Webinar: Integrating JD Edwards and SharePoint

We recently hosted a webinar titled ‘Ready, Set, Integrate!’ during which we showed how easy InFlight makes integrating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and SharePoint. We also shared with attendees the business reasons that are driving business and IT leaders to integrate PeopleSoft and JD Edwards into SharePoint. Of course, we also demonstrated how JD Edwards can be integrated into SharePoint in a matter of minutes using InFlight. A condensed replay of the webinar is posted below.

Generally speaking, when we talk to organizations interested in integrating SharePoint and JD Edwards the reasons sound strikingly similar to the ones we’ve been hearing from PeopleSoft customers for the past few years. Namely, that JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is a core bedrock system-of-record that, despite the introduction of self-service, casual end-users still find cumbersome to navigate.

The Promise of Self-Service

As with many ERP systems, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Self-Service promised to cut costs, reduce paperwork, streamline business processes and increase end-user satisfaction. While some of these goals have been accomplished to varying degrees, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Self-Service has never quite delivered the type of intuitive user experience required to drive the reduction in costs and increases in user satisfaction that organizations require. Unfortunately, much of the efficiencies and many of the benefits of self-service rely upon users finding the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application substantially more intuitive to navigate.

More and More Systems

Further complicating matters, the number of different enterprise systems in-use among organizations has grown. In fact, according to a presentation given by Microsoft at the Collaborate 2013 Conference in Denver, CO, the average $1 billion company maintains 48 disparate financial systems and uses 2.7 ERP systems. As the IT portfolio of the enterprise-level organization continues to grow, so too will the drive to bring many of these systems together inside of a corporate intranet portal.

Driving Towards a Single Point of Entry

SharePoint has long been Microsoft’s fastest growing product line. Because it was easy to implement and use, many organization’s starting using it at the team and department level. Now, however, any time a discussion takes place within the highest levels of business and IT leadership concerning which technology should be adopted as the enterprise portal platform, SharePoint is typically discussed as an option. More so, many organizations are placing long-term strategic bets that SharePoint will continue to deliver. According to a 2011 study performed by Pique Solutions, 63% of companies using Oracle’s business applications also use Microsoft business solutions to bridge the gap.

In terms of integrating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne into SharePoint most of the business and IT leaders we talk to share several similarities. First, most either have adopted SharePoint as their portal platform or are seriously considering doing so. Second, most want to start by integrating self-service functionality frequently accessed by the more casual users. In general, the power users aren’t the issue. Instead, it’s the other 90% of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne users who need to enter their time sheet, submit an expense report, or just check their leave balances.  For the casual users, the JD Edwards user interface needs to be more intuitive. Integrating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne into SharePoint with InFlight makes that possible.

Click below to watch the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne SharePoint integration webinar replay.

We had a couple of questions related to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne come up during the webinar and we wanted to take a moment to answer them here.

Question: Can the InFlight platform, when used with E1, allow you to integrate with an existing SharePoint list? (Such as add a lookup field to an E1 record on an existing list item?):

Answer: Absolutely. Using Web Part connections where you feed a column from a selected list row into InFlight. InFlight will then substitute that into a url parameter string to get at the appropriate item in E1. This works out-of-the-box, and you can ask us for a whitepaper and video on how to set up the connection.

Question: How is InFlight single sign-on into JDE E1 implemented? Does it require an existing SSO tool (like Oracle Access Manger (OAM) to be installed prior?

Answer: Single sign on from SharePoint into E1 is delivered as part of InFlight with no additional software or changes to the E1 server required.