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SolarWinds Task Factory

SolarWinds Task Factory

Overview

What is SolarWinds Task Factory?

According to the vendor, SolarWinds Task Factory saves time managing tedious ELT/ETL tasks with high-performing SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) components that can be used within the Visual Studio environment to connect to nearly any data source. Task Factory’s components…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Upsert Component: Highly praised for its simplicity and ease of use, the Upsert component in Task Factory has been mentioned by several …
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Upgrade to Upsert

10 out of 10
April 30, 2020
Incentivized
Our prima facie need was to increase the speed for loading our data warehouses. We used SSIS, and needed an easy way to convert to bulk …
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Task Factory Review

8 out of 10
March 22, 2020
Incentivized
Our Data Integration team uses Task Factory as a 3rd-party plugin tool to support Microsoft SSIS packages. Task Factory makes our job …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 5 features
  • Complex transformations (35)
    9.6
    96%
  • Connect to traditional data sources (40)
    9.3
    93%
  • Simple transformations (39)
    8.7
    87%
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Pricing

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Task Factory

1,245 (annual subscription license)

On Premise
per server

Task Factory Azure Data Factory

1,495 (annual subscription license)

On Premise
per ADF node

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.sentryone.com/products/task…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Features

Data Source Connection

Ability to connect to multiple data sources

9.3
Avg 8.2

Data Transformations

Data transformations include calculations, search and replace, data normalization and data parsing

9.1
Avg 8.4

Data Governance

Data governance is the practise of implementing policies defining effective use of an organization's data assets

9.4
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

What is SolarWinds Task Factory?

According to the vendor, SolarWinds Task Factory saves time managing tedious ELT/ETL tasks with high-performing SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) components that can be used within the Visual Studio environment to connect to nearly any data source. Task Factory’s components and tasks have been optimized to ensure fast performance of data-centric applications, and the user can run Task Factory on an Azure-SSIS Integration Runtime (IR) with Task Factory Azure Data Factory edition.

SolarWinds Task Factory Features

Data Source Connection Features

  • Supported: Connect to traditional data sources

Data Transformations Features

  • Supported: Simple transformations
  • Supported: Complex transformations

Data Governance Features

  • Supported: Integration with data quality tools
  • Supported: Integration with MDM tools

SolarWinds Task Factory Screenshots

Screenshot of Salesforce.com SourceScreenshot of Dimension Merge SCD TransformScreenshot of Upsert DestinationScreenshot of REST Source

SolarWinds Task Factory Integrations

SolarWinds Task Factory Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo

SolarWinds Task Factory Downloadables

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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(64)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Upsert Component: Highly praised for its simplicity and ease of use, the Upsert component in Task Factory has been mentioned by several users as a valuable feature. Users appreciate that with just a few clicks, they can perform merge operations without the complexities of writing code.

Extended Functionality: Many users find Task Factory to be highly beneficial due to its ability to extend the functionality of native SSIS components. This aspect allows them to work with a wider range of data sources and perform tasks that would otherwise be challenging with only native components.

Seamless Integration: The seamless integration capabilities of Task Factory have been highlighted by users. They mention specific use cases such as integrating with partners' Secure FTP sites, working with Excel, and sending out emails using partners' SMTP servers. Users appreciate how Task Factory simplifies these tasks and saves them significant time.

Challenging execution against non-licensed servers: Some users have found it challenging to execute packages against servers that do not have proper licenses, which has required them to search for alternative solutions or workarounds.

Lack of detailed logging for errors: Users have expressed a strong desire for more comprehensive and detailed logging capabilities when components encounter errors. This would enable better troubleshooting and analysis of issues during package execution.

