It’s that time of year again! Infor has released the regulatory patching for Lawson. Patching affects 1099 reporting, benefits/ACA, and payroll. We have compiled some tips to help make your year-end patching experience as smooth as possible.
This node is used to parse a JSON response from a file or a web service call. The input can be any JSON text, such as the result from a web service call or output from a file.
On the output tab, you can select a sample document that will help building the variable list. When you click “Set Variable”, you can see all the variables that are available from the sample document, and you can export those variables so that they can be copy and pasted in assign nodes.
The automobile has gone a long way in design, speed, efficiency and most importantly technology. Today, vehicles are smarter and safer than ever and there’s no denying the cars of the future will become smarter, safer and more advanced. An article from The Burn-In shares a few advances in car technology that have made driving a bit safer and easier for our commute.
- Blind-Spot Detection – No matter how much design and input is put into a car, there will always be some blind spots for the driver. Blind-spot detection is a great addition for a driver to have another set of “eyes” when having to deal with fast lanes, incliment weather and merging into traffic.
- Rearview Camera – Rearview cameras help drivers be a bit more careful when backing out or into a space. It’s almost standard in new cars these days and the added safety of the rearview camera will detect if anything is in your way so you can safely wait to back out.
- Fatigue Detection – Whether it’s a road trip or being stuck in traffic after a long day at work, fatigue detection is a great addition to cars as it dings and asks or reminds you to take a break if you need one. Fatigue detection is done by a combination of things – drive time, speed change, lane swerving, etc.
- Forward Collision Warning – Per the article, “Whether a vehicle suddenly slammed on the brakes ahead of you or you simply got distracted, forward collision warning is a must-have safety feature for all drivers. Forward collision warning, or automatic emergency braking, uses radar to detect hazards ahead, such as cars and pedestrians, to determine whether your speed and distance can result in a crash.”
- Facial Recognition Software – Iphones aren’t the only devices that are taking advantage of facial recognition software. Cars are adding this personal feature as well. Per the article, “Facial recognition software in vehicles works by scanning your face to determine if you’re looking down, using a phone, or getting distracted. If the software notices any dangerous or alarming behaviors, it will issue warnings. While this software is still in its beginning phases, you can expect it to be common in most cars a few years from now.”
The automobile has come a long way and many players are challenging the competition by being one step ahead with technology. Pretty soon we might actually have those self-driving cars.
When setting up a lambda function there will most likely be secure information that you don’t want to put into your lambda functions. This is when you want to use environment variables. When declaring environment variables inside the code of your lambda function, add the string “process.env.varable_name” where “variable_name” is any string. Once you’ve declared all your environmental variables, go to your was lambda function console, and scroll down to the environment variables section. Then add all your “variable_names” to the left side text boxes and on the right enter in the actual value of the variable. You can then, if needed, encrypt the environment variables by using the encryption configuration.
The future of business technology is here and one of the major game players is customer relationship management, or CRM. Companies that use this software know how big of a role it has on data, relationships and day-to-day processes. We’ve seen what CRM can do for our company and know there is much more potential for CRM. PYMNTS.com shares a few insights of where CRM seems to be headed in the next decade and beyond.
David and Goliath?
Research done by PYMNTS other data sources show the increasing important of CRM offerings that offer better customer service and more personalization features. The many talks of integrated artificial intelligence with just about any program – CRM especially – is going to become a norm (maybe in the early 2020’s) rather than continued discussion. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-supported systems are at the cutting edge of CRM, and the audience and market for AI-related solutions is growing. “Some estimates claim that AI-enabled CRM software is on course to increase global business revenue by as much as $1.1 trillion from 2017 to 2021. Using such technologies to enhance CRM capabilities allows quick-service restaurants (QSRs) to provide customers with AI-enabled screen access at select QSR drive-thrus and other retail locations, offering personalization that would be impossible to match by relying on traditional Excel spreadsheet analysis.”
More Data
As businesses grow, people spend money and years go on, data continues to grow. CRM’s capabilities in data management will grow with it. Data is very important not just for operations and finance, but for the relationships with customers and vital information to help continue those relationships. The article states, “The general idea is to provide an omnichannel experience that applies to the 2020s. Birnbaum defined that experience as a “single-thread conversation around a topic where you can converse with your customers in any channel you support.” That requires a tight focus on customer service, and via personalization as well.”
CRM is just getting started so we should expect more companies implementing this solution in 2020 and beyond.
