5 integration roadblocks iPaaS Routes help bypass

Why Alumio iPaaS Routes are essential to streamline integrations

Building data Routes in the Alumio iPaaS involves defining the specifics of HOW you want data to move between integrated applications, systems, or data sources. Each Route is a workflow that details the journey of data travelling from a data source (incoming configuration) to a target destination (outgoing configuration), via the Alumio iPaaS. As such, Routes help you simplify, optimize, and limitlessly customize your data integrations.

Let’s say you’re trying to connect your e-commerce store to your ERP to exchange specific data. The Alumio iPaaS provides Connectors to swiftly integrate key data entities (Orders, Pricing, Customers, Shipping etc.) between the two endpoints. However, suddenly, you’re confronted with a new set of crucial questions:

• “Should I send ALL the order data from the web shop, or just the new orders?”
• “How do I match the e-commerce data format with that of the ERP?”
• “Do I need to ensure this data is exchanged every minute, once every day, or just over the weekends?”
• “How do I ensure real-time synchronization for specific data entities such as Inventory or Prices?”

Route building within the Alumio iPaaS doesn’t just help you answer these questions, it’s designed to ensure that you effectively do so. Think of Routes as the translation, navigation, and traffic control system for your integrations, ensuring that the right data moves between applications in the right way, at the right time, and in the right format, via the Alumio iPaaS.

However, before understanding how Routes in Alumio help tackle key integration challenges, let’s understand what an Alumio Route is and how it works.

What is an integration Route in Alumio, and how does it work?

An Alumio Route is the workflow that you need to build to clearly define how you want data exchange to take place between two endpoints. It involves choosing how to import data in from a source application into Alumio, how to transform this data within the iPaaS as required, and how to export it to the target application. It also lets you schedule and transform each part of this workflow.

The key features of Route-building within Alumio:

1. Incoming configuration: Determines what and how data is retrieved from the source application (e.g., your e-commerce platform) into the Alumio iPaaS.
2. Outgoing configuration: This helps send the data that is retrieved and transformed within Alumio to the target system (e.g., your ERP).
3. Transformers: Alumio provides a vast array of Transformers that can be used to modify the data being exchanged. They can be used to filter, map, or enrich data to optimize integrations, map the correct format, type of data, and data structure to ensure compatibility between source and target systems.
4. Scheduler: This is essential to automate when and how often the Route runs, which could be weekly, once a day, every hour, or every minute. Or, you can also choose the option to run the Route in real-time!
5. Task management: Each unit of data that a Route successfully integrates between two endpoints is defined as a Task. For example, each Order sent from an e-commerce platform to an ERP via an Alumio Route counts as a Task.