IFS Cloud innebär valfrihet, men också ett ökat ansvar för dig som kund. Du måste göra viktiga val när du hanterar din IFS-lösning, både på kort och lång sikt. I tidigare versioner av IFS kunde det vara svårt att få fler partners att samarbeta kring ens IFS-lösning, särskilt när det gäller anpassningar av applikationen. IFS Cloud ger dig som kund möjlighet att sitta i förarsätet och bjuda in fler att arbeta tillsammans, sida vid sida. I IFS Cloud äger du som kund lösningen samt dess anpassningar.
Hur navigera rätt?
Vilken väg just du som kund bör gå beror på flera saker: egen kompetens, strategi, verksamhetens behov, förändringstakt m.m. En viktig fråga blir vad ska vi göra själva och vad vill vi lämna till andra? Vill du själv kunna styra och ha kontroll, med en hög grad av engagemang av dina egna resurser, eller vill du överlåta ”så mycket som möjligt” till en eller flera partners? Svaren på dessa frågor kommer att avgöra vilken samarbetsmodell som väljs, både för projekt och förvaltning. Om du vill kunna förvalta lösning själv är det viktigt att bygga kompetens, och ta ansvar, redan i projektet.
IFS Cloud har en ny arkitektur. Med denna kommer en ny viktigt fråga, där lösning kommer att hanteras i ”Build Place” och användas i ”Use Place”. Vad ska placeras, var och hur säkerställs kvaliteten på helheten? Och hur hanterar man uppdateringar till nya versioner på ett effektivt sätt?
En eller flera partners? Vilken är rätt modell för dig?
Att ha en leverantör med monopol är bra, förutsatt att leverantören är vass på allt du behöver och dessutom ger dig sitt fulla fokus
Att ha flera leverantörer kan vara mer krävande men ökar flexibilitet samt tillgången till stöd
Varför är samarbete med flera viktigt?
Align har goda erfarenheter av att sätta upp ramar och spelregler och därmed lägga grunden för lyckade projekt och framgångsrik förvaltning, där flera partners samverkar.
Detta blir extra viktigt i en så kallad ”evergreen” strategi, vilken möjliggör snabba och enkla uppdateringar till nya versioner.
Vilken typ av samarbetsmodell ska du välja? Det finns inget rätt svar, inget svar som är rätt eller fel. Du behöver finna den väg som passar dig och ditt företag bäst. Det viktigaste är att göra en bedömning och göra ett medvetet val.
Align har lång erfarenhet av att hjälpa kunder att definiera spelregler och ramverk för projekt och förvaltning där flera parter arbetar tillsammans. Vi ser att allt fler kunder upplever ett ökat värde genom samarbete med andra. Det får även flera att vara på tå.
IFS Cloud är affärssystemsleverantören IFS namn på sina senaste versioner av sin programvara. Genom sin moderna och öppna arkitektur har IFS sinnrikt givit sina kunder ännu större möjligheter att faktiskt använda så många olika samarbetspartners man så önskar.
Det där kan såklart låta bättre än det är. Är det alltid en fördel med många samarbeten för en kund? Absolut inte, inte för alla. Att ha en och samma partner till “allt” inom ERP, ja kanske inom hela IT-området, kan absolut ge fördelar. Har du en riktigt bra motpart får du snabb och kostnadseffektiv support och proaktiv vidareutveckling av någon som verkligen kan din verksamhet. Du får högsta prioritet. Väntetiderna blir korta.
Vi tror dock att det är många som tyvärr inte riktigt upplever att det vi just beskrev stämmer med verkligheten. Är du en kund som ser förbättringspotential inom något område tror vi det är relevant och klokt att söka olika samarbeten. Då väljer du, för att måla exempel i IFS-världen, kanske ett bolag som din IFS-licenspartner, ett annat som din förvaltningspartner, ett tredje som stöttar dig i din mottagarorganisation och ett fjärde som din integrationspartner. Dessutom kontaktar du kanske något enskilt orakel du hört talas om som expert på just området du har utmaningar inom. Osv. Du kan givetvis göra fler, och helt andra, val än så.
Men, blir det inte knepigt med ansvarsfördelningen då? Det blir det absolut. Om du inte beskriver vem som ansvarar för vad. Det gör du exempelvis med stöd av enkla s.k. ansvarsmatriser, där vi själva förordar varianten som kallas RACI. Gör du detta med de involverade parterna ökar sannolikheten för framgång avsevärt. Att på så sätt använda de individer och företagskulturer du gillar, som passar din stil, dina värderingar och dina verksamhetsbehov, är mer möjligt än någonsin med IFS nya arkitektur. Ta chansen att testa. Börja i liten skala. Det är kul och givande med samarbeten!
Not: Detta med samarbeten filosoferade vi och vår kund Profoto mer kring på IFS skandinaviska användarförenings träff i Solna den 22 november samt det virtuella mötet den 8 februari. Missade du det?