Infor recently announced that ground-breaking UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) has selected Infor Cloudsuite Industrial Enterprise. The enterprise resource (ERP) platform will underpin business and manufacturing processes at the new center in West Midlands – the most advanced facility of its kind ever created in the UK. UKBIC aims to help industrial partners design, test and commercialize next-generation battery technologies when it officially opens in spring 2020. The center is expected to expand across more industries over time. The UK based company selected Infor because of their incredible cloud ERP solution. Per the press release: the decision was based on Infor’s ability to provide a single platform to support all aspects of the business from quality control, traceability, production and finance to HR, talent management and analytics – as well as its long-term partnership approach. Infor MES, a solution to manage shop floor operations, could be deployed on-premise and work seamlessly with Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise, which is a huge benefit. HCL Technologies will lead the implementation for UKBIC.
The most common trend in enterprise resource planning as of late is migrating their solutions to the cloud. Dave Ives, Digital Advisory Executive at Altron Karabina, shared an article on IT Web Africa about how this migration is beneficial to organizations. With the arrival of mult-national data centers in the country, more organizations seen the benefits of the cloud and making it a standard business practice in South Africa. The business value in making the move sooner rather than later cannot be ignored. There are some challenges, however, that require a lot of obstacles to successfully run ERP in the cloud. Ives explains a couple and how to overcome it.
- Governance rules – Ives explains, “ERP operates in a highly governed environment. This means that any business must undergo several internal processes, including streamlining redundant and outdated processes, before committing to an upgrade or migration. With this decision comes the migration of legacy data and ensuring traceability of past transactions. Migrating from an on-prem to a cloud version requires a deeper assessment. Diagnostic tools are available from certain vendors to assess the impact of upgrading, while in some cases a refactoring of the solution, adaption of the interfaces and significant process changes may be required. The tools and assessments are typically run by a trusted partner who can align to a client’s organisational requirements. The resultant diagnostics also enables the partner to understand how the ERP application has been configured for an on-premise environment and what can be adapted for a cloud-based deployment. This enables the partner to either natively port the ERP processes or reconfigure them for a cloud solution.”
- Overcoming challenges – Says Ives in his article, “The cloud might provide the same features natively that companies had to tweak in their on-premise solutions, thereby foregoing the need to customize anything online. This is where an assessment forms an integral part of the migration plan. Tools and libraries that are available, such as the American Productivity and Quality Centre (APQC), provide standard process classification frameworks and assist in aligning to standard processes.”
AWS has SES (Simple Email Service) which is used to help developers create notification emails. In order to use this feature, you must create a template for an email and then you can send emails. Currently, there is no way to create a template in the AWS console. One of the ways to create one is by using a Node script. You first need to have:
- Node installed on your computer
- An AWS account with access & secret keys
You will want to enter your account information where the red highlights are. Then you must add a template name (name you will be using when calling template), htmlPart (text in the email in html form), subject (the greetings), and text part (The email body that will be visible to recipients whose email clients do not display HTML).
Run the script and check if your template is in your AWS SES dashboard.
Infor recently announced that Watami Co. Ltd. has gone live with Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage (F&B) – the multi-tenant cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution purpose-built for the F&B industry. This implementation was to improve Watami’s supply chain management (SCM) platform for its sites across Japan. At the same time, Watami will implement data-driven management with Infor Birst cloud-based business intelligence (BI) platform linked to the Infor CloudSuite solution. The Watami Group of companies operates across the food industry in restaurants and meal delivery services. Watami selected Infor CloudSuite F&B for its ability to drive business standardization through industry-specific functions and to build a platform for data analysis. This implementation has helped standardize business processes and data definitions in production management. With that, Watami is better able to advance in cost calculations and production planning.
The following instructions are given that you have a lambda function created that works. AWS has API Gateway which enables developers to create RESTful API endpoints so people can call it and in turn run a lambda function. If you have never set up an API in API Gateway, you must:
- Log into the AWS console
- Search for “API Gateway” in the services tab
- Press “Create API”
- Choose REST / New API / assign a name to your api
- Once Created, add a resource to you api
- Create a method
- Add the created lambda function to the api resource
Once you have followed these steps the API Gateway will give you a url where you can call from your code and it will run your lambda function. One last thing you must do is to deploy the API. To do this, go to the resources tab of the API and click the Actions button and then click “Deploy”. Note that you may need to set up CORS if you want to secure your API.