Great for Dynamics CRM
Updated March 15, 2023

Great for Dynamics CRM

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with TIBCO Cloud Integration (including BusinessWorks and Scribe)

We use TIBCO Cloud Integration to synchronize our ERP data with the CRM. It is used for six companies in Europe. As the ERP is the leading system, the source data always comes from Infor LN and Sage B7 ERP. This data is integrated into three different On-Premise Microsoft Dynamics CRMs. Most of the data is synchronized daily and partly every few minutes to keep the CRM data up to date.
  • Easy integration, even for non-programmers
  • It can connect to a lot of different systems/databases easily
  • The support is helpful and questions are answered fast and professionally. And if nothing helps, you get remote live-support
  • Good on-site training available
  • It is fast and (the CRM module) has the ability to cache query results
  • Export and import of mappings are very easy
  • Easy change of connections in (imported) mappings
  • The debugger is a pain. Sometimes it is hard to find an issue
  • It is not possible to split the integrations into steps. You need to copy/paste (and maintain) integration-steps that are used in multiple integrations
  • You cannot call a flow from another flow
  • It saves a lot of time so it had a huge positive effect on our daily business.
  • Mappings are cancelled when too many records fail, sometimes this is an unwanted behaviour
  • Sometimes the whole integration is cancelled and nothing is in the execution history. You can only see a small message in a mouse-over hover tooltip
As we don't use other Tibco products I cannot tell you anything about this. But the Tibco cloud environment has been obviouslly enhanced so it should work well.
We could easily add multiple agents and new systems. This had no impact on the performance. We had some issues because flows cannot be splitted and called by each other. So you have lots of flows which are the same. It would be great if this was improved. Also transferring values via variables between flows seems to be impossible. You can only use global lists with dictionaries.
Scribe has been the first big integration solution we used. After the test period we knew that it fits our needs. We thought about programming own solutions but in most cases that would be too much work.
We set up the integration and did not need to change it for more than a year now. It's stable and fast. I can focus on other work now. We could hire a new colleague who is not a programmer and he was able to work with Scribe within days.

Do you think TIBCO Integration (including BusinessWorks and Flogo) delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with TIBCO Integration (including BusinessWorks and Flogo)'s feature set?

Yes

Did TIBCO Integration (including BusinessWorks and Flogo) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of TIBCO Integration (including BusinessWorks and Flogo) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy TIBCO Integration (including BusinessWorks and Flogo) again?

Yes

Microsoft Visual Studio, Adobe Acrobat, Navisite Productivity and Collaboration (Microsoft Office 365 and MDM)
We did integrations for 4 different sub-companies. Mostly the data was pushed to the CRM system. As all were using MS Dynamics this was really easy with the connector. Sometimes you have small issues with non-standard systems.
I would recommend TIBCO Cloud Integration for most standard tasks, especially for integrating data to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The integration is fast and stable. But in some cases, I would think about a data warehouse solutions, especially when data needs to be calculated for business reports and dashboards. The calculation-abilities of TIBCO Cloud Integration are limited in these cases.

TIBCO Integration (including BusinessWorks and Flogo) Feature Ratings

Pre-built connectors
10
Support for real-time and batch integration
8
Monitoring console
5

TIBCO Cloud Capabilities

The cloud integration works well with other standard cloud systems. We use it mostly with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It's fast and reliable. Although it is expensive it reduced our costs because we need less people working on integrations
We migrated from the previous Scribe cloud solution. The migration was easy and the Tibco support helped to manage the migration within minutes. I've never seen something easier. But I am sure migrations from other tools will not go that smooth.
Yes the migration of the existing applications were very easy. The integration on the new environment worked the next day, so we had no impact. Nobody even noticed that anything changed in the background. That's how a migration (in the same ecosystem) should work. I'm really impressed.
I did not notice real big changes in the integration capabilities. Some things I would like to see (like calling flows from a flow, better debugging) are still missing. I also did not notice any speed increase. They often update some connectors but mostly this does not affect ours, because we only use 3 or 4 connectors.
  • Stability
  • Speed
I had problems moving a solution between organizations. I was called (they considered my local time) and solved it whithin minutes. The migration from Scribe to Tibco cloud was done within minutes also and without any real issues. The support is really superiour.
I made some feeback which was ignored by Tibco. Some small annoying things: The login screen shows only an email field and after entering it the password field appears. Because of this behaviour the saved password cannot be autofilled by the browser.
Another really annoying thing: The mappings open in a new browser window and this window is resized to the whole screen size - I have a 49 inch monitor.
I asked Tibco to change this. But it was ignored.
  • We used it straight forward for ERP and CRM

Requirement & Considerations

Fast and reliable integration to and between CRM systems in our company. That is what Tibco integration is exactly doing. We booked 2 days on-site training and were able to create the integrations. No weeks of learning needed, it just worked out of the box.
We did not consider other systems, Tibco convinced us at once.
We will use it to migration a on-premise CRM to a cloud CRM. We will not use the Microsoft tools because this is the chance to clean the data. So we will set up a really huge integration and copy only the relevant data.

