Category Archive: Integrations

2. Identities Are Consistent Across Apps

Once logged in, members should see the same name, title, and profile information across every system. If someone is ‘Jane Doe, Membership Director’ in your CRM, they shouldn’t appear as ‘jdoe42’ in your LMS.

Even small inconsistencies can break the illusion of a seamless experience and erode trust.

How do you create consistent member identities?

Your identity provider (IdP) should be the single source of truth for user attributes. Every system, from your Salesforce or Fonteva to your LMS to your event app, should reference that same identity data.

4. Multi-Factor Authentication is Only Needed Once

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) should make people feel safe, not pestered. Users should only need to verify once per device, not each time they switch platforms.

Centralizing MFA policies at the IdP level ensures consistent enforcement and prevents repeated prompts when users move between systems on different domains.

6. Transitions Across Connected Platforms are Smooth

For many associations, Salesforce and apps like Fonteva sit at the core of the ecosystem with learning, event, and community platforms layered around them.

Your members shouldn’t care which vendor runs which system, and they shouldn’t have to. They expect to log in once, register for an event on events.memberhub.net, complete a course on yourorg.learn.com, and return to their profile on portal.yourorg.org seamlessly.

When transitions are invisible, users experience your organization as one connected brand, not a collection of tools.

How do you build a connected SSO experience?

Behind the scenes, it requires:

• Federation between your IdP and each vendor platform
• Alignment of token lifetimes and claims
• Modern standards like OpenID Connect or SAML
• Clear return URLs and session renewal policies

Give Your SSO Experience the Empathy Test

The best SSO experiences feel effortless. A quick “empathy test” helps validate your process by focusing on how your login feels to users, not just how it functions.

During your empathy test, pay attention to moments of hesitation, extra clicks, repeated prompts, or confusing redirects because that’s what your members will notice most.

If users describe your login experience with, ‘I just click once and it works,’ that’s success.

Comprehensive tech ecosystem

The key to effective Salesforce integrations is understanding the ecosystem we need to build. We’ll dig into the software you need Salesforce to speak to, from third party apps on the AppExchange to custom integrations, and bring flexible solutions for what you need represented in the system.

fusionConnect middleware

Depending on the complexity of your Salesforce integration, you might need a middleware platform to ensure all parts of your system are talking effectively to each other and no data is lost.

If that’s the case, we can deploy our fusionConnect middleware platform as part of your integration solution. Our team is also familiar with other middleware systems such as MuleSoft, and can expand on them if they’re already part of your working tech stack.

Innovation Lab

Because Salesforce is always evolving, our Salesforce integration services need to be as well. The Innovation Lab is fusionSpan’s R&D arena, where we experiment with next-gen technologies and solutions such as AI to ensure we’re always offering our clients configurations at the cutting edge.

Discovery process

We’ll start the road to your integration solution with a high level view of the endpoints you want to use. Then we conduct deeper research exploring what API calls each point needs to receive and what technical spec is needed to make that happen.

We’ll also begin producing documentation for all of your processes, setup and infrastructure, so that it’s always clear what’s going into your integration.

Data migration

At the end of the build phase we’ll draw up a plan to manage your data migration going forward, deploying bulk uploads and creative data pull solutions to ensure you have a seamless transition to the new system and don’t lose any data in the process.

What is Sales Tax Nexus?

Sales tax nexus refers to the connection between an organization and a state that requires the business to collect and remit sales tax on taxable sales. An organization must have sales tax nexus in a state to be obligated to collect and remit sales tax. Nexus can be established through various activities, including having a physical presence in a state, selling a certain amount in a state, or engaging in other activities that create a connection between the organization and the state.

Why is Sales Tax Nexus Important?

Failing to comply with sales tax nexus regulations can have severe consequences for organizations, like penalties, fines, and even legal action. It is essential to understand the rules for establishing nexus in each state where an organization operates and to comply with the requirements for collecting and remitting sales tax.

