Item: SolarWinds Task Factory
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Task Factory is being used to integrate to a number of external organisations and data sources so it can be loaded into our organisations data warehouse. It helps make the integrations through SSIS very easy and simple using Task Factory's connectors. The main connector we are using it for is the Salesforce ones which are simple and effective.

Pros and Cons

Easy to install.
Easy to use.
Great support if stuck.

New connectors are not released very often.
Updating the connectors is not an easy task.
Troubleshooting a problem can be difficult.

Return on Investment

Saves time instead of programming own connectors into SSIS.
Saves time instead of programming own transformations into SSIS.
Cost of purchase was cheap compared to resource cost.

Alternatives Considered

ZappySys SSIS PowerPack

ZappySys is an alternative provider that we tested. However, we found the ease of use, set up and installation to be much simplier and quicker using Task Factory. ZappySys has a number of the same connectors but are more difficult to setup and the GUI is not as intuitive and simple to use.

Other Software Used

Tableau Desktop, Microsoft Access, Zoho Analytics (formerly Zoho Reports)

Likelihood to Recommend

Task Factory is well suited for integration with Salesforce, REST APIs and other offline sources.
Rather than programme your own connectors, the Task Factory connectors will make it simple and easy to download and parse data from JSON/XML into a database or table.

Task Factory is less suited for custom/very secure API connections especially if they require hashing the connection string each time.

Task Factory great for connecting to external sources

Overall Satisfaction with Task Factory