Version 4.1 Feature Preview

Welcome to the v4.1 release, almost (we’re putting the final changes to the documentation). This release continues our overall modernisation of IMan, with key enhancements to:

The User Interface, including a new Preview area.
Major enhancements to our webservices capabilities.
A new streamlined installer.
A raft of minor improvements, fixes & version compatibility.

User Interface & Usability

New Preview Area

On our release the preview grid was pretty revolutionary, but it has had no changes since.

In V4.1 the Preview area has undergone a major rework.

The preview area now auto-refreshes – just one Refresh click, making design much quicker.
The new grid control used in the preview area is much quicker to expand child transactions.

Other UI Improvements

General performance improvements across the UI, making the Transform UIs snappier.
Modernisation of several controls used across IMan.
Usability improvements to the Script control such as resizing, better font and auto-check on edit.

Webservice Improvements

We’ve made another set of large enhancements to our webservice capabilities.

A new writer transform allows you to integrate with webservices requiring values to passed to it in key value pairs. The key/pair values can either be sent as URL or ‘body encoded’ parameters. Parameterised requests are typically found with older or simpler (web) services, in particularly payment processing gateways.
Paging Capabilities – Extensive capabilities to ‘page’ through data on Readers. Paging provides provides the ability to consume data from a webservice needing several requests (pages) to obtain the full dataset.
Response Handling – Textual and binary responses from write operations (POST, PUT, etc) can be consumed and written back onto the IMan dataset. This is key for any roundtrip integrations needing the values from generated from an insert/update to be written back to source data. Binary responses give you the capability to integrate with shipping services to produce labels.
Improved JSON Document Capabilities – Allowing complex elements of JSON data to be queried.
Extended Authorisation Capabilities – Additional capabilities on request headers have been added to the Basic Authentication providing integration with wider range of webservices.
Both JSON & Xml Readers have ability to post content with request. The post request can either be specified with a file path or with the post content itself.
New Training & Articles – To help you learn IMan webservice capabilities. These will be updated to the site on release.

Simplified Installation

The new installer simplifies the installation process. Missing windows pre-requisites and the IMan IIS Application Pool are now automatically added during the install.

Connector Readers

Connector Readers such as SageCRM, Salesforce, Magento now have the ability to deselect the transaction types from being imported. This greatly simplifies integration of connectors such as Salesforce, since unwanted transaction types can be removed from the IMan dataset yielding a simpler dataset.

Continued Performance Improvements

Continued performance improvements across IMan especially across the CSV, Fixed Width & JSON writers.

Sage300 Connector Improvements

Several key improvements have been made based on your feedback.

Ability to append to existing A/R Receipt batches when creating prepayments in O/E Order, Shipments, Invoices; much needed for eCommerce integrations.
Ability to delete empty or erroneous batches for A/R Invoices, A/R Receipts, A/P Invoices, A/P Payments & G/L Batches.
Ability to post A/R Receipt and A/P Payment batches.
New imports for Orchid Bin Tracking Transfers and P/O Requisitions.

Other Connector Improvements

Shopify – Additional fields added to Order download for discounts, taxes and shipping.
Shopify – Handling of multicurrency stores.
SAGE EM – General compatibility with latest versions.
SAGE EM – Ability to connect over an HTTPS connections.
SAGE CRM – General compatibility with latest versions.
SAGE CRM – Ability to connect over an HTTPS connections.
Salesforce – Massive performance improvements when working in the designer.

Other Transform Improvements

Ability to specify field headers on the CSV, Excel & Fixed Width writers; this rounds out the functionality made to the other writers.
Write out binary fields to a binary file using the WriteBinaryField function – Particularly useful for integrating shipping type webservices producing labels.

Compatibility

Ability to run IMan over an HTTPS connection.
Compatibility with SQL 2017 & SQL 2019.
Compatibility with Windows Server 2019.