“Jedox (22), looking to build real, deep, and functional connections to interface, integrate and consolidate with each other. Loves to extract, load, transform and to make plans for the future together”
Now, before you go and divorce your current EPM-System, you should know Jedox is very liberal regarding its connectivity. It will literally integrate with any other system using its premier API interface feature: the Jedox Integrator. Let’s talk in detail about what that is and how it works.
Jedox Integrator: TL;DR
The Jedox Integrator is a data integration and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool within the Jedox Software suite that helps businesses automate and streamline the process of importing, transforming, and consolidating data from various sources into Jedox for advanced analysis and reporting. It features a user-friendly graphical interface, supports automation, and is designed to handle large volumes of data, making it a key component for enhancing business intelligence and performance management capabilities.
First things first: What is the Jedox Integrator?
The Jedox Integrator is one of the most powerful data integration tools in the business intelligence market. It offers pre-built connections to all the major ERP, CRM, SCM, and HCM systems, databases, and even other business intelligence tools like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI. Also, FlatFiles, MySQL, and of course various data formats like CSV, JSON, and XML. Should a tool or system not have a pre-built connection yet, the Jedox Integrator can interface with any tool using common API and web-protocols like REST, SOAP, OAuth, or HTTPS. The secret lies in how incoming data is handled and transformed – the Jedox Integrator is super flexible and user-friendly when it comes to establishing ETL processes.
What the hell is ETL?
The Jedox Integrator streamlines the ETL process. Now, while that sounds interesting, I doubt every reader understands what that means exactly – so let’s dive deep. ETL stands for Extract, Transform, and Load and simply describes how data is processed by a data management software. In many ways, the process is similar to many other real-life processes. Imagine taking (extracting) eggs, flour, and water out of their respective containers, placing it all in a bowl to mix and knead (transform) them into dough, and pushing (loading) it into a pre-heated oven from where it will once again be extracted onto a cutting board, transformed into slices, and loaded into a bread basket before being extracted onto a plate, transformed into a delicious sandwich, and loaded into your mouth.
Much in the same way, in an ETL process, data is extracted from various sources, brought together in a transforming software model where it is transformed and then loaded into another data model where the already transformed data is transformed one more time, and so on … with the goal being a single screen that shows you good, valid, digestible data. An ETL process can be used for something as simple as adding up the costs of eggs, flour, and water, multiplying it by the number of purchases, transforming it into a sum, and loading that sum into your household budget under “baking ingredients” which together with “fresh veggies” and “sliced cheese” can be extracted into a combined budgetary expression of the delicious sandwiches you keep making. If you were to add the time spent on prep and transform that time-data into money-data by putting an hourly rate behind it, you could consolidate it all into a single piece of data … the price of a sandwich – at which point you can make an informed decision if that’s worth it or perhaps the 3€ equivalent from the store is not overpriced after all. #bakingintelligence
So, put simply, ETL is the bread and butter of data management.
Why the Jedox Integrator is so cool
It’s common sense that improving core processes will have the biggest impact on pretty much anything. A wheel that is just slightly improved can impact the transport speed of sandwiches, which will lower the cost of transport and thus reduce their price, increasing the margin of profit and potentially the purchasing power of the consumers which can impact the overall economy of a country … The same cannot be said about an improvement on the sandwich itself, it will simply taste better. Which is nice – but not necessarily impactful. Streamlining ETL has a profound impact on the implementation time of any Jedox solution as well as on ongoing development and thereby increases the ROI significantly. Moreover, using the Jedox Integrator, the solution can be adapted quickly and easily to account for scale, changes in organisational structure or the market environment, or even just to plug in a new tool you’ve found. The Jedox Integrator has a simple, wizard-type user interface which enables many integrations in a self-service fashion without the need to hard-code anything.
Workflows and Access Rights
Jedox Integrator also supports sophisticated workflows and access rights management to ensure data governance and security. Workflow automation in Jedox allows you to define and manage data processing tasks, ensuring that data is extracted, transformed, and loaded in a seamless and timely manner. You can schedule these workflows to run at specific times or trigger them based on certain events, providing flexibility and control over your data integration processes. Access rights management in Jedox ensures that only authorized users can access, modify, or manage data and integrations. You can assign roles and permissions to users based on their responsibilities, ensuring compliance with organisational policies and data protection regulations. This granular access control helps prevent unauthorized access and data breaches, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of your business data.
How does the Jedox Integrator work?
First of all: The Jedox Integrator is not some type of device that works on Jedox from the outside. It’s an integral part of the software and the reason why Jedox works the way it does. At its core, the Jedox Integrator is a configurable framework for networking protocols that uses authentication tokens to establish a protected end-to-end connection which is then used to launch data queries via pre-defined messaging or web protocols. So it’s an API hub with a wizard-like interface where users can fill out various forms and go through a step-by-step process to connect a system and transform it into the multi-dimensional data cubes which Jedox works with.
Special connection: Jedox <3 SAP
SAP-based system architectures have a special connection to the Jedox Integrator. The SAP Connector add-in offers real-time data processing integration between Jedox and SAP products. It has a pre-built API that is set up via a technical SAP user that can access any SAP module in the software landscape (ERP, HCM or ACDOCA from S4/Hana etc.) and can be used to start the extraction process directly from SAP. So basically, it’s a fully synchronized, seamless integration of data storage and management with any SAP system.
Connecting the REST
Whilst the Jedox Integrator offers pre-built APIs with roughly twenty thousand applications, there will always be innovations and improvements, and hence, there will always be software which has not yet been connected. So, for these cases, the Jedox Integrator offers a REST API, the format that comes closest to an industry standard. It uses queries to retrieve data via parameterised directories – now if that sounds like technical jargon, that’s because it is. Here’s an attempt to explain: Imagine standing in front of an extremely large group of people, looking for a Welshman called William Wheeler who is really good at whistling. How do you get him to step forward? You shout (query): “I’m looking for William Wheeler” – but it’s such a large crowd that 50 people step forward … “I’m looking for the Welsh William Wheeler” – down to 10 – “… and he can whistle really well” and now maybe you’ve got your guy. What you’ve done is: You have added parameters to your query statement, thereby making the initial request more concrete. This is how APIs extract data … thousands of times per second.
The Jedox Integrator considerably simplifies the creation and parameterisation of interfaces. Be it via REST, JSON, SOAP, XML or another network protocol. With a little expert support, Jedox users can learn how to use the Integrator and create interfaces themselves. But: Every beginning is difficult. Fortunately, you can buy help for the implementation of your Jedox solution and the complex interfaces and training of your admins … preferably from us, so do contact us!
