Not many decades ago, time tracking and invoices were written on paper sheets and sent with a postage stamp in the mail. Do you remember the smell of warm freshly produced paper coming from the copier? And spending hours each month putting large piles of documents into binders, and sending them to your accountant?
There is just something nostalgic about all that manual paper work. But let’s be honest, it was quite inefficient – and expensive. Today, useful software and automated processes have replaced this.
Cloud-based solutions make everything in the office run smoothly
In a modern office, everything is done in the cloud. From tracking hours to sending invoices. Even your accountant keeps control of the numbers and figures in a cloud-based system. Having all our systems communicating saves us a lot of time. We avoid manual duplications and make sure that we always have up-to-date and correct numbers available to anyone who needs it.
The systems don't communicate automatically though – an integration needs to be set up.
Learning about integrations in Milient
We reached out to Helene, who is in charge of the development in our system Moment, to learn more about the benefits of integration.
In Moment, the development team is responsible for integrations. They are always making sure things run smoothly.
Simply explained: What is an integration?
For most people, integrations are about transferring information from one end to the other. For example, it may be an invoice going from Moment into an external accounting system. Let's dig into the details:
Different structure of information calls for a reshaping
Most often, the recipient system will not be able to interpret what you are trying to send because the information (in this example, the invoice) has a different structure and is built up differently. Therefore, you need to reshape the information to fit the specific recipient.
Coding to make the information equal in both systems
Finally, the relevant information should be equal on both sides. To do this transformation, we need to write codes.
The other day we had an invoice that had to be transferred from Moment to an accounting system, and the system required that the figures were entered in cents or decimals. This meant that we had to change from Norwegian “kroner” by multiplying the amount by a hundred. There are small details that vary from each time we set up a new integration and when the external system makes changes.
Metaphorically we can say that integration is the bridge where
the information crosses from one side to the other.
What are the benefits of having integrations?
- You avoid duplication, it saves time and money on administrational and monotonous work.
- You reduce the risk of errors. The program moves each element, field by field, without changing the content.
- Get the most out of the systems your company has acquired.
What is it like to work as a developer and be responsible for integrations?
Helene tells us about the work in the integration department:
I like to alternate between meeting customers and being back at my desk and taking part in the technical development. Meeting customers is important to me, it gives me a better understanding of what the customer really needs. It’s motivating to create things that are useful and that others can enjoy using.
Integration work demands attention to details
When it comes to integrations, we are a committed team of developers dedicated to this work. It requires deep focus and you need to be careful and cautious about the details. We spend a lot of time on testing, as well as on maintenance and updates. It is interesting to constantly find ways to improve the code so that things go faster, safer, and more clearly. We often develop the integrations based on customer’s feedback.
Clear communication with integration partners is key
Sometimes, changes are made to the external system. For instance change of data type on fields or access control. In those cases, we need to follow up and make sure that the changes don't affect existing setups. If something goes wrong, it is incredibly important to get it fixed as soon as possible, so we always make sure to establish good communication and contact with our integration partners. Both parties are committed to providing stable services to our common customers, so we usually always manage to detect the problem and then find a solution to it.
What can Milient be integrated with?
In Milient's systems, you can choose from integrations with over 50 systems. For accounting for instance, we have integration to the most well-known accounting systems on the market, such as Tripletex, PowerOffice GO, Azets Connect, Visma, Navision, and Xledger.
Endless integration possibilities
If we do not support the integration towards a different system that a company needs, we have the opportunity to create this. We also have integrations with systems other than accounting, such as Jira, for task management. As long as the external system has good interfaces (APIs), we will be able to transfer most of it.
Sometimes a so-called file-based integration is an alternative solution, which means that files are created and then read elsewhere. But we prefer to use available APIs to avoid manual steps in the process.
We are also open to external systems connecting to our API to retrieve or push data, on behalf of the customer. We will see more of this in the future, and here we will be launching more information and opportunities.
