Connectors

Archibus Connectors

When leading commercial, government, educational, and health care institutions deploy Archibus as an integral component of their ERP suite, the IT function of these organizations often have additional requirements which include the ability to:

leverage existing “gold standard” financial and human resources information within packages like SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft for use in Archibus.
merge IWMS information from Archibus, such as locations and general ledger charges, back into these systems.
clean, validate and transform legacy data into Archibus data that can be the basis for sound strategic decisions as well as for financial and regulatory compliance activities.
eliminate multiple points of data entry, duplicate processing of financials, and duplicate systems of record for account codes, properties, full-time employee lists, and other backbone data.
ensure implementing data integration and workflow processes quick, cost-effective, repeatable, and predictable.

Connectors -- a dependable, extensible, database-independent means for integrating Archibus with other enterprise systems -- address these issues. Initially, Archibus Connectors were available only through Archibus Professional Services. where they have proven effective on the data sets that drive some of the world’s largest organizations. The Archibus Connectors have delivered the live data synchronization needs of these enterprises, and have handled millions of data changes each month.

Archibus Connectors have been used in a wide variety of uses, for instance:

Download human resources data from ERP to support space occupancy, move management, hoteling, or reservations activities. Merge human resource lists of full-time employees with Archibus lists of contractors and temporary employees to get an accurate list of occupancy for resource planning, space planning, and security.
Download account codes into Archibus so that property, lease, work request, and internal chargeback costs are all correlated with the most up-to-date finance categories and cost centers.
Upload Archibus real estate invoice charges to the ERP general ledger so that the accounting system can bill tenants based on the actual terms, responsibilities, and option exercise of their leases.
Upload Archibus chargeback information to the ERP system so Finance can seek reimbursement for indirect costs from research grants or insurance carriers.
Update actual employee locations in the ERP system to manage various workplace services, such as work orders, service requests, and more.
Update equipment and asset locations and stewardship information for enterprise asset tracking. Upload depreciation information to the general ledger.
Correlate utility billing information with buildings and lines of business to map carbon debt to individual business missions.
Import standard benchmark data, such as RS Means data, to compare your own process efficiencies and costs to industry norms.

The Archibus Connectors

As part of Archibus V21.3, Archibus introduced a new version of the Connectors which are available directly from the product and do not require Archibus Professional Services. These connectors implement most of the features of the Professional Services connectors, but within the quality standards of the Archibus product.

Features and benefits

Feature	Description	Benefits
Meta-data Mapping	Define field mapping, merging, and identity fields without coding.	Quickly correlate data elements between data sources.
Flat-File and Database Integration	Connect to a wide variety of data-sources including -- but not limited to -- databases, xml files, text files, excel files, LDAP services.	Choose the method that is right for your enterprise architecture, workflow, and security requirements.
Centralized Rule Definition	Share rules with the entire IT team over the Web.	Create common, repeatable standards for data transformation and validation. Speed work by sharing rules between teams and projects.
Validation Rules	Specify that a transaction needs to have certain required data values, or meet certain validation requirements to be transferred.	Ensure that data in the system meets the quality bar needed to operate business processes before it is accepted into the system.
Validation Inferences	Infer validation categories from an incoming data source that is considered to be authoritative.	Assemble validation criteria within Archibus that will continue to enforce the validation of the authoring source of the data.
Automatic Lookups	Automatically substitute table-driven lookup values for literal values in a transfer.	Easily convert between enumerations and standards conventions between systems, sites, divisions, or between numeric codes and human-readable titles.
Scheduling	Configure your Connectors to run at certain intervals right from the Connector user interface.	Easily review and edit Connector jobs in one place without requiring access to the database.
Notifications	In many production environments, batch processes like the Connectors run, unattended in the middle of the night. The Connectors can email the desired contacts on completion or on errors during the execution.	Proactively notifies system administrators of any failures and/or successful completion of Connector batch processes.
Field Transformations	Use masks and patterns to format field values, combine multiple field values, provide literal values, format date values, or provide current date and time – all without coding.	Quickly perform typical field merging or transformation.
Filters	Filter input or output rows for a rule.	Merge or extract data appropriate for a location, project, division or other logical unit.
Custom Rules	Reuse the Connector rule framework but override portions of the logic with your own scripted pre-processing, post-processing, validation, or error reporting.	Perform advanced integration using loops, conditionals, or lookups from data sources.

Help Topics

Configure Connectors task

Connector Properties table

Connector Fields table

Connector Rules table

Schedule Connectors Using Cron

Define Connector Rules

Upgrading

Details on Connector Types