Sales Tax Automation Tools and Sales Tax Nexus

Sales tax automation tools like Avalara can help businesses stay compliant with sales tax nexus regulations. These tools automate the sales tax calculation process, making it easy for businesses to accurately calculate and collect sales tax from customers. They also simplify the process of remitting sales tax to the appropriate tax authority.

Avalara offers a range of features to help businesses stay compliant with sales tax nexus regulations, including real-time tax rate calculations, tax exemption management, and tax reporting and filing. These tools integrate with various accounting and e-commerce platforms, which makes it easy for businesses to implement.

Sales Tax Nexus and Multi-State Operations

If an organization operates in multiple states, it is crucial to understand the rules for establishing sales tax nexus in each of those states. Each state has its own rules for establishing nexus, and it is essential to comply with each state’s specific rules to avoid penalties and fines.

Sales tax automation tools like Avalara can help businesses manage sales tax nexus in multiple states. These tools can automatically calculate the appropriate tax rate based on the rules for each state, simplifying the process of collecting and remitting sales tax.

Incorporating Avalara with your Fonteva Org

Avalara Avatax can be integrated to add tax components to the orders placed in the Fonteva store. When a product is added to the cart, the tax rates will automatically be retrieved based on the product configuration, and state of delivery of goods/services, and used in tax calculations. The integration will also write back the invoice details to Avalara so that any tax filings can be done directly through Avalara.

fusionSpan currently offers a multi-system software package called “fusionConnect,” marketed towards member-based organizations of all sizes. fusionConnect is a three-part software that allows the sharing of data within multi-system infrastructures. It includes Storage, Sync and Log Management.

Log Management is an important part of fusionConnect. If an organization has multiple applications running 24/7, syncing data accurately and having the process monitored via a log management system is crucial for operations. Loggly is the primary tool that fusionSpan uses for log management.

How Loggly Works

Let’s say your organization leverages two separate platforms: a Membership System and an Email Marketing System. You have a data sync in place where a new member signs up, member data gets sent to your email system from the membership system. The issue you have is catching errors. There are times when sync errors occur, such as member address format is incorrect, record duplicates, record missing information and more.

Ideally, you’d like to catch errors as soon as they occur. Loggly is the solution you need to address this issue.

The way Loggly works is by tracking down logs scattered throughout different systems, and copying those same logs into its own storage within the cloud. With that data, Loggly generates dashboards and notifications for the user. An IT administrator can use Loggly to understand how much data each system is sharing, and how many errors are occurring in any given time.

Benefits of a Loggly-Based System

Two features that make Loggly shine is its ability to allow users to search for logs by keywords, and also allows users to build dashboards based on log data. For example, if you want to visualize how many member records were synced between Salesforce and WordPress, you can easily visualize the count of member records that were sent to WordPress, and then create a dashboard panel based on that count.

Loggly Can Connect To Any Log Source & Build Dashboards

Connecting Loggly to different systems is fairly easy. Infrastructures that Loggly supports are listed on its website. With a bit of tinkering, Loggly can connect to any log source or application. After the connection is set up, Loggly will automatically start collecting and indexing logs.

Easily Detect Anomalies & Get Notifications With Loggly

Within Loggly, users are able to set up a number of different monitoring criteria. If you hook up an eCommerce system with Loggly, Loggly will tell you how many orders were placed successfully, as well as how many order attempts failed.

You can also compare different system logs under the same timestamp to figure out what exactly went wrong at any given point in time. Users can configure the platform to send email notifications if the number of errors exceed a certain threshold.

Use Loggly To Search & Analyze Your Log Data

Loggly allows a drill-down of Log data, which allows the user to type in a keyword and easily search for all logs related to a specific category. Users can tag their data based on the filter, as well as store their search results for future usage. Hovering over the log events will provide tooltips on log metrics, allowing users to understand the data more thoroughly.

