Sage Mas90 Visual Integrator website custom EDI questions

[HomeharvestDotcom]

Hello this is my first post please bare with me.

I am in need of some Mapping or some sort of Key help for visual integrator. I am brand new to using VI, currently my coworker using VI to import customers into mas90 to create inital Sales Orders. Looking into ebusiness and seeing the price drop to just a 1/4 of the orignal price still not considering it for sometime. Therefore me and my programmer buddies are interested and have been trying for sometime to make a full website based around VI imports and exports. Basically we plant to create e-business clone or something close to it.. others like In-Sync and so forth. Creating all this without VI would seem to be impossible.. seeing some datas in blueshelldataguy was very confusing. Anyways, With VI it seems to have a Job List of many possiblilties and then parameters once thats picked. Where should I go from here to Understand more about VI and using it with a customized cms shopping cart on steroids ?

Thank you for all your help and time reading, message can be directed at Big Louie

p.s.
Also anyone who post questions or concerns I will start to help as much as i can.. I have about 8 years of exp in Mas90 modules + starship and rma add ons.

Peter

 

[BigLouie]

If you are on v4.20 you could always use VB and the Business Object Interface and write directly to the MAS tables. For exporting VI is not very good or efficient.

If you are going to use VI you really need to go to class at a regional training center. Take the data files class along with VI.

Can I ask where your reseller is in all of this.

 

[HomeharvestDotcom]

Hello Thanks for your reply.. yes we are using v4.20 always upgrading to the latest. Our resellers are suggesting e-business but because of the expense I am researching other ways to do the same. Currently we have e-business available for $4500 it used to be $20,000+. We are now considering the e-business but I have a very good programmer on board and with VI we purchased for around $3800 seems to import making sales orders just fine. So you would not suggest we export with VI for databases in php/mysql ? Our resellers are great but I just saved over $10,000 on a PDA palm computer bid by finding another software goBarecode vs scanco. I think if we design it ourselves we might have better customer support.

I will look into VB and the Business Object Interface and see a about a solution this direction.

All and all you don't suggest VI for this edi solution?

Thanks again,

Peter

 

[dgillz]

What you are suggesting is not, in and of itself, EDI. It may electronically bring orders into Mas200, but EDI is a very specific set of standards, imposed by the trading partner, on you the supplier.

So if you are being pressured to use EDI, make sure that it really is EDI and not simply an import of orders.

Look up EDI in wikipedia for a good explanation of it.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"What version of URGENT!!! are you using?

 

[HomeharvestDotcom]

Sorry I knew EDI was Electronic Data Interchange but forgot about the standards -- I just mean to use a term that would describe import and exporting mas90 information from one database to another. I believe my reseller first brought this acronym. Thanks for everyones help.

Peter

 

[BigLouie]

You can use VI to import orders from a web application and then use any number of SQL databases to extract inventory and master file information for use with your web page. If you have good VB programmers then I would use the BOI and VB as you could push the orders into MAS in real time when accept on the web.

 

[dfeller]

With the cost of re-creating the wheel using VI or custom programming, you could have a website up and be accepting orders using e-Business.

But I'm more curious about some of the pricing you are mentioning ... the e-Business software was NEVER $20,000, it's always been around $5,000.

The VI module costs around $1,700; I'm not sure why you paid $3,800 for it.

Can you explain?

Dawn

 

[HomeharvestDotcom]

Hello Not sure if this should be a new thread or not but I am Looking into BOI and VI to recreated e-business, after our resellers recommended we wait on e-business because they are dealing with a client that is programming their own option. How quickly could we have automatic invoicing and e-mailing of status with BOI/VI compared to investing in e-business.

To answer previous questions addressed to me, We have investing in yearly upkeep this may effect pricing I said and we were told 20k plus for e-business about 1-2 years ago and recently told it had "dropped" to $4500. I am trying to determine if that value is still valid this late in 2007 nearly 2008 with the advances in software integrations known today. Another reason I am willing not to invest in the $4500 is if the BOI and VI will do this then we can spend the money on PDA palms for inventory and shipping with goBarcode or Scanco.

Thanks for all your comments and help,

Pete

P.S. any thoughts on throwing away the nearly 100k we have spent in years to come on this all vs quickbooks/management software combo. Looks like quickbooks can always do what the bigs can for a little price and monkeys can install the software and use it....

 

[BigLouie]

Quickbooks is extremely limited compared to mid-market packages such as MAS90/200. It's cheap for a reason. The number of records the database can hold, the number of users it can handle, compliance with GAAP rules and the like means that after throwing away the 100K after a few years on Quickbooks, if your company grows, you'll have to spend probably close to 150K-200K to upgrade to MAS200 or MAS500 all over again.

