Enabling seamless communication between a third-party app and Business Central cloud: development and testing
IBF, a major concrete provider in the Danish construction market, migrated to Business Central cloud from NAV. In Business Central cloud, they prioritized reimplementing vital two-way communication with a third-party application for concrete mixing and delivery. IBF also focused on careful testing.
Thus, keeping the IBF’s operations and business processes smooth and uninterrupted in the new cloud solution was crucial.
IBF contacted Global Mediator as a reliable partner with exceptional expertise in Business Central development and quality assurance.
Challenges
Global Mediator's development and QA teams were responsible for managing the following complex tasks while working together:
• enabling streamlined, API-based integration between Business Central cloud and the third-party application for concrete production;
• helping automate the document-related process by introducing SharePoint on top of the integration;
• proactively addressing the customer’s change requests and suggesting the most practical and user-friendly options;
• enabling stable and bug-free operations of the newly developed integration through comprehensive manual testing;
• minimizing the risk of errors and ensuring the integration functions as required in different environments;
• ensuring easy maintenance with detailed testing documentation.
Thomas Bak Olesen
IT director at IBF A/S
"After we migrated to Business Central cloud, a seamless connection between our add-on for concrete mixing and the new cloud environment was crucial for business operations. We needed a partner that could make it happen - efficiently, on time, and within budget."
Solution
As a result of cooperation, Global Mediator’s specialists enabled swift communication between the industry-specific application and Business Central cloud. They also thoroughly tested the solution to ensure its uninterrupted and error-free performance.
To streamline the workflow, the team mapped out future development and testing processes during the analysis phase as our customer granted our specialist access to the concrete application.
To fully describe and develop the additional required changes initiated by IBF, Global Mediator’s team meticulously maintained the change request process in Jira.
The development phase highlights
The team enabled stable business operations in the cloud - quoting, ordering, planning delivery by truck, mixing, delivery, and notifying the customer by email at each step.
Our development team successfully reimplemented the needed integration from scratch, entirely based on the customer’s new requirements, explanations, and specifications.
In a nutshell, the team did not simply move the old C/AL-based solution to a new platform but based the new solution on AL, BC cloud coding principles, making it reliable and future-proof.
For seamless two-way communication with the producing program, the team used the API provided by the program’s owner. Users quote, order, and plan trucks in Business Central, then move the orders to the external system, mix concrete there, and post respective invoices in BC.
The team also integrated SharePoint on top of that communication: the third-party concrete app produces PDF documents and Business Central transfers them to SharePoint.
To enable automated business workflows, the software engineer created comprehensive schemas used for determining and calculating different order statuses, ensuring consistency between Business Central and the third-party app for concrete. Our QA specialist later used them during end-to-end testing.
To provide a fully functional and cost-efficient solution, our software engineer implemented the customer's vision while offering more cost-friendly options or standard Business Central cloud solutions (e.g., assigning item categories in BC to concrete ingredients).
The testing phase highlights
To ensure that the app users can easily interact with the Business Central cloud (the options for the concrete mix recipes, planning, and vehicle delivery configurations work as required), our QA engineer designed and conducted multiple testing scenarios and manual test types based on detailed specifications and discussions.
QA covered positive and negative testing, functional and integration testing, and manual validation of API requests and responses.
To ensure the minimal risk of errors and that the API performs as required in the customer’s environment and specific setup, our QA engineer first conducted smoke testing on the local environment to validate critical points and main functionalities.
Then, our QA specialist verified that the integration functioned as intended in the customer environment with functional testing and user acceptance testing (UAT).
To secure the solution’s effortless maintenance in the future, our QA team created detailed testing documentation, including reports and use cases.
To efficiently manage the entire process, the team tracked the testing process using Jira and Zephyr.
As a crucial step, the team timely updated the customer on any errors and bugs for parallel testing.
The QA engineer was also engaged as a functional consultant to suggest improvements related to change requests from the customer’s side.
Technologies behind the project
A snapshot of what we leverage to deliver best-of-breed solutions
Thomas Bak Olesen
IT director at IBF A/S
"We are satisfied with the results. Global Mediator promptly addressed any issues and questions, implemented change requests, and suggested options and alternatives for the best possible outcomes. It was indeed a mutually beneficial cooperation."
Impact
About our customer
IBF's origins trace back to 1960, when they were a small cement factory. Over the years, IBF grew organically and through acquisitions, broadened its product range, and turned into one of the major players in the Danish construction market. Committed to quality, functionality, and esthetics, the company also stands out for its timely deliveries. To better serve its customers, IBF also established factories in Poland.
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