As your company receives data files from customers in many different layouts, having a strong data integration capability with easy customer onboarding is essential for successfully integrating your customer data with backend applications. One of the important components of a strong B2B Integration platform is an accessible graphical interface, that allows your team to pull data layouts of customer files and map them to the format required by your ERP or backend systems.
Adeptia’s data mapping interface is browser-based and allows users to graphically click and drag the source field of the customer file and map it to a target data element. For example, a Policy Number field in a source data file would simply need to be clicked on, dragged, and mapped to the target field and the mapping rule is automatically created. At design time, users can collaborate and graphically utilize the data transformation functions, and the rules are converted into a standard XSLT code which is executed at runtime whenever a new file arrives from the customer.
(Adeptia Data Mapper interface – Map multiple sources & targets, data preview and validation)
Several built-in features of the data mapper that accelerate the implementation of transforming data are pre-built functions to modify text, math functions to calculate values or aggregate numeric values, SQL functions to run database lookups to enrich source data, and conditional functions to apply filter or situational rules on the field values and send only those records that meet a certain condition.
Additional functions are related to cross-reference lookups and over-laying existing maps onto new maps in order to reduce time creating new ones. This, in particular, is a game-changer, because reusability of maps is very important in cases when your team is onboarding multiple client files and need a way to reuse or copy standard mapping templates for new customer onboarding projects.
Auto Mapping
Auto-mapping is also available in the Adeptia Data Mapper, which allows a user to automatically map similarly named fields with a click of a button. Another important feature of Auto-Mapping is to allow import of existing maps into a current map so that all the rules and conditions of the template map are automatically applied on the current map. This saves a lot of time where user does not have to recreate a database lookup or complex if-else conditions.
Mapping Templates
Use of mapping templates accelerates the process of implementing new maps. Users can select a standard map from a centralized repository and use them for converting a customer’s data file. User can edit and make a copy of an existing map and use it for new data conversion scenario or to onboard new customer data. Using the mapping template provides the reusability feature that is so important in a B2B integration use case. An example of this can be having a standard EDI 850 Purchase Order standard mapping in the centralized repository. When a new customer is added to a trading partner network, and sends an EDI 850 message, your team already has a pre-configured EDI 850 map available for use in converting that file into SAP IDoc or any other target format.
Lookups and cross-reference functions
An important part of data conversion is to allow users to lookup a value in a table or a file and convert an incoming value to a normalized value before it is mapped to a target element. An example State code of CA needs to be converted into a normalized State code of 12 that is expected by the ERP system. This type of conversion requires referencing a value-map that may exist in a SQL database or a file. Adeptia’s Data Mapper allows users to query any database through its mapping interface. User can write a SQL query to select any field from a table and apply the result of the query to target elements. User can also create a new value-map inside a mapping and share it globally with other users in the team so that they can reference the value map from any other mapping.
If-Else and Filter Conditions
Another requirement of a data conversion activity is to filter bad records from the incoming data files. In Adeptia Data Mapper, user can use pre-built “for-each” conditions to filter out invalid records. An example could be to filter data if the Amount field is null or filter data if the PolicyID is less than eight digits etc. Conditions can also be a composite function consisting of multiple fields with different rules that are applied to identify erroneous records
The erroneous data can be mapped to an error table or another output location where users can cleanse the data and resubmit back into the integration flow.
Mapping Multiple Sources to Multiple Targets in one Map
In Adeptia Data mapper you can map any number of sources and targets within a single mapping service. For example, you may have two separate Header and Detail files and need to map to separate tables on the target database. You can pull up the schemas of both the sources and targets in a single mapping service and apply the conversion rules. Adeptia provides Merge function that allows user to join the different sources through common keys and that allows the data extraction to be sorted before it gets mapped to the target tables.
Calling REST API and Data Quality functions
As part of data mapping, one of the challenges that users often face is how to fix a particular address or a phone number that is coming in the source data. Reference functions in this case are not applicable since the company may not have that information in-house for a lookup. In this case, the need to call an external API such as LOB or USPS web service to cleanse the data is very important. Adeptia Data Mapper contains pre-built Data Quality functions that call external REST API and custom programs.
Adeptia also provides a browser-based mapping interface in its Connect iPaaS for business users or “citizen integrators” where users can configure simple data connection processes and map data from any application to any cloud or on-premise application.
To learn more about Adeptia’s Data Mapper interface, check out:
Data Mapping use cases with videos
Data conversion – convert Excel, Fixed Width, XML to any output format