Staying ahead of the competition is crucial in today’s drastically evolving business landscape. Every organization is pursuing innovative strategies to enhance efficiency and productivity. IFS Cloud is one crucial piece of the enterprise digitalization journey, and with Microsoft Power Apps serving as the integration platform, it is possible to build mobile apps or automate business processes enriched with AI capabilities.
What is Power Apps?
PowerApps is an enterprise low-code application platform by Microsoft, and it provides a rapid development environment to build custom business apps without the need for coding expertise. Using Power Apps, you can create cross platform business applications through a simple drag-and-drop interface, workflow automation and pre-built AI models.
Power Apps and IFS Cloud
With the API driven architecture of IFS Cloud, extending on the outside and seamlessly integrating external systems like Power Apps is a breeze. Power Apps enable connecting to other external systems using connectors and we could create a custom connector to integrate IFS Cloud according to the needs.
Connecting IFS Cloud with Power Apps platform
In this post, we’ll discuss on how to connect IFS Cloud with Power Apps platform and create a simple, custom-made mobile app within few minutes!
Microsoft Power Apps documentation is a good starting point to setting up everything you need to develop on Power Apps. If you are new to Power Apps, it’s better to spend some time on reading the concept and setting up Power Apps platform for developments.
In this article we’ll discuss following key topics.
Key component of connecting PowerApps to IFS is the custom connector. A custom connector is a wrapper around a REST API that allows Logic Apps, Power Automate, or Power Apps to communicate with 3rd party APIs. In IFS terms, a Projection is equivalent to a RESTful API and you can find all the information about the API specifications, documentation using API Explorer in IFS Cloud.
There are two ways to create the custom connector for an IFS projection.
Build the custom connector using the OpenAPI specification which can be found in API explorer
Identify the projection calls you need for the integration and build the connector from scratch
OpenAPI specification for an IFS projection is usually heavy with many API operations which covers a business functionality within IFS Cloud. If we create the Power Apps connector using projection OpenAPI specification, you could end up creating a connector with many unwanted operations. Therefore, the best approach is to identify specific API operations and create the connector from the scratch according to your needs.
In this example, we are planning to create a simple Power Apps mobile application where a user can search a Master Part in IFS Cloud by description and get the part details.
As the first step, we can simulate what we need in our app in IFS Cloud to find the information on the API calls using the log window or browser network debugger.
IFS Projection: PartHandling.svc
Projection Operation: PartCatalogSet
HTTP Verb: GET
We can use the API documentation in IFS Cloud API explorer to identify the URL, request/response samples and HTTP headers which are required to make the request from a 3rd party application
Create IAM client for Authentication
Now we have identified the API operations we need to build the connector. Next step is to create the IAM client in IFS Cloud for authentication. We are building an app for IFS end users, where a user must authenticate with IFS for using the app. This can be done by using the End User Authentication (Authorization Code Flow).
Go to IFS Cloud > IAM Client Details, create a new client. Give a client ID, description and save.
Keep the Redirect Uri blank for now. We will fill this after creating the custom connector. Copy the secret after creating the IAM client to be used in the PowerApps connector.
Creating the Power Apps Custom Connector
Next step is to start building the connector in Power Apps platform to connect to the IFS Projection and the operation we have identified above.
Microsoft documentation Create a custom connector from scratch is a good starting point to understand what a custom connector is and all the prerequisites needed for building one.
In the Response section, use add default response option and paste a sample response from projection API documentation.
Press the Create connector on the wizard to finish the setup.
Upon creating the connector, it will reveal the Redirect URL in the security tab. copy that and add as a Redirect Uri in IFS IAM client created above.
Now it’s time to test our connector! Go to the Test tab and Create a New connection. If everything is setup correctly, you will be directed to IFS login screen. enter credentials and create a new connection. Use the same filter condition and see if you can see the response.
Creating the PowerApps mobile App
It’s time to create the app. We are creating a Canvas App with a gallery and not going into details on how to create the app since there are tons of material can be found on how to create power apps.
On the Data section, select the connector we created and add as a data source.
Our App has a Text Input to enter the part description, a search button and a vertical gallery to show the response data.
In the Button function, We can call the PartCatalogSetSearch operation in the custom connector and put the response in a collection named partCatalogCollection.
Set the data source of the vertical gallery to partCatalogCollection and then you can add fields from the result set.
Now it’s time to test the app in action!
Save, and Preview the app (F5). Change the layout to mobile to see the real feeling of your app 🙂
Once the app is completed, it’s possible to Publish and distribute to the other users in the organization.
Summary
By integrating IFS Cloud with Power Apps, you can unleash the potential of the Microsoft platform and build tailor-made applications for your organization and user requirements. Power Platform has over 600+ connectors if you need to couple with other systems and pre-built AI models to cater your unique business needs.