Loggly & fusionConnect

As mentioned, fusionSpan leverages Loggly as a core component of our fusionConnect solution. With every data sync or microservice it builds, a Loggly connection is put in place to closely monitor the sync or service. fusionConnect helps associations link their multiple systems together to ensure information is shared. Loggly ensures that those links are monitored 24/7 and notifies users whenever it detects any kind of failures.

fusionSpan assists associations with the setup of both fusionConnect and Loggly. Should associations already have a sync solution in place, they can still enroll the service of fusionSpan to actively monitor those solutions for them. This way, instead of worrying about infrastructure, associations can focus on the more important aspects of their business.

A Loggly-based solution benefits associations greatly by reducing the time it takes to identify issues within their IT infrastructure. With Loggly, users are able to see all their logs in one place, and there is no need to log into each individual solution or install proprietary agents.

Take Your Member Org To The Next Level Today

Loggly is an amazing monitoring tool offered as part of the fusionConnect software stack. Our developers at fusionSpan use Loggly daily to get updates on the solutions we’ve built for our clients.

Associations that are interested in fusionConnect can request fusionSpan to provide certain services with Loggly included! If you’re interested in building a highly responsive system, contact the fusionSpan team to learn about scalable solutions for your organization.

This blog was originally published on September 13, 2016.

The first interaction most people have with an organization is through their website. Having an attractive website that is easy to navigate and well organized to engage effectively is essential for every organization. The latest web technologies enable developers to create attractive websites and, with some effort, organize content that is easily accessible for customers. But nowadays, a well-designed website isn’t enough for most users.

The User Comes First

Because of sites such as Amazon and Google, customers expect the site to adapt to them. To meet those expectations, organizations must deliver websites whose layout and content are tailor to individual users. This is what we call a “context-sensitive website” or “personalized content.”

Certain attributes, like the user’s geographical location, platform (desktop or mobile), or even technology (Operating System, Browser, etc.), are obtainable with current web browser technology. Most organizations have much more information on their customers that could personalize the customer’s experience. Unfortunately, unless the organization has a CMS built into their customer database, they cannot leverage the information.

That’s where fusionSpan comes in. Our CRM integration solutions — where we integrate websites with the backend of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or Association Management System (AMS). We also know a lot about the user currently using the website (for users in your CRM or AMS as Members or Customers). These include:

Customer Attributes

The customer database contains a lot of data on an individual, including name, address, organization affiliation, and past purchases. We can use these attributes to personalize the website for that specific user more accurately. For example, if we know that a user is located in a certain geographical location, and there is a conference that is being organized near that location, we could alert the user and prompt them to attend.

Membership Status

We will also know if a website user is a current member of the organization, if their membership is up for renewal, or even if that user is not a member. We could prompt a user to sign-up (or renew) for a membership right from the website in such cases. We could also advertise early registration specials for current members. Since doing so on the website is a lot more convenient than remembering to mail a paper form, this could make the entire process much more seamless for members to sign up and renew their membership, boosting membership numbers overall.

Event Registration

We also know the events that a customer has registered for, and that information can drive the content on the website. For example, if a customer registered for an event last year but hasn’t done so this year, we could display the event details and registration link for that event on the homepage banner but omit the banner for someone who has already registered. Instead, a customer who has registered for an upcoming event might have related news around the event featured more prominently on the homepage.

Contact fusionSpan For More!

In each of the examples above, the common theme is that the entire website becomes more dynamic and tailored for a particular user or group. We could also call this “engaging content” because the integration will make the website more interesting to your customers, increase traffic, boost event attendance, increase membership retention, and increase customer interaction.

If you would like to learn more about our out-of-the-box CMS-CRM integrations, feel free to reach out to our talented team today!

TIBCO Cloud Integration, formerly known as TIBCO Scribe Online, is a cloud-based data integration tool that helps businesses sync data between two existing applications. TIBCO Cloud Integration has a wide variety of connectors, allowing it to extract data from HubSpot, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Amazon Redshift, Amazon S3, Dropbox, databases, and much more.

