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Relay racing

November 24, 2021

I can almost hear you think, how can relay racing be connected to DataBridge? 

Let's look at the specifics of a relay race or relay. It's all about one team with more than one member where each member finishes a portion of a race in the fastest way possible. Now replace team with business process and member with application. See where I'm heading?


A typical business process that involves importing or exporting data consists of several steps that run from separate applications or platforms. They primarily act as disconnected processes that somehow need to let their successor know they are all done, and the next part of the job is up to them. 

If there is no way to signal the successor, then usually, the successor just sits and waits and checks every now and then if it's his turn. Luckily, the toolbox of a modern software platform has options to send such signals. Or receive them to get things going. A modern way of signals between platforms is called webhooks.


One of the brand new features that our brilliant team added to DataBridge, is the option to fire a webhook right after a job finishes. And already since the launch, we have the feature to trigger a job via webhooks.

This latest addition to its toolbox makes it possible to let DataBridge join in your relay race. It can now receive the baton and hand it over to the next team member once it has finished a job.


Let's look at a few options now with a simple example where we need to import leads or prospects. We get the file in XML format from a supplier that will send it to us in a random interval. The goal is to let our eager sales team know that the leads are imported in SuperOffice.

The first part of our business process is the same for all options. The third-party lead provider triggers DataBridge as soon as a file is generated by firing a webhook. DataBridge will immediately process the file and import the new leads. It will not import leads that are already known.


Now we have to inform the members of the sales team. They want to know right away so they can ring the sales bell as soon as possible.


The simplest way is to let DataBridge send an email after a successful job. But hey, that does not use the webhook feature. And that's why we're here. We will use Microsoft Power Automate to receive our DataBridge webhook and create a message in a Microsoft Teams channel. More on how to set that up in another blog.

We can also use a more familiar recipient for our DataBridge webhook: a CRMScript. And since we can add all kinds of details from the job to the webhook URL, we can set the CRMScript to work with the selection ID's, the number of processed records or the job status.

Imagine the possibilities when a CRMScript can fetch the newly created companies -through the selection- and apply business logic to the company details.

 

And to open up even more possibilities, we can also trigger another DataBridge job if our first job, based on its status.


That's it for our relay race. I hope you are inspired to start setting up your business processes with webhooks. I'm curious what you come up with.
And please let our team know your ideas for DataBridge to make it even more helpful and fun.


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