Integrations with External Systems 1 CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION The information herein is the property of Ex Libris Ltd. or its affiliates and any misuse or abuse will result in economic loss. DO NOT COPY UNLESS YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN SPECIFIC WRITTEN AUTHORIZATION FROM EX LIBRIS LTD. This document is provided for limited and restricted purposes in accordance with a binding contract with Ex Libris Ltd. or an affiliate. The information herein includes trade secrets and is confidential. DISCLAIMER The information in this document will be subject to periodic change and updating. Please confirm that you have the most current documentation. There are no warranties of any kind, express or implied, provided in this documentation, other than those expressly agreed upon in the applicable Ex Libris contract. This information is provided AS IS. 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Microsoft, the Microsoft logo, MS, MS‐DOS, Microsoft PowerPoint, Visual Basic, Visual C++, Win32, Microsoft Windows, the Windows logo, Microsoft Notepad, Microsoft Windows Explorer, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Windows NT are registered trademarks and ActiveX is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Unicode and the Unicode logo are registered trademarks of Unicode, Inc. Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. iPhone is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. Copyright Ex Libris Limited, 2020. All rights reserved. Document released: November 2020 Web address: http://www.exlibrisgroup.com Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company 2 Introduction Alma integrates with external systems, such as vendor systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, metadata management systems, and remote storage systems, via standard protocols, such as S/FTP. Configuring integration with external systems includes the following steps: 1. Handling the data transition between Alma and the external system, including mapping the exported invoices’ fields to the external system fields. For details, see https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/alma/integrations 2. Defining an external integration profile in Alma, explained in this guide. Also see Configuring Integration Profiles. This section describes how to configure integration between Alma and external systems, and is organized according to the following areas: Acquisitions, Resource Management, Fulfillment, User Management, and Administration. Note If you are working with Alma in conjunction with MetaLib, you must configure your link resolver in MetaLib. For instructions, see the MetaLib System Configuration and Administration Guide. 3 Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company Acquisitions This section includes: • Financial Systems • Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) • Real-Time Integration In addition, you can import embedded order data (EOD) files and update orders after the delivery of shelf-ready material by importing records using an import profile. For more information, see Importing Records Using an Import Profile. 4 Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company Financial Systems To configure integration with financial systems (such as ERP systems), you must have the following role: • General System Administrator Alma acquisitions includes ordering and receiving materials from vendors, which involves handling orders and invoices by vendors. When these are managed in the institution's financial system, information about/for the transactions must be imported from these systems into Alma, or exported to these systems from Alma. In this way, financial information about funds and orders are kept regularly synchronized with these systems. For details on the integration between Alma and financial systems (including XSD and XML samples), see https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/alma/integrations/finance. To configure export to, and import from, a financial system, you configure FTP connections for the system and create integration profiles for the actions you want to perform. The integration profile enables you to define jobs that can be scheduled or run manually. If the jobs are scheduled, they appear in the Scheduled tab on the Monitor Jobs page (see Viewing Scheduled Jobs). The jobs also appear in the Running/History tabs on the Monitor Jobs page when/after they run. The jobs are: • Import Payment Confirmation – ERP Import Using Profile <integration profile> Imports payment confirmations from an ERP into Alma. This enables Alma to move paid items to the next step of the workflow. • Export Invoices for Payment – ERP Export Using Profile <integration profile> Exports invoices from Alma to an ERP. The job exports each invoice to a separate file. The owner of the invoice is one of the fields in the file. • Funds Allocation Loader – Fund Allocation Loader (called Update Fund Tx Job in the list of scheduled jobs) Imports up-to-date fund balances from a financial system into Alma. This changes the allocations of funds in Alma to match those in the ERP. • Export Orders (PO) – Export Order (PO) Job (cannot be scheduled) Exports submitted POs from Alma to a financial system. • Export PO Lines (POL) – Export PO Lines (POL) Job Exports closed or canceled PO lines from Alma to a financial system. The job can export only up to 1,000 PO lines. If more than 1,000 PO lines are marked for export, the job exports 1,000 of them and the job report page includes an alert suggesting that the user rerun the job to export any remaining PO lines. Note If a job encounters a connection problem (for example, the remote system cannot be reached or there is an FTP error), any remaining records are processed on the next successful run. 5 Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company To configure the export and import of order and invoices: 1. Configure an S/FTP connection to be used by Alma and the financial system, as described in Configuring S/FTP Connections. (If you are working in a sandbox environment or pre-”Go Live” production environment, ensure that the S/FTP connection you configured is defined as an allowed S/FTP connection for your institution, as described in Configuring Allowed S/FTP Connections During Testing.) 2. On the Integration Profile List page (Configuration Menu > General > External Systems > Integration Profiles), select Add Integration Profile. The first page of the integration profile wizard opens. 3. Perform the following actions on this page: 1. Enter a code and name for the profile you are defining. 2. From the Integration type drop-down list, select Finance. 3. From the S/FTP connection type drop-down list, select the name of the FTP connection that you defined in step 1. 4. Indicate the type of financial system with which you are integrating (for Ex Libris’ informational purposes). Note that this is mandatory. 1. If you select Other from the list of systems, the System Description field appears for further system details. 5. Optionally, enter a description of the integration you are configuring. Note The Default check box is not functional for this integration type. Finance Integration Profile Definition – Page 1 4. Select Next. The second page of the wizard appears. 5. Perform the following actions in the Import Payment Confirmation, Export Invoices For Payment, Funds Allocation Loader, Import PO Approvals, Export Orders (PO), and Export PO Lines (POL) sections on this page. 1. Select Active or Non Active. Select Active to enable the import/export job to run. By default, Non Active is selected. 2. In the Input file path/Output file path fields, enter a subdirectory of the path specified when creating the S/FTP connection. For example, if you specified Alma in the Sub-directory field during S/FTP connection configuration and you enter payments in the Output file path field, the invoices are exported to the Alma/ payments directory. When the action is Active, the file path is mandatory. Note The value of the Input file path field cannot be identical to any of the other Input file path or Output file 6 Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company path values. 3. Configure the following job specific fields: 1. For a Funds Allocation Loader job, in the File Extensions field, select the type of file that is being imported for the fund allocation, .CSV (.csv) or Excel (.xls). 2. For an Export Invoices For Payment job, select Split by Owner to split the files into separate files, one for each invoice owner (library). When split by owner, the exported file names are named <LibraryName>_<OwnershipType>…xml where <OwnershipType> is LBR for library or INT for institution. For example, BC01_LBR. 3. For an Export Orders (PO) job, select Integrate by ERP Number if the PO requires ERP approval before moving to the next stage of the process.