While TIBCO Cloud Integration offers code-free customization, the fusionSpan team has been leveraging code to get the most out of the TIBCO Cloud Integration. Successful projects include creating pipelines using API calls, integrating pipeline notifications to Slack, automating FTP uploads, and writing complex SQL processes.

In one of our projects to send data from one system to another, we leverage SQL and the TIBCO Cloud Integration to ensure quick and efficient data transfer. The pipeline we built allows data to go through multiple stages of transformation before reaching its final destination.

So you might be wondering, how are these pipelines built with TIBCO Cloud Integration?

Creating the Staging Area

Before we start creating our ETL processes, we need to ensure that we have a staging area to hold the data. Since we were using SQL to transform our data, we chose Microsoft SQL Server as our staging area. Within our staging area, we create two databases, one to hold data in the process of being transformed and the other to store data ready to be uploaded.

Once the staging area is set up, we start building flows that transform the data. Within Tibco, data operations are controlled by blocks; you can set up a data flow by adding filters and quickly calculating measures through clicking and dragging blocks. To create more complex data transformations, embedding SQL queries in blocks seems the most efficient way so far.

In the screenshot below to the left, we have an example of an extraction flow. The flow queries (extracts) data from the starting application and stores the data in the staging table called “1.Promotions”.

After running the flow, we start transforming the data by utilizing native queries, as shown in the screenshot below to the right. We write the SQL code and embed it in the native query block to conduct operations such as filter, join, group by, unions, case when.

This flow will eventually transform the data within the staging table and store it in a new table called “2.Promotions”. Once that is complete, we copy the contents of that table to the “Final Upload Database.” Simply put, our data goes through these stages:

“Data Source” → “Staging Table 1” → “ Transformation via Native Query” → “Staging Table 2” → “Final Upload Table” → “Destination App”

If more transformations are needed, we rinse and repeat, adding more flows in Tibco and more tables in the staging area.

Net Change vs. Data Dumping

To ensure our data flows don’t take more than an hour or two to run, we utilize net change and data dumping to increase flow processing speed.

For net change, Tibco Cloud Integration gives users the option to progressively load and update data provided that a record change date or change data capture (CDC) exists. Every time Tibco runs a flow, it will bookmark the latest date that data was processed, and when new records come in, it will only process those new records.

By enabling net change, we avoid having Tibco compare millions of records to what already exists in our staging area. However, there are scenarios where a data source does not have a record change date; in that case, we would use data dumps instead.

Within Tibco, a “create” block allows users to process data in batch, by default, 2000 records per batch. This increases pipeline efficiency significantly. Before dumping, we utilize a native query to truncate the tables within the staging areas first. Once all data is cleared, we run the create flow to allow records to repopulate those tables with new data quickly. With Tibco, we can dump millions of records into the staging area in just a few minutes.

Documentation and Notifications

Careful documentation of what happens in the flow is considered best practice. Tibco offers blank fields where users can fill out the information about the flow process and explain what is happening during the ETL process. However, in addition to adding explanations in Tibco flows, we also recommend creating shared documentation that contains a list of all flows, their functionalities, and their runtimes. This allows you to see all ETL processes in one list and pinpoint necessary changes quickly.

Regarding notifications, Tibco users will be automatically notified of any flow failures. Take the time to go over any flow failures since data sync errors can cause many problems once an application fully relies on it.

If we need to get any custom information about the user (i.e. the member status), then we would need to make some customization in the WordPress SAML Auth plugin (to include the custom information from Fonteva), and then map it as a user role in WordPress. Any custom information required needs to be set as a custom attribute under the Connected App that will be used on the WordPress site.

PowerBI is a powerful tool that is able to handle both data transformation and data visualization. In recent years, the developers behind PowerBI have introduced PowerBI online: a new cloud solution where offline PowerBI Desktop users can upload their dashboards and share it with other licensed users.