Lack of notifications for software updates: Several users have mentioned that they were not notified or alerted when new versions of the software became available. This lack of notification caused them to miss out on important updates and improvements to the product.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 40)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Nancy Petrey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It gives us best platform for connecting all data sources. Collection of data from our partners and clients gives us insights on how to manage our company better. When publishing our marketing campaigns it gets information and feedback from our clients comments. Our web designing team has been able to program most platforms without coding.
  • Managing data warehousing.
  • Integrating our servers to accelerate components.
  • I have not experienced any challenge from the operation of this great tool.
  • All the data tools function excellently.
Since I started working with this great tool all data analysis programs have been running effectively. Implementation of projects and tasks have been effective and reliable. Data collected from each department gives us working plan on better management of various programs. The Dimension Merge SCD Transform helps us to load large volumes of data within a short period of time.
Holly Couch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds Task Factory across our team to manage data by connecting all sources in one integrated solution, including REST sources. Managing ETL and ELT tasks is less tedious with SolarWinds Task Factory.
  • With Task Factory, it is easy to connect data from multiple sources such as SharePoint, Microsoft Excel, Facebook, etc.
  • Extension of SSISS with zero coding has enabled us to save time while managing the data warehouse.
  • Also, SolarWinds Task Factory makes it easy to automate metadata tasks in real-time.
  • Pricing is way too expensive compared to other alternatives.
  • Unavailability of existing mobile application.
If you are an MS Dynamics CRM User, you should consider SolarWinds Task Factory because it integrates data in real-time. Also, if it is hectic to encrypt and decrypt data, it is advisable to implement SolarWinds Task Factory for incoming and out-coming data.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used by our organization to optimize our data warehouse and streamline many tedious data warehouse management tasks. It also helped us to become cloud-ready and increase our productivity. Task Factory also helped to improve the performance of our data-centric applications and speed up our batch processing.
  • Improve performance.
  • Increase productivity.
It is affordable and easy to use for our system. It also reduces the amount of effort required for our data warehouse tasks and now we do not need to do the tasks manually.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used across the organization. Task Factory makes it easy to achieve functionality that is not available within native SSIS. It saves a lot of coding time by making available out-of-the-box connectors and tasks that SSIS does not offer or has poor performance issues with. Speeds up time to market on ETL jobs.
  • Merge (Insert/update) loads.
  • SharePoint connectors.
  • Row filters.
  • It was built by Pragmatic Works who sold it to SentryOne and now Solar Winds, concerned about future support. SolarWinds is discontinuing support for related products such as BiXpress.
  • Had issues with connecting to certain versions of SQL Server - would fail when deploying one package - had to deploy the entire solutions.
  • Occasional random failures observed with the Filter tranform.
Speeds up ETL development - so good for small shops and not very expensive. Not required where there is a big team of programmers and resistance to using 3rd party products. Also, the fact that SolarWinds is dropping some related products makes me nervous and want to build my own products.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Task Factory is used to support our SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) needs. SSIS has many tasks built in but we have found they fall short of our needs and Task Factory fills that gap for us. The components provided are well designed and easy to configure for the package to use and allow parameters to be configured for ease of use across environments.
  • The SFTP task is particularly helpful with proxy capabilities and setup with environment variables.
  • The RestAPI task is something new that we have found helpful now.
  • The latest UpSert task has also been a great addition.
  • I thought it needed to improve the UpSert task to include delete capabilities but was informed it is present. Just might be useful to be more apparent to an infrequent user.
One task we use with every package is the Advanced Email task, although simple and used primarily for our monitoring of package success, it is helpful and simple to use. Only downside as with any product is it does require some maintenance and has had the occasional blip of an update breaking an existing functionality.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use the tools mainly for the slowly changing dimensions as we load our warehouse.
  • Slowly changing dimensions.
  • Error logging during the process.
  • Ease of setup.
  • The ability to move records to different tables based on the data.
  • None
I only use the tool for our slowly changing dimensions in our data warehouse. The error hanging is great and the ability to move records around to other tables based on the data is a nice feature.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Task Factory to better standardize our ETL and to reduce the number of script tasks leveraged. It is primarily used for data flow and control flow tasks, although some connections are used as well. This is used as a standard, centralized tool within IT, along with other 3rd party SSIS tools.
  • Email notifications.
  • File management.
  • User defined settings for external package calls.
  • Better software update methodology.
Being able to easily call packages from other projects is the biggest win. Having a single process to handle all child calls is a big win over using the standard component for calls within a project, and some other mechanism (via SQL stored procedure calls and/or SQL agent calls) for packages not within the same project.
April 30, 2020

