include authentication, either a simple user id and password encoded, or more complex authentication scheme like OAUTH, requiring numerous parameters and run-time creation of an access token.

We also have the option of defining a firewall profile for the API Endpoints where Create is the server. This firewall profile can include blacklist or whitelisting IP addresses as well as restricting access based on domain names.

Laura: This all sounds very technical…

Richard: Unfortunately, this is one of the more technical areas of Create. It normally relies on both IT and someone knowing what is on the other end of the connection to get it going. Once it is in place, there should be little or no change required.

I hope I have avoided too much jargon and given a flavour of just what is possible using the system integration and data exchange capabilities of Create.

Laura: Thanks for your time Richard, I’ve certainly learnt a lot! Hopefully that has covered a lot of useful points for you as well.

If it has whetted your appetite, you may want to revisit our earlier “Low-code 101” sessions on security and the fundamentals, plus our Podcast series, Life in Low-code, is really interesting. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn too.

We’ll be doing another session soon which will put building the business case for low-code under the spotlight. From Richard and me…. Goodbye!

Watch other webinars like this one on Low-code integration – you can find them in the Low-code 101 series.