Evaluating TIBCO Cloud Integration and Competitors

  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
The product features

Purchasing

The most important factor was the flexibility of Tibco Scribe. We needed to integrate data from a lot of different sources for example MSSQL, CSV files, and after splitting CRM (each company now has its own) from other CRMs. We are also able to work with different agents, which speeds up the integration a lot. You can install agents on different VMs and run jobs simulanously.
Connecting to several web-APIs becomes more and more important. Especially if you need data from self-written software in other tools. So the possibilities connecting to any APIs would be a bigger factor than some years ago. But Tibco Scribe is able to connect to every service we need, so we would have bought it (again).

Infrastructure Environment

Tibco Scibe itself runs in the cloud, so the deployment is very easy. We installed seven connector agents on several machines (one for each company which needs integration). The jobs can be run simultaneously overnight. We installed an additional cloud agent for integration data from some online services (Microsoft Azure).
Some self-written tools generate data which needs to be available in the CRM system. These data is usually delivered by an XML- or JSON-API. We do not integrate data from other popular tools. But it is planned to integrate data from a quality-testing-software where barcodes need to be tracked. So mostly other data comes from self-written tools.

Learnings and Advice

To speed up initial integration you can install 10 agents and run 10 solutions simultaneously.
My advice is to book an onsite training first.
I asked several questions and they all were answered quickly and always helped solving my issues.
To have a bit of configuration I added some variables in a configuration lookup table. There I can control things like "read data of the last X days"...
We did the correct choice. Nothing to change here.

Using TIBCO Cloud Integration core features

1. Debugging: This is really helpful finding errors.
2. Multiple agents: My solutions can connect to different agents on different on-premise systems. This speeds up the integration a lot
3. Lots of connectors: These are really helpful with most of the common data sources
As I first had an onsite training I knew the best practice. This is what I recommend everyone who starts with Scribe.
The different connectors are amazing. They connect to all data sources we have in our companies. The mappings are absolutely easy to use and the community (and staff) is helpful and extensive.

Using TIBCO Cloud Integration (including BusinessWorks and Scribe)

5 - Software developers, IT managers and consultants
3 - Software developers: These are doing the debugging and tricky things
IT managers: Doing the planning
Consultants: Sometimes help when there is no time
  • Maybe adding triggered integrations
It's stable and you can quickly setup new mappings with ease

TIBCO Cloud Integration Implementation

Buy a training and ask the community. This will both help a lot
  • Implemented in-house
  • Third-party professional services
aXon GmbH Paderborn
Change management was minimal
  • Setting up the correct permissions for the SQL database user

TIBCO Cloud Integration Training

  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
We have had an 2-day on-site basic training before we started building our integrations. After that we were able to build the first integrations very fast. I would strongly recommend a personal training to get a basic understanding how it works and what are common mistakes.
The onsite training has been very helpful to learn the best practices and start with clean mappings .
It is possible, but to get started fast I recommend a training. The trainer will answer specific questions directly which you would otherwise search in the internet spending a lot of time for it.

Configuring TIBCO Cloud Integration

We almost did not configure anything. It works out of the box!
Install it, run it
No - there is no facility to customize the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
We did not customize anything.

TIBCO Cloud Integration Support

ProsCons
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Not Available
They helped a lot with moving solutions between organizations. Got a call and it was done quickly.

Using TIBCO Cloud Integration

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Familiar
None
  • The mappings
  • There are no variables in the mappings
Most of the features work out of the box and stable. The mappings are done by drag'n'drop

TIBCO Cloud Integration Reliability

In the last weeks they had several issues with the login and we could not add users. But the integration did not stop, only the frontend has not been available.
It depends on the mappings, mostly it does about 2-3 records a second. But this is a limitation of the CRM API. Lets see what happens when we move to the cloud.

Integrating TIBCO Cloud Integration

All done by drag and drop
  • Dynamics CRM
  • Infor ERP
As there is a CRM connector this was absolutely easy. The ERP integration is done by direct reading of the SQL database.
  • Some self-written tools
Yes, this will be done on SQL server
Get a training before you begin

Relationship with TIBCO Software Inc.

We already knew what we need. So no advice needed.
We had no complains

Upgrading TIBCO Cloud Integration