Gentrack Integration Resources

Synchronisation Process

Initial Synchronisation

The connector performs an initial synchronisation to reconcile data sets across both systems, then moves into an ongoing synchronisation mode. As you plan for the initial synchronisation you will need to consider:

  • Volume of data determines how long the synchronisation process takes, we recommend testing first in a non-production environment
  • An outage window for both systems to prevent data modifications during initial synchronisation
  • Disable Salesforce triggers on related entities
  • Disable Velocity event publishing

GCIS uses Salesforce Bulk API 2.0 to do Initial Data Synchronisation, and it relies on an External ID to upsert (update or insert) records into Salesforce.

To begin the process:

  1. Sign in to the GCIS Developer Portal
  2. Navigate to My Connectors then select the connector instance
  3. As this is the first time you are doing synchronisation for this instance, no synchronisation history will be shown. Over time, you will find all the synchronisations run for this instance on this page, regardless whether those were successful or otherwise.
  4. When both Gentrack billing system and Salesforce are ready, navigate to Initial Data Synchronisation and click Start Migration which will ask you to confirm to proceed

You can monitor progress of the initial data synchronisation on the Initial Data Synchronisation page. Once it has finished, you will see the result - possible options are as follows:

  • Initial data synchronisation has successfully completed.
  • Initial data synchronisation has completed with errors. For details, a link to a full report in Salesforce will be provided.
  • Initial data synchronisation has failed. A synchronisation stage which the process failed at will be indicated.

Additionally, an email will be sent to indicate result of the initial data synchronisation. Once the initial synchronisation is complete you can re-enable Salesforce triggers and Velocity event publishing.

Ongoing Synchronisation

As part of on-boarding, we will work with you on how to link to the related entity in your Gentrack billing system. Once the entities have been linked to their Salesforce equivalents, ongoing synchronisation will happen automatically. When a change of data occurs in the master system, whether it is Salesforce or Gentrack, it is automatically synchronised to another. For example, a change of a contact phone number in Salesforce will automatically update the respective phone number in Gentrack billing system.

On-Demand Synchronisation

On-demand synchronisation API is an optional extra capability in Salesforce Sales Cloud Connector that allows users or Salesforce apps to send a synchronisation request for an entity.

Using Developer Portal UI

On-demand synchronisation can be triggered from Developer Portal by users with appropriate roles.

  1. Sign in to the GCIS Developer Portal
  2. Under Connectors, find your Connector instance in the table and click on it
  3. Navigate to On-Demand Synchronisation page and provide the following;
    • Synchronisation Direction - source system and destination system
    • Entity Type - entity type
    • Entity ID - entity identifier from the source system
  4. Click Start Synchronisation to submit the synchronisation request

Using API

This feature enables developers to build advanced integrations between Salesforce and their Gentrack systems. An example use case is a Salesforce developer adding a UI component to a Salesforce page that will call this API to enable Salesforce end users to trigger synchronisations from entities that are mastered in a Gentrack system.

Pre-requisites

API Endpoint

Depending on the sovereignty region, the base URL of all Salesforce Sales Cloud Connector API endpoints is https://salesforce-[YOUR_SOVEREIGNTY_REGION].integration.gentrack.cloud.

The API path for on-demand synchronisation is /v1/salesforce/instances/:id/sync-jobs. Where id is the identifier of the tenant associated with the connector instance. This identifier can be retrieved from the tenant details page of the Developer Portal.

When you make a request to the API, you will need to append API path to the base URL.

For example: https://salesforce-au.integration.gentrack.cloud/v1/salesforce/instances/61668309/sync-jobs.

Authentication

The API endpoint requires authentication, and it uses the same authentication scheme as GCIS Universal APIs. Please consult this documentation for more information.

If calling from Salesforce code, the Named Credentials feature offers a convenient way to request access token. Follow the guide here to enable it for your Salesforce instance.

API Documentation

Please refer to API documentation for technical details on API usage.

Last updated on 17 Jun 2021