Outbound Integration Process

The outbound calls from AC to the external ticketing system can all be based on the Deployment Status of a change within AC. Integration scenarios based on AC status changes are delivered as standard with the AC Integration Engine and therefore require no development.

The steps to set up this type of status based integration are:
1. Complete base AC Integration engine configuration. This includes identifying the end points of the integration and any mapping requirements. The mapping engine can be configured for most standard scenarios, but if complex mapping is required, ActiveControl user exits can be implemented to enhance the standard mapping routines. For more details on AC user exits and how they are implemented, please refer to the ActiveControl Administration Guide.

2. A trigger program should be scheduled to pick up the Task status changes that need to be interfaced to the external system(s). This trigger program selects the appropriate AC records, dependent on the configuration set up above, and passes it through the mapping engine. It then stores the mapped integration transactions into a set of standard tables. See Outbound Configuration section below.

Program Name: /BTI/TE_INTEG_TRIGGER

3. A send program is then scheduled to pick up the mapped transactions and send them out to the configured external systems. It retrieves the required records and then uses the configured send methods for each particular integration scenario to actually push the data out to the receiving systems. If a standard send method is not available for a particular external system (maybe the ticketing system is a ‘home-grown’ application), then custom send methods can be created and utilised in the Integration Framework. See Outbound Configuration section below.

Program Name: /BTI/TE_INTEG_SEND

4. The outcome of the send process is recorded for audit purposes. If successful, any updates configured are made to the AC data objects, alternatively if errors have occurred, the send program will try to re-send (if configured to do so) a certain number of times before marking the transaction in error and sending a notification to the relevant person(s) within the organisation.

5. At any time, the Integration Reporting Console can be used to see the status of all integrations, the status and history of each transaction and can also be used to update the underlying transactional data, if required, to fix errors. See Outbound Configuration section below.

Program Name: /BTI/TE_RINTEG_AUDIT