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Innotas Web Services Application Programming Interface (API)

Very few enterprise applications exist in a vacuum. CRM spans sales, financial, and inventory systems. Help Desks need information about resources in the HR system and assets in the financial system. Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is no different. With projects and resources as the core data elements in PPM, it is often necessary to integrate PPM with other applications to fully automate and manage a business process. With its Web Service API and dedicated integration team, the Innotas on-demand PPM solution makes this vital integration easy compared to the weeks or months required to integrate installed PPM software solutions with other business applications.

A typical project lifecycle may span several applications:

  • The initial project begins when an opportunity is created in the CRM system (Salesforce.com®, for example). Accounts and contacts are passed from the CRM system to Innotas to make sure the sales and delivery teams both have the most up to date customer information.
  • To effectively staff the project, project managers need detailed data about the skills and roles of resources. This information can be pulled in from the HR system (such as Oracle® PeopleSoft) to save the organization from dual data entry and maintenance.
  • Finally, once the project is in flight and project team members are actively logging time against the project, that information can be fed back to the financial system to manage chargebacks, billing and invoice aging, or general ledger entries.

The end result is a smooth process flow from start to finish that has a significant impact on your organization’s productivity, competitive advantage and bottom line.

Innotas — Standard Web Services APIs

Web Services provide a compelling alternative to traditional integration approaches because they enable new applications to be connected to Innotas through a single, highly standardized API. Web Services-style integration over the Internet removes a great deal of the idiosyncratic nature of point-to-point integration that exists today, reducing cost, improving reliability and accelerating the ability to connect applications in a meaningful way.

Innotas — How the Web Services API Works

Innotas provides a standards-based web service API that communicates through the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Our API supports both SOAP v.1.1 and v.1.2.

Entities — Entities in Innotas are the high level objects in the application. Web Services for these objects will abstract the complexity of the underlying data model into a single flat view to simplify integration code. Web Services are included for the following entities:

  • Program
  • Project
  • Resource
  • User
  • Account
  • Contact
  • Task
  • TimesheetRequest
  • Request
  • Issue

Each entity is assigned an Entity ID that must be included as a parameter in each web service invocation.

Additional entities may be added in future releases based on customer demand.

Methods — Methods are the attributes or fields of an Entity. For example, the Account entity includes methods like Account Title, Account Owner, and Account Status among others. Methods allow the web services to access specific fields on an entity including any User Defined Fields (UDFs) created on the entity as part of the configuration of Innotas.

The following web service actions are available:

  • createOrReplace: Insert or replace an entity
  • deleteEntity: Delete an entity
  • findEntity: Select one or more entities that match one or more criteria
  • getEntityFields: Returns list of fields for an entity
  • getListValues: Returns ID-value pairs of lookup and status lists in Innotas
  • insertEntity: Create an entity
  • login: creates a session for a user
  • logout: closes a session for a user
  • selectEntity: select an entity
  • updateAnEntityByMethodId: Updates one attribute of an entity
  • updateEntity: Update one or more attributes of an entity

Methods can vary from customer to customer based on configuration. The getEntityFields web service is provided to return the full list of methods and their corresponding IDs under an entity.

Security — Innotas leverages HTTPS for all web service invocations with username and password authentication required.

Innotas — Dedicated Integration Team

With the Web Service API and the Innotas dedicated integration team, your organization can quickly and effectively integrate the Innotas PPM solution with other key business applications to eliminate re-keying data and ensure a single, accurate view of all critical business-building initiatives. Included with the WS APIis a service designed to help new & existing customers optimize and tune the application to meet advanced process and reporting requirements. Included in this offering is: Web Service Application Programming Interface (API) Access, Maintenance Service and Implementation Support.

  • Access- is the permission and availability of the Web APIs for customer use.
  • Maintenance Service- is the customer assurance that Innotas web APIs will continue to perform to specification and will comply with future releases. Maintenance also includes up to date documentation on released APIs.
  • Implementation support-
  • Functional Coaching/Knowledge Transfer of Innotas API
  • Support in Business requirements analysis of integration needs for one API integration
  • Support in Data mapping and flow specification for one API Integration
  • Support in Development, testing and implementation of technical integration for One API

Innotas helps the customer implement integration by applying our standard Fast Track methodology – the same methodology used to PPM implementations.

The customer team responsible for definition of the integration, development of the integration (either through custom API code or one of our integration platform partners), technical documentation, project specifications, required technical resources, and ongoing maintenance of the integration.

Innotas — WS API Usage Scenarios

While the Innotas WS API can be used to quickly integration Innotas PPM with other key business applications to support virtually any process, the following usage scenarios are common:

  • A key aspect of PPM is demand management – to be effective, IT must have a handle on all of the requests coming into IT. Yet in many IT organizations, the “front door” to IT is typically a help desk. Using the Request entity, customers can automatically route appropriate types of demand from the help desk to Innotas Requests where they can be managed and prioritized against supply.
  • Whether charging back IT services to business units or directly billing customers, the Timesheet entity can be used to feed actual hours worked on projects and maintenance activities into a financial system.
  • Most customers manage resources in a central active directory or HR system (LDAP, MS Active Directory, Oracle® PeopleSoft, etc ). The Resource entity allows customers to easily synchronize resource data in an HR system or active directory with Innotas to prevent dual maintenance of users.
  • In most cases, customers have some legacy data to migrate into Innotas. Using the Innotas WS API, data can be easily migrated into Innotas, including any data transformations required.
  • Many Innotas customers have already invested in business intelligence or advanced reporting software. While Innotas provides built-in reporting capabilities, customers often ask to link Innotas data with their existing data warehouse so that they can leverage existing expertise and functionality. Innotas WS API makes it easy to regularly push data from Innotas to a data warehouse.

Innotas — Make Your Strategic Vision a Reality.

With the Innotas API, you can quickly and easily make PPM an integral part of your business processes. As the only on-demand (SaaS) PPM vendor with a Web Services API and a dedicated integration team, Innotas helps you achieve the system and data integration that is vital to maximizing the success of your organization.

For all the details on PPM with a Web Services API, contact Innotas today at:

1-866-692-7362
+1 415-814-7700
www.innotas.com

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