At Align Consulting, we are experts in leveraging the cutting-edge extendibility capabilities of IFS Cloud to seamlessly integrate with powerhouse platforms like Power Apps. We are there to help crafting bespoke, industry-grade applications that perfectly align with your unique business needs and fit for the future🚀.
Contact us today to learn more and embark on your innovation journey💡.
It has been over 8 months since I started my first cloud development, and it has been a nice journey with many new things to learn; challenges and new processes to adopt. Here is my retrospective experience and some useful tips, coming from me and my colleague Asbjörn Brekke, for those stepping into IFS cloud development.
Things I liked most
Even though I worked with IFS developments for a considerable time, it was not an easy step for me to get things started since IFS Cloud development comes with a big technical leap and different tool set to adapt. But once the basic setup was done, I started to feel more comfortable since one big change in cloud development is that developers can work from the local workstation rather than a virtual desktop.
One thing I like about developing in IFS Cloud is the new web-based client framework. It gives much freedom to the developer to choose between different layouts, controllers, and design patterns. We can produce modern interfaces with rich user interface controllers in such a quick time in IFS Cloud.
Integration capabilities of IFS Cloud has been drastically improved and it’s nice to see that IFS is moving towards open standards. Hence, now we can think of many new ways of interacting with IFS through integrations.
Another plus point in IFS Cloud development is the use of git and Azure DevOps. We can do more collaborative developments, and it is possible to do unit testing in sandbox environments and identify errors before delivering to the customer. Therefore, my overall conclusion is I believe developers can deliver more quality products in IFS Cloud than in previous versions.
Points for improvements
When writing this, it has been only four major releases made in IFS Cloud. Admittedly, I’m pretty impressed by the speed it evolved through that short period of time. However, I believe it has a long way to go as well.
Performance is one of the key areas which I believe should be improved in IFS Cloud. There are two folds of performance, user performance and data performance. As developers it’s our responsibility to consider the performance impact and use new design patterns for optimized user performance. I do hope IFS will address the data performance problems which we’ve experienced on many occasions.
An area I experienced being difficult in IFS Cloud is debugging. Since most of the code is generated, a simple mistake could lead to errors, and it could take more effort for troubleshooting. Consequently, improved debugging capabilities would be helpful indeed.
Some Useful Tips
IFS Cloud has a future proof design and under the hood it carries lots of new capabilities and potential which were not there with older versions of IFS. Developing in IFS Cloud involves new thinking, and new learning. Here are some tips which I think will be useful to get the maximum benefits from IFS Cloud developments:
Have a good design – Having a good design is the key to success in any development. When it comes to IFS Cloud, design plays a major role since then you can wisely decide which building blocks you need to use in early stage, since changing the core logic could be a heavy effort
Think Evergreen – With IFS Cloud, IFS is moving towards an evergreen software concept. In a nutshell, that means IFS will release feature update releases twice a year, and frequent service updates. We must take that into consideration and try to avoid any developments which would disrupt IFS core logic. For example, sometimes we could provide a quick solution for a customer need by overtaking the IFS code, and the modifying it. But then, with each service or feature update, we would have to check our code and might need to do re-work to adopt to IFS changes. This would lead to high maintenance cost in the long run. Hence, we need to think smart and design our solutions to have minimal impact on the IFS core logic.
Re-Use Existing code – IFS Cloud encourages making reusable code and it can be seen everywhere in IFS core developments. Most of the time you could find the needed pieces if you look carefully into how the developments are done. It could save a lot of time and effort and cope with the evergreen concepts.
Med IFS Cloud har IFS gitt kundene mulighet til å eie og lede utviklingen av egen IFS plattform og løsning inkludert konfigurasjoner og tilpasninger. Kunden eier utviklingen og bestemmer selv hvem som skal inviteres inn for å gjøre utvikling. Align har meget positive erfaringer med den nye åpne plattformen – IFS Cloud. Det blir en kortere implementeringssyklus fra idè til ferdig levert kode siden vi kan ivareta hele prosessen på vegne av kunden.
Korte livssykluser på utviklingsmiljø, hyppige leveranser og kort «time to market» for ny funksjonalitet krever god kontroll på grunndata, konfigurasjoner og tilpasninger. Det er også viktig å etterstrebe evergreenprinsippet, slik at risiko ved oppdateringer og releaser reduseres. Som funksjonelle og tekniske arkitekter i et IFS Cloud Prosjekt, ser vi dermed at mulighetsrommet i IFS Cloud øker kompetansebehovet på kundesiden.
Med IFS Cloud skjer utvikling raskt, som igjen krever en mer proaktiv tilnærming til både system og prosesser. Kjennskap til kundens forretningsprosesser og krav blir ekstremt viktig.
Vi anbefaler at våre kunder samarbeider med et kompetansehus som Align for bistand og hjelp i overgangen til IFS Cloud.
Birgitte Hanstad (løsningsarkitekt) og Kjetil Pedersen (teknisk arkitekt)
