Welcome to the first in a series of articles that will introduce you to the BC Web Services which allow the integration of third party applications and the automation of common activities such as project creation.
We’ll look at what they can do and how they do it. We’ll do so by including actual examples straight from our development labs.
Introduced in Business Collaborator 6.1, web services allow third party applications to securely connect to Business Collaborator across the internet.
This enables the creation of solutions that:
For instance, you could connect an ERP financial system to Business Collaborator using Web Services to create a project collaboration area whenever the budget is approved for the project.
Each solution must be granted access to a server before it can connect. Furthermore, any action carried out is on behalf of the current user and restricted by existing access rights and membership permissions.
Authentication is securely handled by OAuth and all communications are carried out over HTTPS.
Use of the web services is free.
First you’ll need a developer with a can do attitude. Then you’ll need to get in touch with our support team who’ll be able to get the ball rolling.
The Web Services REST API does bring with it a small downside.
Jargon.
You don’t need to understand the terminology but if you are interested:
This series of articles is brought to you by Shane Donnelly. He first joined GroupBC as a developer back in 2002 and has been key in the delivery of modules such as ProcessPlan (Assure) and Tendering.