As part of a pitch, we had the challenge of being able to show that we could write software to allow a 3rd party system PRINT to Sage CRM.
The first question one might ask is “why this would this be needed with all our modern web-services and feeds?”
Well I guess there are a few real world reasons for this.
One is that the technology exists (in an organization) and it would be quicker to implement just the receiving end (the bit we did).
Second (I would think) is an obvious cost element involved with gaining access to a legacy system that a business may have run on for 30 years (yes they do still exist)
and third I would imagine office politics (it’s my server/system/platform and you can’t play with it) – Network Admins, tut!.
Okay so I have justified to myself at least some reasons for this. So lets get back to how this worked.
We create a basic XML document (see below)
A very simple structure here with a persons last name/first name/some id value and a mail restriction option.
So I want to print this to Sage CRM and I want it to create a person record in CRM.
So we created a virtual printer and from notepad you can click File->Print and you see our printer
We called it “PrintToSageCRM” – So you just select that printer and print as normal and within CRM we see the record.
I think the idea of doing something like this is very interesting though not trendy or cool.
The real world though continues to throw curve balls like this and I guess I’m just saying…..we’ve got a very big bat!!!!