IF you are on MAS200 v4.20 you can get the BOI for free so all you will need is your web application and VB programmers. You could do your own. If you used a reseller such as Dawn you could get up and running on EBusiness pretty cheap and fast also.

 

[tecphonelady]

We have MAS90, eBusiness Manager (EBM) and a Yahoo! store.

What's nice about EBM is that the orders go right into Sales Orders and it's about as easy as it gets to update your inventory on the web site, prices, shipping weights, etc.

Big question is: is this site for existing customer or are you trying to attract new biz?

If your existing customers are inclined to order online then EBM would be the way to go.

If you are looking to gain new business, then I wouldn't recommend it for the following reasons:

-the pages are dynamic (vs static) and aren't indexed by the search engines--so no organic traffic right to the store

-you can't see how much shipping is going to be until after you enter your CC number. Customers can still bail out without being charged but how do you convince them?

-If you want to send someone a link to an item, it's very difficult. You can't cut & paste the URL, you have to 'build' it and put in %20 as fillers, big PITA. Same issue with building a PPC campaign, hard to build the links.

There is a company in Canada that will build an interface for you between MAS and 3rd party e-commerce. I can get you their name if you'd like.

Also, feel free to check out our B2C EBM store, at

http://telecomex.com/store_switchboard.php

Click on new customers, that's the B2C module. Our Yahoo store is

http://www.PhoneLady.com

if you'd like to see that.

We are still running 3.71 too, FYI.

I wish you luck and if you find the ultimate solution please let me know!!

Ann

 

[krock918316]

Ann,

I've got a question. We are in the process of converting to MAS200, and we have both a B2B and B2C presence. We are moving our B2B to the EBM, but not our B2C.

Is your Yahoo store tied into MAS?

Kevin

 

[dfeller]

The filling in with %20 etc. was just prior to 4.10. As of 4.10 and 4.20 that is a thing of the past.

It is true that it is very dynamic -- the pro on that is that someone who isn't a programmer can quickly get items up on the web and there isn't as much maintenance.

Dawn

 

[tecphonelady]

Hi Kevin,

We have not tied the 2 of them together and I've spent a fair amount of time researching that topic.

You may want to talk to eBridge Software, they can write you an interface.

Ann

 

[ebizsalman]

We are trying to create PO in MAS90 using Visual Integrator so we are creating a Job for Import PO. Can you people let us know what are we missing in it.
As the PO Header information is populated successfully but the line item information is not populated successfully.

Can anyone send us a Import PO job for PO or tell us what are we missing in it?

 

[AndyMc]

ebizsalma,

You need to modify the records tab of you VI job. Because the lines of a PO can have several kinds of lines imported (inventory items, comments, special items, ...) you idendify the kind of line(s) coming in on the records tab.

Andy

 

[ebizsalman]

I have check the record tab and try different combination there by selecting only Item Record, all available type except Skip Record, but my problem still there, line item is not showing up in the grid only line number is visible there. I also try by unchecking the perform logic only checkbox but the result was same.

 

[HomeharvestDotcom]

I might get e-business, and gobarcode and enable boi and try it all. Web business has been great so we can now afford all these options that e-busiess gives for automatic invoices and customer service emailing, and we can work on a custom solutions as well for php enviorment. Anyone have any scripts or jobs for VI importing/exporting anything? We have one that imports web orders and turns them into Sales Orders saving errors and input time. I am looking to pull information from mas 90 once its been shipped have a realtime robot that check mas90 ever 5 minutes to see if anything has been shipped and then auto emails customer. E-business has this but I would like to try it myself. So if anyone wants to trade job files or perhaps has a bunch they would let me use that would be great?! It doesn't look like e-business will do php but we might try a new website on the e-business and keep our current big one in html until we can figure out a html/php e-business clone deal.

Peace, thanks for your comments

 

[BigLouie]

Check out Knowledge Sync, it is a business monitoring software that will send out e-mails. We use it to send out the tracking numbers at night for all the days shipments. You can set it for any frequency.

 

[AndyMc]

ebizsalma,

Once you uncheck the 'perform logic only' checkbox, you need to set a definition for the line. If all your lines are Item Records, try changing the Relation to "Not Equal <>" and leave the Value blank.

Andy

 

[ebizsalman]

Hi Andy,

Thanks, this solution works. Right now I am only integrating Inventory Item. If I need to integrate other types of item too then what are the other things which I need to follow.

Have you ever tried to run the job outside from MAS90, I am trying to run it as it is given in the documentation ((shortcut e.g in which you need to refer exe with parameters). I can run the job successfully if I double click the shortcut icon but if i am trying to run it from command prompt it gives me error "File is missing". In fact I am trying to call this job from a .net application.

Once again thank you very much for the help.