Upgrade to Upsert

Bob Amy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our prima facie need was to increase the speed for loading our data warehouses. We used SSIS, and needed an easy way to convert to bulk updates and deletes. Task Factory offers several tools that reduce our load time by about 60 times. These are Upsert, Bulk Update and Bulk delete. We were already using the SSIS fast load, but had we had Task Factory earlier, it would have saved a huge amount of development. We have used a few of the other tools as well, but unfortunately, our addition of Task Factory was retrofit and not new development.
  • Fast, large updates and deletes.
  • Simple Upsert logic.
  • Very nice integrated help, including video.
  • Easy to install, well documented, and easy to use.
  • Support was excellent under Pragmatic Works. I cannot attest to Sentry One.
  • We had one case of an upgrade that would not work with existing code. They did release a next version very quickly.

I bought Task Factory for the Upsert, Bulk update, and Bulk delete tools. It was WELL worth it to not have to develop bulk loading techniques ourselves.

I never got the chance to use the nuggets tool for generic code patterning.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Task Factory within our team. We have a need to ensure efficient ETL design to drive our high-performing data-centric application. Task Factory helps us reduce development time spent programming custom SSIS tasks, gives us components and tasks that are optimized to perform well in production, and a broad array of connections to various data platforms.
  • One-click Auditing Feature. Simply push a button, and all of your SSIS packages now have detailed auditing built-in, including the ability to watch it in real-time.
  • Wide variety of connections. If you need to connect to a common data source, Task factory will have what you need. No need to roll your own anymore.
  • The Upsert Component. Task Factory has a simple and FAST way to do an insert or update with new row data. It just works and works well.
  • SCD component could be a little more intuitive.
  • The help documents could be more detailed and current with what is actually released.
You should strongly consider Task Factory if you are a Microsoft Data platform shop. It really rounds out SSIS. If you don't know what SSIS is, then this is the wrong product for you.
April 28, 2020

Love Task Factory!

Steven Gockley, MBA, MCSA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are heavy SQL Server Integration Services shop. There are a number of instances where we were faced with hand-coding solutions that would take hours or days to implement, but with Task Factory we were able to do it in seconds. We have a large number of highly visible, customer-facing processes that depend on Task Factory, and it has been very reliable and easy to use.
  • Our first use case was integrating with our Partners' Secure FTP Sites. Task Factory did this seamlessly.
  • Our second use case involved Excel. We have multiple groups that use Excel to monitor their processes, and using the Excel refresh task made this very quick and simple.
  • Our third use case was for SMTP. The basic SMTP did not give us enough control out of the box that we needed. We send out E-mails on behalf of our partners using their SMTP servers, so being able to change those connections effortlessly using this task was a huge time saver.
  • Not sure. I have not run into an instance where their transform didn't provide what I needed more easily than other solutions.
We use Task Factory a lot for our report automation. We have several use cases where we send out thousands of reports on a schedule to certain groups of customers, and Task Factory allows us to easily get files and move them via SFTP, FTP, or Email very easily. We have used it in our data warehouse as well, but not as heavily.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Usage: We are using Task Factory inside the IT department to enhance the capabilities of SSIS (SQL Server Integration services).

Business problem: Your team can keep using SSIS and tackle data problems they could not resolve before (read from different sources without any code and do data upsert in one component).
  • Read from APIs without code.
  • Upset mechanism.
  • Can be longer to debug.
  • Need one license for dev servers.
Well suited:
  • When the capabilities of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) are not enough for you.
  • When you want to extract data from web sources without writing some code.
Not Well suited:
  • If you have separate servers for all your environments (that will cost you more money).
  • If your team does not know SSIS enough (the tool can be difficult to debug).
Karl Blacquière | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Task Factory is used by the BI and the Integration Department. It helps us to standardize the way we are extracting and transforming data into our data warehouse and also the way we are connecting different applications (CRM and ERP).
  • The Slowly Changing Dimension Component saves us a huge amount if time compared to the native SSIS component.
  • JSON Transform is really useful to convert record and send it to rest API.
  • The advanced derived columns allow us to use really cool functions that are not available in the regular transforms.
  • We were disappointed that the Marketto Connector has been retired from the components.
  • We had a problem integrating Task Factory with LegiTest (license problem). It took a lot of time for Sentry to find and fix this problem
I think Task Factory is really helpful when building regular ETL in SSIS. IT helped us save time by replacing the native SSIS component with a more advanced one. However, there are some cases where TF was not performing well when the keys are GUID. We had to remove some TF components in that case.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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.
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.
March 22, 2020

