Weekly Review: IM Tip, Key a Transaction

I was wrestling with a SOP integration recently. I had to use the old style adapter for Integration Manager because some fields I needed are missing in the econnect adapter. The integration would start, process a few records and fail, crashing IM and not writing to any logs.


This is a an effective way to learn new expletives.

To complicate things, the source was a really complex SQL query from a non-GP database. Also, the integration wasn't failing on the same record each time. Records that failed one time would integrate the next and the process would fail on another record. (aside: son of a motherless goat is good expletive to use here. Extra points if you can name the movie it's from)

I was ready to drop everything to a CSV and test it that way but that would have been time consuming and not fun.

My colleague who keeps claiming that she's "non-technical" but who keeps solving my technical problems sat down and we walked through keying an entry. The problem was subtle but we found it.

I was forcing the Ship To information into the integration (not necessarily using a ship to address id) because I wanted to make sure that the ship to data was right even if the address wasn't setup for that customer. But I had Ship To Address set to default. The problem was that Ship to Address wasn't defaulting so there was no ship to information to change when I forcing in data.

I've found lots of Integration Manager issues by keying integration transactions in the past but usually they stand out. This one was more subtle so even though I've given this advice before and thought I had done it here, I'll say it again. If you are having IM trouble, key one transaction from the integration. Key every step. Don't skimp. Don't say "oh, I know how that works". Key it. Do it now!

Originally Posted by Mark at 6/25/2008 08:10:00 AM