tibbr Now, the Information Finds You.

Transcription

1 tibbr Now, the Information Finds You. - tibbr Integration 1

2 tibbr Integration: Get More from Your Existing Enterprise Systems and Improve Business Process tibbr empowers IT to integrate the enterprise systems and data that your employees rely on every day to get their job done. With a weboriented architecture, a robust REST API and the tibbr Event Streams Framework, tibbr allows you to marry enterprise social computing with the critical business processes that propel your organization forward. tibbr provides out-of-the-box integrations to Oracle, SAP, Salesforce. com, and Microsoft SharePoint, while also making it easy to incorporate homegrown or custom applications as well. By pulling key events and data from these systems into tibbr and tying them to relevant Subjects in the tibbr social architecture your employees can collaborate more efficiently and serve your customers faster. You can also deliver tibbr inside of other applications. tibsmartwidgets deliver relevant streams from tibbr as your employees execute key business processes. This document will provide an overview of the tibbr Architecture, and also highlight the four key methods (REST, ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks, Event Streams and tibbranywhere) for integrating applications and systems of record with tibbr s social computing platform. 1

3 Integration Type Benefits Example REST API Loosely coupled, language agnostic integration Tie updates to relevant Subjects in tibbr. Receive updates from your document management system when people checkin/check-out content. ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Current TIBCO customers leverage custom built integrations and messages by pulling them into tibbr. Give employees critical updates from your enterprise service bus as they happen in real-time Receive fine-grained updates such as when a shipment is being delayed and users can serve your customers faster. Event Streams Framework Enable end-users to configured updates they want from your enterprise systems. Bi-directional integration that lets users take action in other enterprise systems without leaving tibbr. Receive and review expense reports inside your tibbr stream, and act to approve them without leaving tibbr. tibsmartwidgets Bring tibbr to other enterprise applications, enabling power users to keep relevant colleagues and information right at their fingertips. Easy to embed and simple coding (copy and paste in relevant Subjects or People IDs you d like to render in the stream). As your HR team accesses key tools in their HRM system, pair it with the HR subject tibbr SmartWidget. As your marketing people update content in SharePoint, pair it with a tibbr SmartWidget for Sales Collateral. 2

4 tibbr Architecture: An Overview Whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud, tibbr runs on a weboriented architecture with RESTful APIs that make it easy to integrate data and systems in and out of the social computing platform. By integrating with active directory and your single sign on systems, tibbr makes it easy to populate your tibbr instance with rich user data just hours after deployment. Key Components of the tibbr Architecture The tibbr server (Apache Tomcat) manages all the core tibbr services, including users, messages and filtering. The server provides a clear and secure Representational State Transfer (REST) interface. This allows clients, events streams and utilities to utilize the HTTP protocol to interact with the platform, making integrations with tibbr development language agnostic. All content stored in the tibbr server is stored in the database via Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). 3

5 Web Client. The tibbr web client is a rich interface that runs on all the major browsers and utilizes HTML, as well as Web 2.0 technologies like Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). Web browsers can access the interface over either HTTP or, for added security, the HTTPS protocol. Mobile Clients. tibbr has native apps for iphone, BlackBerry, and Android that connect with the tibbr server over the REST API, allowing them to communicate over both HTTP and HTTPS for added security. Command Line Interface. The CLI allows utilities to access the tibbr server through the REST API to help manage tibbr deployments, in the same way that mobile and web clients do. Cache Server. tibbr utilizes a cache server to cache wall information for a specific interval. In doing so, tibbr can respond quickly to client requests and minimize the database load.. tibbr Search. tibbr runs on Apache SOLR search, a powerful open source search engine. This will enable searches through tibbr messages, subjects and people. The tibbr event stream runner is a daemon process that runs the event streams configured by you on a scheduled basis. Events can be matched to relevant Subjects in tibbr. Chat Server. The chat sever is run on Prosody, a flexible communications server for Jabber/XMPP. This enables tibbr Instant Messaging. SMS Gateway. This enables you to send and receive text message notifications from tibbr. tibbr supports Clickatell and Twilio. Server. tibbr utilizes a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server to push out notifications and for account management s. tibbr supports server connections in both Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and non-ssl modes. Lightweight Active Director Protocol. tibbr integrates with your company s active directory to authenticate users and retrieve user profiles. You can also read user information from LDAP to populate the tibbr database. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). tibbr can integrate with any SAML-based single sign on system. Database. tibbr stores all of its content in a standard rational database, and creates the necessary schema inside the database that is configured during the installation process. Supported tibbr databases include Microsoft SQL Server 2008, MySQL 5.x, and Oracle 11g Release 2. 4

