Working with Mappings

In the previous page of this course, you completed the first part of setting up an integration. Before you can test your integration, you first need to pair of data from the external source with fields from ItemPath and Power Pick. To help keep this task manageable, we'll talk through some resources and strategies for working with mappings, the general workflow, and any app specific details you may need to know!

Step 1: Review requirements

Before diving into all the data structures available, you should think about the business requirements for your integration: what goals are you trying to achieve? What data is available from the service that you are integrating with ItemPath? Find the pages in your documentation that detail available fields, and understand how the role that data plays in your business. It might help if you have a data dictionary, or the API documentation for that service available.

For ItemPath, the following pages will be helpful:

Report Data Reference: This is a guide to report themes available in ItemPath, which can be helpful for understanding the data structures that come from Power Pick.
API Documentation: This is a guide to the various data endpoints that comprise the ItemPath API, and can be a helpful guide to our data structures.

Typical use cases for ItemPath integration services involve Orders, Order Lines, Materials, and Transactions. Building a Variance integration is slightly less standardized, but report themes like Location Content Breakdowns, Materials, etc. are common starting places!

Step 2: Create a reference table

To help you build the actual mappings, it can be helpful to construct the pairings in a table. Create the following columns in a spreadsheet:

ERP-Name Key: Enter the name of your ERP or database as a header. Use this column to record columns or fields from your services data that will either receive data or supply data to ItemPath
Definition: Provide a brief description of the data and note the type (this can prevent headaches later on!)
ItemPath Value: Enter the name of the resource in ItemPath that aligns with the field or column from your service.
Notes: Any notes about expected behaviour, potential concerns, etc.

This will save you from switching between multiple tabs when building the actual mappings. If there is a complex data structure, you can adjust this if necessary, but the goal is to list each pairing that you will need to save in ItemPath.

Step 3: Construct the mapping

Go to the Mappings section of the app you are building your integration in. To create a mapping, use the drop down at the bottom of the page, depending on the application, different type options will be available for you to select.

The general workflow is to:

Specify the type of value being mapped (is it column?, is it being mapped to static values? etc.)
Enter the key (name) being mapped from the external service to ItemPath.
Select a value from ItemPath, or specify an absolute or complex value to pair to that key.
Save. This will create a new row in the Mappings table.
Repeat this process for each of your reference table pairings.

Consult with the Data Pull, Data Push, or Variance documentation for particular details!

Data Pull includes an additional tab to create mappings to return confirmation to your ERP after the task has been completed. Variance is a more complicated case where you can specify the behaviour used when it joins data with your ItemPath reports.

Once you have constructed all of the mappings, you'll be ready to test the integration!