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TriPartum Benefits from Flexible and Cost Effective Integration Solution
Since 2010, TriPartum has been using Blue Integrator to handle the transportation of its clients’ source data files into its managed service platform and the resultant output files back to its clients and third party providers, such as print partners.
About TriPartum
TriPartum was established in 2009 and provides organisations with advice, design and technical services that make customer communications come to life – bringing together a unique blend of consulting, design and technical expertise.
TriPartum has an extensive track record in creating effective customer communications that are geared to channel of choice through the union of user centred design expertise combined with a managed service technology platform. As part of any engagement, the project team looks holistically at the whole document creation process to bring efficiencies and generate outcome-based communications that enhance the customer experience.
TriPartum reduces the need for IT involvement, retaining brand integrity while allowing the business to control what is said and to whom. Its secure, high-volume managed service platform brings together multiple data sources to drive physical or electronic communications, producing documents that support customer brands. TriPartum works in many sectors, including financial, telecoms, business service, housing, insurance and membership.
TriPartum’s services are suited to any organisation that needs to communicate to a large audience through channel of choice in a personalised, effective and timely manner.
Blue Integrator and TriPartum
Prior to deploying Blue Integrator, TriPartum tried various solutions such as WinAutomation (now part of Microsoft Power Automate) and several homegrown solutions, but they were not as flexible and powerful as Blue Integrator. Recently, it used Azure Logic Apps but migrated off it and onto Blue Integrator as the cost is prohibitive for simple receive/send integration points. It also didn’t want to end up solving integration problems with several different tools, as it’s hard to manage and maintain in the long term.
Mike Prager, Technical Director at TriPartum, explains how the relationship with Blue Integrator began: “I worked on Microsoft BizTalk for years and although very flexible, it’s also very expensive. I initially wanted a low cost integration platform that could reliably shift files to and from our managed service platform, but actually what we got, with Blue Integrator, was a very flexible and powerful integration tool that can solve many problems.”
Solving Business Critical Issues
TriPartum has several business critical processes running on Blue Integrator and one of these reads Webhook messages from an Azure Queue that a 3rd party email provider posts whenever an email event is triggered. This is very important to TriPartum clients, as every email it sends is delivering transactional or regulatory information and clients need to know at a granular level the delivery/bounce status of each email. TriPartum can’t afford to lose or not process any messages and must handle failures reliably. After receipt from the Azure Queue, the messages are transformed (using a Map) from JSON to XML and Base 64 decoded and based on the type of event, inserted into a SQL Server database. The Azure Queue receive transport is an example of a custom transport that TriPartum has written for Blue Integrator.
Prager continues: “Blue Integrator is great for getting quick and simple integration points up and running e.g. monitor folder, pickup all ZIP files, SFTP to location, send email to confirm, while also allowing us to easily extend or change the integration point. The product handles more sophisticated scenarios such as message correlation and you can implement sophisticated processes using an orchestration based on Windows Workflow Everything is configurable through the easy to use UI and what we like most is that if there is no transport or workflow activity for a particular solution we are working on, we can go ahead and write it using our in house .NET developers.”
Prager concluded: “We have handled the installation and upgrade to the latest version of Blue Integrator with no issues. We are pushing a lot of messages through the solution and it copes very well. The best thing about Blue Integrator is cost versus power. You can implement some sophisticated integration patterns with no code by just filling in configuration screens or if required code up your own integration assets to be used by the platform.”
What Does the Future Hold?
Blue Integrator and TriPartum are discussing a number of enhancements to the solution. This includes improving the help functionality. Currently on the table is the possibility of developing an integration recipe book. In addition, TriPartum has requested a RabbitMQ transport. Finally, TriPartum has suggested having the dashboard as a webpage so that it can login from anywhere and see the status of any messaging, rather than needing a PC to run the desktop UI.
Blue Integrator – An Overview
By deploying Blue Integrator, companies in the manufacturing, logistics, retails and e-commerce sectors gain access to a flexible and cost-effective solution that can be used for virtually all types of integrations. Blue Integrator is easy to implement and can work alongside SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Jeeves, and Garp.
Unlike traditional direct integration engines, Blue Integrator does not detrimentally affect the operation or performance of the existing ERP system. The integration engine is also extremely cost effective when compared to market alternatives. Blue Integrator is currently being used by over 200 companies globally.