While the new solution is quite useful, PowerBI does contain certain limitations that Desktop users should be aware of. Check out the following tips on what Desktop users should pay attention to before uploading their dashboards.

Check your online storage space often to make sure your dashboard isn’t pulling in too much data, which would exceed your Data Capacity Limit of 10 GB. Your dataset has a 1GB limit so make sure your dashboard doesn’t hit that limit as well when pulling in data.

3: Simplify Your Dashboards and Spread Content Out

One thing that may also slow down the performance of PowerBI online Dashboards are DAX formulas. While DAX formulas take up very little resources, if there is an alternative to DAX, like built-in table features, use those instead of the DAX. Having too many DAX formulas in your dashboards can drastically slow things down.

Another thing to take note of is to not squeeze all your panels in the first dashboard. Having too many panels rendered in the first dashboard page not only slows things down but also makes it hard for the user to distinguish the information in the dashboard, as everything is too crammed together. Ideally only include three to four visualizations in each dashboard page. Also, include filters in each page to allow users slice and dice their data.

4: Subscribe to PowerBI Newsletters

PowerBI is a tool that’s constantly evolving. Subscribing to relevant newsletters gives you insights for new game-changing features that have been added. For instance, PowerBI Online now includes dataflow, which is an ETL tool that works similarly to PowerBI Desktop’s query/transform mode. This allows more flexibility in your data cleaning process.

Consider checking out the official Microsoft PowerBI site to register for their weekly updates. Other resources like sqlbi and PowerBi Weekly offer regular tips and white papers surrounding the platform. Brushing up on new updates and tips can help you fully harness the power of your system.

5: Always Build a Proof-of-Concept Before You Build the Real Thing

Proof-of-concept is to make sure that the PowerBI Online App you are building includes everything you need for it to work. Not doing a proof-of-concept may cause you to miss certain key issues in the app development process. For example, if you want to schedule PowerBI to refresh without using PowerBI DataFlow, then you have to host a gateway on a secure windows PC. Thi is so that the data is able to be imported through that gateway to your PowerBI online app. If you had not tried this out as a Proof-of-concept, you might have assumed that uploading the PowerBI app is enough to schedule your data refreshes.

In all, PowerBI developers not only need to make sure their metrics are calculated correctly, but they also need to think about time and space. Time refers to the time it takes to load a dashboard; Space refers to the ETL process: how to clean and store the data needed to be used in their metrics.

Thus it is important for them to pay attention to the features and limitations of the apps they are using. It is best to test things out as often as possible, go through the app’s documentation, and plan out the dashboard building process.

Single Sign On, or SSO, is probably a phrase or acronym that you have seen a lot. To understand what it is in the most basic sense, consider this analogy: the internet is like a shopping mall, and each storefront a domain. Now, each time you enter a different store, you are immediately asked to provide your identity, and again asked to confirm that identity upon checkout. After visiting more than a couple stores, this process would probably get pretty frustrating, right?

SSO is an access mechanism that allows users to securely authenticate with multiple applications and websites by logging in only once. It permits a user to use one set of login credentials (e.g., name and password) to access multiple applications, and furthermore helps to mitigate the management of multiple usernames and passwords.

A well known example online is the “Login with Facebook” button that you see when accessing various websites. Instead of going through the process of creating a new password and filling out personal information, a user can just create and access an account using their existing social media credentials.

Associations are increasingly adopting multiple software systems to obtain the best of breed for each focus area. They are moving away from integrated systems that have multiple modules that manage varied IT functions but only excel in one or two. That means most associations use a multitude of IT systems – including a Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Learning Management System (LMS), Content Management System (CMS), Event Management, and Abstract Management systems. Any time a new system is introduced, it’s important that the new system integrates and “talks to” other systems already in place. In a vast majority of cases, these integrations are being developed on an ad-hoc (as needed) basis.

That’s the reason one of the most common issues we encounter is the number of point-to-point integrations that are in place at any large association. Technically this is referred to as “tight coupling”, where systems are highly dependent on each other.

