Sage

[greyhound]

Hi,

I have a client using Sage MMS. When I asked tech support whether or not this was compatible with Actinic I was told "No" - has anyone else had experience with MMS? I don't really want to turn the work down but will have to if I cannot get the two linked up.

On a seperate note, I have no experience of linking up Sage with Actinic - does anyone have any good knowledge references and possibly a link to the cheapest way of getting hold of Sage software? I am in a position where I have so little knowledge that I am finding it difficult to get to a starting point.

Help........

Thanks in advance.

[dallen]

Sage MMS

We use Sage MMS with several Actinic (and other) websites. There is no 'direct' compatibility, but it is possible.

As long as you know what you're doing with the SQL DB behind Sage and the Access DB behind Actinic your best and quickest (development wise) option is to build a set of excel spreadsheets or VB apps that pull data from both databases and then spit out CSVs for importing back into MMS or Actinic.

You'll also need an MMS Sales Account and Sales Order Import programme - most Sage MMS re-sellers will provide one for a nominal fee (the company you're hoping to do the work for may already have one).

So you'll have:

one spreadsheet/app that pulls customer data from the Actinic DB to save as a CSV for importing as MMS Sales Accounts.
one spreadsheet/app that pulls order data from the Actinic DB (and product details from MMS if necessary) to save as a CSV for importing as MMS Sales Orders.
one spreadsheet/app that pulls the list of products from Actinic and the Prices and availability (inactive, out of stock etc) from MMS to save as a CSV for importing into Actinic as a product update import.

It will take some time and as you're doing it under contract you will need to get a clearly defined set of objectives - the goalposts can be moved daily if they decide they want to get something else out of it so make sure your task is defined accurately. I'm a full time employee here so the development is continuous as we refine and add functionality to the two way linking (plus adding links from individual websites to amazon, google base and other places).

I can probably give you some pointers in the right direction - it all depends on whether you have full access to the clients SQL DB (as you will need to create some custom views) and what level of SQL skills you have.

Let me know and good luck!

[greyhound]

Thankyou very much for the advice / info, I really appreciate it.

My SQL Skills are pretty good, my usual development tools are SQL Server 7 - 2005 and c sharp. Access and Excel are a bit shaky but I can brush up on them.

If its ok I may come back to you after I have run some test on getting data out of Actinic as I'm a little unsure about what you mean by splitting out the CSVs.

Thanks again.

[dallen]

no prob

PM me if you need anything - i can send you some basic templates for pulling data - should give you a better idea of what you'll need to do...