Task Factory Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Data Integration team uses Task Factory as a 3rd-party plugin tool to support Microsoft SSIS packages. Task Factory makes our job simple in terms of connecting to "CRM", "SharePoint" or to pull data/files from a web service where we don't need to write a C# code to get this done. Also, it seems very effective when doing encryption and decryption techniques.
  • Task Factory does a pretty good job in terms of connecting to any 3rd-party website/Web API/CRM and downloading/uploading files into them without using any program code.
  • Task Factory makes it easier to encrypt/decrypt incoming/outgoing files.
  • I believe they should improve the "address parser" feature where it simply parses the incoming address but didn't check/verify whether the incoming address is valid (or) checks whether the address has USPS address standard format.
Task Factory works well if we need to connect to any 3rd-party website/tool like CRM / web services / WebAPI, where we can easily download/upload files without writing any code.

Task Factory is less effective in a SharePoint connection feature task where they don't have a variable option to overwrite the existing file in SharePoint site.
Francisco Murillo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Task Factory is being used by the IT BI department. It is part of our daily SSIS processes, for example, reads from XML or JSON sources, extracts from websites, compresses and decompresses zip files, handles data to be inserted or updated on tables, parses address information, sends email on different stages of the process.
Specifically, we can use it to download a zip file and decompress it and later use TF Upsert to update or insert zip code data into tables.
  • Upsert data on dimensions
  • Read XML and JSON information from website
  • Allow Upsert to just load bulk data
Task Factory is well suited to update and insert data on EDW database.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Task Factory is used in the IT department only. It addresses the need for data connections and transformations that are not included in the base SQL Server Integrations Services system.
  • Tasks are more automated than having to create them by hand.
  • Support is great either in forum settings or direct contact with support.
  • Maybe ensuring that all assemblies are deleted when having to install Task Factory on the server.
For the tasks available in Task Factory, it does them very well. The upsert task is ideal for my uses. I do wish that there was some sort of delete or mark as delete feature when loading data into a data warehouse. We don't run Enterprise Edition of SQL Server so we don't have the change data capture feature.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it for linking our SQL DB to the Salesforce cloud connection for data integration and a variety of other data processing components.
  • Easy to install, use and learn with basic SQL and SSIS knowledge.
  • Wider component selection available for different use cases.
  • I don't have any issues with the program.
It's a great tool to use. For the price, it's good for our use case to integrate SQL DB with the Salesforce cloud. This product was helpful to make the integration simple and robust.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used and implemented by my team , serving company needs . Connecting to REST API.
  • Rest API
  • FIle properties
  • Secure FTP task
  • Upsert
  • Amazon Connectors
  • S3 Connectors
  • Red Shift Connectors
  • Tableau Connectors
Data source calls where SSIS has limitations task factory can work well but there are company's outside has all the connectors. So, Task Factory has to improve its list of items.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Business and Application Reporting team is using this tool. We are using this to take the data from our Salesforce org into a data warehouse. Once the data is there we use it to create Microsoft Power BI reports. Also we use Task Factory to upsert data into Salesforce for any data migration projects. This has solved a numerous amount of issues regarding moving Salesforce data in and out of our data warehouse and other ETL.
  • Upsert Salesforce data.
  • It is simple to use.
  • Very straightforward upgrade process.
  • Continually getting new features that are useful.
  • More drag and drop interfacing.
  • Modernize the UI.
Works great for Salesforce. I can take any flat file or other source and upsert to Salesforce. I think the other way around is also well done. I would like to see a better way to create the relationship between records, but otherwise well done. It has always finished the tasks we need it to.
October 25, 2019