Changes in one system often require changes to multiple systems.

When implementing a new software system, migrating all of the current integrations can be a project in itself. One that involves multiple stakeholders and vendors, and is not only complex and expensive but can result in project delays and issues post-go-live. The project cost and timeline are at the mercy of multiple vendors since changes need to be made in multiple systems to accommodate any change.

One that gets us away from this quagmire is to implement loose coupling between systems. Loose coupling is a coupling technique where two or more system components are interconnected but non-dependent on each other. We can achieve this by introducing a separate integration layer that facilitates all integration across the enterprise.

Source: Daily Fin Tech

When it’s time to change one of the systems, only the link between the integration layer and that one system needs to be re-implemented. All of the other IT systems and applications across the enterprise can continue to function as if nothing has changed.

This is a good technical architecture to implement for future scalability and stability. But this is also a good opportunity to implement to streamline processes and to extract business value. The integration layer can also be leveraged to house business processes and enterprise data. We can put such organization-wide business rules, such as membership tiers, in one common repository – one which is owned by the organization. This way, no one vendor or system controls your data or business processes.

For example, when customers’ membership information is saved in the CRM or AMS, any system that needs to know the current membership level of a user needs to integrate with the CRM. With an organization-wide User Data Service, any system that needs that information will just communicate with the business hub. By eliminating direct coupling with the CRM, we can also ensure the User Data Service is based on the organization’s view of a “User” and not any particular CRM’s.

In subsequent blog posts, we will explore the business hub in greater detail, and also come up with an implementation view of how this can be implemented in your association with existing tools.

Following the Complicated Integrations Made Easy with Zapier – Part 1 article, we will now look at how we can leverage Zapier to easily build an integration with no actual coding. There are hundreds of Zapier connectors that we can use to integrate various systems together.

For the purposes of this article, we will use a simple use case – an association wants all new members to be registered for an Introductory Webinar that provides new members with a brief overview of the organization and all the benefits of their membership.  To achieve this, we will integrate GoToWebinar and Salesforce.

Other related use cases that can benefit from a GoToWebinar and Salesforce integration include:

1. Users can sign up for Events from the Salesforce Member Portal, which will automatically register them to a GoToWebinar event.
2. Users that sign up for a GoToWebinar events are automatically added to an Event in Salesforce.

How to Integrate Salesforce with GoToWebinar with Zapier

1. Configure an Outbound Message and Workflow in Salesforce: Outbound Messages are API callouts that are triggered in Salesforce for specific events. In this case, we have configured an outbound message that Salesforce makes a call to the Zapier REST endpoint when a Membership is added to a User Object.
2. Setup the GoToWebinar Wccount: If you already have a GoToWebinar account then you can skip this step. Otherwise, you can sign up for a new account here.
3. Setup the GoToWebinar Webinar:  Create the New Member Webinar event in GoToWebinar.
4. Setup the Workflow in Zapier: This simple workflow in Zapier sets up a REST endpoint that will listen for inbound messages. Once Salesforce fires the outbound messages, Zapier will take the information from that message and call the GoToWebinar API and add the user to the Introductory Webinar.

Interested in finding other ways to integrate your Salesforce or Association Management System with your web services?  Send us a message!

A new breed of integration software is gaining in popularity. Cloud-based applications such as Zapier, IFTTT, Workflow, Microsoft Flow, automate.io are easy to use and affordable. These applications can be used to set up simple workflows and offer less customization that integration Engines can offer.

netFORUM Enterprise is a feature-rich system out of the box. But if your organization selected netFORUM Enterprise, they also likely selected it for the flexibility allowed through customizations. Being able to customize means you’re not dependent on a vendor’s roadmap to get the features your organization needs. That said, before you go out and hire a vendor to start adding your amazing new feature, here are five questions to consider about your customization or ask vendors.