6 The tibbr REST API: Integrate What Matters The tibbr REST API makes it easy to integrate enterprise applications written in any language. Virtually every part of the tibbr interface -- including subjects, user profiles, tibbr posts and streams -- can be accessed via the REST API to interact with other enterprise applications and systems. Because the tibbr REST API adheres to the HTTP and XML protocols, it s easy to pull an event from an enterprise system into a pertinent tibbr Subject. So as an example, if you wanted to publish events from your business intelligence system in tibbr, you could tie to them to the Subject for Business Analysts (or any Subject of your choosing). Common Objects inside tibbr Assets (file attachments, message time stamps, and images) Links Messages (tibbr Posts) Message filters Subjects Users REST API Methods The tibbr API makes it simple to use HTTP-based methods like put, post and delete to manage the various actions and activities of your integrations to the platform. REST API Methods inside tibbr include: Create, follow, and update users and subjects Retrieve details on users or subjects SAML authentication (log-in/log-out) Posting, liking, starring, and deleting messages Adding, deleting and retrieving user and subject followers Search for messages, subjects and users The tibbr REST API is bi-directional. So if you d like to pull events from tibbr into another application, this can be done with the objects and their methods listed above. Detailed REST documentation on these methods and objects can be found at under tibbr. 5

7 ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks: Bring Your Custom Business Integrations and Processes into tibbr If you re a company that leverages TIBCO s Enterprise Service Bus to build integrations across your company s core systems, now you can incorporate those messages and process flows as posts inside tibbr with the BusinessWorks plug-in for tibbr. The BusinessWorks Plug-In for tibbr: How it Works Using the plug-in is easy, and requires a few simple steps: 1. Install the plug-in into the BusinessWorks designer. 2. As you construct a specific business process that s destined for specific systems and databases, now you will have the option to point it to tibbr as well. 3. Set rules for sending to tibbr, and what Subjects and Users receive the update to ensure relevance. 6

8 Since launching in January, tibbr customers have already utilized this critical integration point. Example One tibbr customer is a shipping cargo company based in Asia. With 6,000 employees and 1,000 partners, they needed a central place to collaborate and learn about the status of cargo shipments. Using the tibbr plug-in for BusinessWorks, they were able to push updates from their track and trace system into tibbr. Now, employees receive updates in tibbr about shipment delays, and are able to serve customers faster. 7

9 The tibbr Event Streams Framework tibbr Event Streams provide a powerful way to enable integrations with your core enterprise systems, while at the same time enabling end-users of tibbr to configure the updates and events that matter most to them right from the main user interface. There are two types of event streams 1. Work Streams are server-based integrations with your enterprise applications 2. Life Streams are browser-based integrations that connect to applications on the Web. tibbr Work Streams: What They Are and How They Work Overview tibbr Event Streams are each a tibbr plug-in that integrates with a specific enterprise application of your choosing. To communicate with, and deliver, the data into tibbr, tibbr leverages the tibbr event stream runner, a daemon process that runs the event streams configured by you on a scheduled basis. Events streams can be matched to relevant Subjects in tibbr, so you deliver data to the right people at the right time. By default, Event Streams aren t made public. To share them inside your tibbr instance, you ll have to explicitly add users or choose to make them public. 8