Task Factory Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It was initially used to upload and download data from Salesforce. It was then used as part of our ETL to load data for Analysis Services models, both MOLAP and Tabular.
  • Connect and access data in Salesforce
  • Slowly changing dimensions task
  • Error codes and descriptions
  • I haven't used enough in recent months to suggest improvements.
On-premise SQL Server running integration packages. I have not tried to use Task Factory with the intergration packages in Azure.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Purchased for Salesforce connectivity from our SQL Server platform. We have since leveraged other features such as Upsert.
It is used in support of our organization-wide data warehouse.
  • Upsert - simplifies coding.
  • Facilitates an odbc connection to the Sales Force world without the complication of using APIs.
  • Various other utilities to simplify ETL development.
  • We have run into compatibility issues or low level problems between SQL server and Task Factory. Working with both SentryOne and Microsoft, they both ended up blaming each other and not offering a fix.
Utilities such as Upsert have provided us with significant improvements in the reduction of repetitive code.

Because of bugs/complications with data type conversions (eg. Decimal to Numeric), care must be taken when converting numeric types.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The main reason we purchased Task Factory was to decrease the time to do Upserts into SQL Server and Oracle databases. Without it, developers would manually have to do lookups/inserts/updates in SSIS.

Although this was the main reason for the purchase, there are so many other components we use in SSIS like the termination task, the Sharepoint task, and the email task. Some of these tasks seem like "no brainers" that should be in SSIS by default!
  • Upserts to Oracle and SQL Server
  • Email
  • Secure FTP
  • Cleaning up DB objects when Upserts fail
Well suited for upserts. However, there are some limitations based upon primary keys, column names, etc. Sometimes if you package crashes or fails, Task Factory doesn't clean the temporary objects in the database.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My department's role is to support business intelligence reporting of ITIL process areas. We are currently using Task Factory to perform ETL processing and data warehouse processing. We utilize the email task to send our reports in pdf format, and we also rely on the data warehouse fact processing task and the dimension processing task as it makes processing much smoother and easier to manage.
  • Advanced Email task makes it easier for an end-user to configure.
  • Fact Load task makes the data flow much easier to manage than the OOTB lookup function in SSIS.
  • Dimension Load task makes it easier to track multiple dimension types when loading into the DB.
  • Would really like to see an SSRS generate PDF output with parameter input.
  • Load improvement for larger datasets in the Upsert function.
  • Consistency with expressions for every task.
The Nulls processing task has really improved the speed it takes to transform null data. Otherwise, scripting is involved or a very lengthy derived column tasks will need to be developed. This would make it really hard to manage, especially when you have over 100 ETL processes to manage.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am testing Task Factory features and functionality to determine if it's a good fit for our organization. It is currently not widely implemented across the business, but there is potential for it if the POC proves viable. I am primarily looking at Task Factory to replace cumbersome, manual API calls and to streamline data flow from 3rd parties into our internal data warehouses.
  • Good SSIS integration with other packages and processes.
  • Easy to configure 3rd party account logins, credentials, etc.
  • Intuitive interfaces.
  • The user-experience could be a little more intuitive. Struggled a bit to put all the pieces together the right way in order to get the data processed the way I needed.
Task Factory seems like it would be great for moving data out of our third-party systems and into our own data warehouse where it can be combined with our other mission-critical data. We are really seeking a way in which we can merge our users' front-end behavior and actions with back-end outcomes. Task Factory seems suited to the task.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Task Factory in our daily ETL processes. These processes are built and maintained by the Business Intelligence department
  • The task to call another package in a different solution
  • Advanced lookup and other tasks
  • Improvement can be achieved when new releases are tested better. We had a few times that our ETL stopped when implementing a new release.
When having a complex ETL environment and calling packages in different solutions, it's the only software we found that works according to expectations.
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