1. What would this process look like in baseline?

netFORUM Enterprise is extremely feature-rich. With over of 20 modules, over 900 tables, and 14,000+ columns, there’s likely a lot you didn’t know netFORUM could perform without customization. Before considering any new customizations, take the time to explore what the process would look like in baseline.

This exercise process is easier once you separate the business requirements from the technical requirements. For example, say you need to generate a membership email for any membership purchased. Baseline would not allow you to attach an email to the Membership package. BUT – baseline does allow you to attach an email to a specific product, and if you only have a membership product in each package, those two processes, in essence, accomplish the same thing. If you’re willing to think outside the box with your processes, there’s a lot you can do with netFORUM out-of-the-box functionalities.

2. Will the customization be built using Toolkit or is it custom code?

Not all customizations are made equal. Building out a customization with netFORUM’s Toolkit provides an easier user interface for most changes. When implemented properly, the Toolkit allows you to minimize the need for future code changes and maximizes the baseline footprint that can be upgraded. Also, if you’re extending baseline, you may get the functionality you can reuse to your advantage – see fusionSpan’s Type Ahead plugin which leverages netFORUM’s baseline lookup definition functionality. At the same time, there are certain limitations in netFORUM Enterprise. Sometimes you’ll need a custom control or form extension. This allows you to get exactly what you want, and– particularly in eWeb– may be necessary for an optimal user experience. However, any updates to the customization won’t be simple, and you’ll need a developer for changes. Both have their trade-offs, and sometimes you need a little of both (baseline form with a custom form extension), just make sure you know what you’re getting into before you start.

3. What features will be editable and what is hardcoded?

Unfortunately, more often than not, customizations are built for the now. Which is fine, until the day after you launch when a colleague asks for one more feature or the board decides to “tweak” pricing. Taking the time to build out variability is key to long-term success and limiting costs. If your customization requires a custom code, having built-in flexibility can save you money and time. By adding in little configurations such as adding in system options, setting up tables, or web posts that can drive the customization, you reduce the need for a developer to get involved with every minor tweak. Granted, providing complete flexibility can be costly, so think through your requirements. What are areas of your solution most likely going to need to be tweaked? Prioritize flexibility around those features, and go from there.

4. What is the data structure of the customization?

From a database standpoint, where the data lives likely won’t have a big impact on the customization. Baseline field, extender column, or custom table doesn’t make a huge difference. Until you need to report on the data, and you realize that your customization has been capturing badge name on a custom table and your event name tag pulls ind_badge_name which isn’t being updated. Now you’re scrambling to reconcile Tom with T.J. Figure out early on where your data will live so you can make plans to adjust any reports pulling old data sources, anywhere data may need to be migrated, or any other potential data issues so you’re not scrambling at the last minute.

5. Who will own the code?

Defining code ownership before a vendor starts building your customization is kind of like signing a prenup – it feels a little awkward, but if things ever go south with that vendor you’ll be happy you have it. If you own the code, that means you can turn to another vendor at the drop of a hat and ask them to make changes as opposed to being stuck with a single vendor. In theory a single vendor is fine, but all organizations have turnover, and if your customization is six years old, the developer who worked on your customization left three years ago, being able to get multiple vendors to provide estimates on updating the customization will at the very least give you some negotiating leverage with your current vendor.

6. How will the customization be supported?

Once you launch, the tendency is to say you’re done and move on. Which you can, until a problem comes up. Then you have the difficult conversation of who is responsible for fixing it. While intuitively it should be the vendor, it’s never that simple. With new service packs being applied, and new features being customized, things can break, and they may require additional work that is time and material. Granted, you could sign a support contract with a vendor, but then you have a reoccurring cost related to the customization, which isn’t ideal either. The best you can do is have a clear understanding of expectations going into the process on what will be supported, when will that support end, and what the expectation is once it ends. Having that conversation at the start is always much better than coming back once you have a problem.

Conclusion

Your organization has complicated business needs, so you’ll eventually end up needing to customize. Hopefully, with these questions, you’ll feel more confident heading into conversations with a vendor next time you take the plunge.