Getting customer data out of progress and into a CRM

[kblackwel]

I've been looking for some suggestions on how to implement this.

We have a progress database that has customer data already in it.

We're trying to implement a CRM solution using the data from the customer tables in progress.

Looking over the CRM forums, I think I have 2 choices.

1. Replicate the data.
I Need to look into an automated process where mysql can process the tables extracted from progress.

2. Create a mapped table in mysql that is mapped to the table structure in progress.
Again, I have no information about doing that. I remember seeing something about it. But hope you guys know more.

I'm also interested in any ideas I didn't think about.

Thanks in advance.

 

[tamhas]

One would need a lot more details to give a very definitive answer, but you are right that basically you have two choices, push or pull. I tend to prefer push since the change in your Progress DB then immediately triggers a change in the CRM DB, but that would tend to imply the use of a DataServer and I don't think there is a DataServer that supports MySQL. Worth asking about, though, since you could then just add code to your Progress app to directly update the MySql app. Failing that, another good approach would be to use Sonic or FUSE and modify the Progress app to push out a message and provide a service on the MySQL app to pick up the message and make the changes. That is at least as good a solution as the DataServer and could be better since you could add additional interaction quite easily once you had the basic structure going. E.g., wouldn't it be nice to also have an update in the CRM update files in the Progress app or to be able to share data like show recent order information on the CRM screens and recent CRM activity on the Progress screens.

Less desirable, but simpler would be to set up the Progress DB for SQL access and write queries on the MySQL side to pull data. But, there is an inherent problem there in figuring out what data to pull. Querying new orders might be fairly straightforward, but noticing an address change would not be.