An insight into the world of Vanillaplan interfaces

The need to create an integration between the two applications came from one of our customers: Jörg AG from Solothurn. The specialists for work on roofs and façades have been using Vanillaplan for their resource planning since the beginning of 2021. In order not to have to record their numerous service jobs twice - once in the ERP and once in Vanillaplan - the question came up this year of whether projects could not be transferred automatically. After all, as the number of manually transferred jobs rises, so does not only the effort but also the susceptibility to error.

The configuration of the integration was handled on our side by our backend developer Carlo Field. To give you a small insight into the world of Vanillaplan Fair, we asked him a few questions about our new interface.

Hello Carlo, can you tell us how setting up a new integration for Vanillaplan Fair works?
With pleasure. First we receive information about the customer's program that is to be integrated. Depending on the case, a meeting with the customer then follows in order to clarify the format of the data. Then, as a first step, we configure the interface so that the data can be integrated. Normally that is already fully supported and it is only a question of configuration and of mapping the data so that it fits into our system. That means, for example, that we split whole projects, as they exist in the ERP system, into project phases so that they can be transferred into the Vanillaplan data schema. In a second step the already configured interface is tested iteratively with the customer and, if required, adjusted according to their wishes.

And what are the advantages for the customer?
In this particular case the whole thing runs at a five-minute interval. That means that if our customer records a new service job in myfactory, for example, it is visible in Vanillaplan within five minutes. As regards the update speed, it depends on the one hand on how the interface is configured, but on the other also on how the data is available in the other system; for example, whether there are automatic notifications for newly created objects. The information is then transferred and a project, an employee or an absence is added fully automatically in Vanillaplan - without anything additional having to be recorded.

Fascinating, many thanks Carlo for the interesting insight!

If you have any questions about our integration platform Vanillaplan Fair or need an integration to your ERP, HR or any other system, please get in touch with us.