10 Built on a Ruby framework, you can use any editor to create custom applications and connections to the tibbr platform that can be accessed via the tibbr web client. tibbr provides you the with proper templates, syntax and scripts to edit and register the application inside your tibbr instance. As you build your new application, you can map it to the tibbr application template that will users to customize their event streams later. The Event Streams Process A tibbr Administrator registers a New Event Stream application The event stream runner sends the applicable events to the tibbr activity stream, where end-users can collaborate around those events. Some plug-ins work bi-directionally -- enabling users to send information back to the system being displayed in that Event Stream. You can make the Event Stream available to everyone across your company, or by mapping to particular subjects, a smaller subset of users. 9

11 Today, tibbr features pre-built event streams to the following applications: Oracle (Expenses and Order Management) SAP (CRM and ERP) Salesforce.com (CRM) Life Streams: Bringing the Consumer Web Securely Into tibbr Some organizations allow their employees to access consumer social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn while at work. With tibbr life streams, users can click to enable the social networks they loginto. After, they simply log-in with their credentials, and they can toggle to these networks inside tibbr. 10

12 tibsmartwidgets: Bring tibbr into Enterprise Applications tibsmartwidgets is an embeddable, pre-built gadget that allows you to embed tibbr securely inside other applications. With tibsmartwidgets, users of enterprise systems can access their content, Subjects and colleagues right within the context of where they re working and helping execute key business processes. tibsmartwidgets allow you to embed: Wall Messages Subject streams and hierarchies tibbr search Because tibbr provides you with the javascript for the SmartWidgets, they require very little custom coding, and that you merely copy and paste in the proper objects and messages from tibbr that you d like to surface. For example, if you had a Human Resources Management Application, you could embed a tibsmartwidget that pulls into the feed from the HR.Team subject in tibbr. As members of the HR team execute key business processes in their HRM system, the colleagues they need are right at their fingertips. To make this work, you simply alter the web address inside the tibsmartwidget. tibsmartwidgets bring context and collaborative capabilities to users that have to spend much of their day inside enterprise applications that drive your business. 11

13 What tibbr Integrations Look Like When integrating system events and updates into tibbr, you can choose to tie them to a specific subject. This not only ensures fine-grained governance over who sees what data, but it also encourages relevance: Only people inside your company see the events pertinent to their job role. For example, if you have a Microsoft SharePoint Library for HR Policy Documents, you can pull relevant updates into your tibbr HR Subject. Employees who follow that subject can see when a document is checked in to that particular SharePoint library. Inside tibbr, they can easily have conversations around the document, and suggest improvements. But tibbr also enables bi-directional capabilities. For example, in this conversation, an employee collaborating with colleagues realizes he has a more updated document to place into SharePoint. With the simple click of a button, he can upload it to the proper library in SharePoint right from the context of his tibbr Stream. 12

14 tibbr pulls in relevant data from CRM, ERP and other transactional systems as well. From Salesforce.com, you could publish key events (such as Opportunity Created ), and empower people from outside your sales team to give input on how you might win that account. From SAP, you could send out an alert to your operations team every time your most popular products deplete in inventory, and click to replenish the stock from inside tibbr. tibbr s Oracle Expenses Event Stream pulls in updates every time a relevant employee files an expense report in Oracle. With tibbr s bi-directional capability, you can view the expense report and approve it without leaving your event stream. 13

15 Ultimately, these integrations save your people time. The average computer user checks or changes windows nearly 37 times an hour. For workers without a computer, they often need to ask colleagues or receive periodic updates from these systems long after the key events. With tibbr s native mobile applications for ios, Android, and BlackBerry, now they can stay in the know and help close the loop on key business processes. Conclusion To learn more about how you can integrate your key systems of record at tibbr, contact your TIBCO sales rep or contact tibbr@tibco.com today. 14