Overcast
Integration App

Overcast is a Salesforce-native cloud integration service that lets you quickly and easily connect Salesforce to your SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and other on-premise applications.

The Overcast Integration App redefines Salesforce integration through its mixed replication/real-time architecture: an elegant, modern architecture that reduces integration complexity & risks significantly. Think of it as a Salesforce app that provides a data access layer for on-premise data and processes rather than being a middleware.

A Salesforce-native App

Overcast for Salesforce is 100 percent cloud native and built as a Salesforce.com application. It is installed as an app from the Salesforce app store and all its user interfaces, database tables and logs are in Salesforce. We manage, update and maintain the software and infrastructure, all for a competitive monthly subscription fee.

Leverages your Salesforce know-how

Once installed – from within Salesforce.com – introspect your SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and other on-premise applications for available APIs, views/tables, or files. After activating you can interact with your backend in Salesforce using the Salesforce tools: map data to Salesforce objects, hook up workflows, use Process Builder, or write your own APEX code to manipulate the data.

The Fastest and Safest Way to Integrate

Being native to Salesforce greatly reduces integration complexity and your staff does not need to learn a third party tool where you create more business logic that you have to adjust each time you want to make a change in the future. Its architecture is simple by design and thus drastically reduces complexity, project risks and points-of-failure. Installation, on premise connectivity and the first production-ready integrations can be realized in hours.

Focused & Enterprise-grade

Overcast focuses on enterprise-grade integrations between Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc and does this really well – rather than trying to be all things for all integrations. Overcast provides the missing, secure link from the Salesforce cloud to the on-premise world and is the only solution that provides true real-time, properly authenticated integration to the backend, and automatically simplifies that backend complexity (e.g. SAP) to provide an amazing ease-of-integration.

Overcast Features

Overcast provides a single solution for ALL your Salesforce integration requirements. Realize advanced integrations within days that would otherwise only be possible with massive subject-matter expertise and a lot of hand-written code.

Supports all integration needs – even calling SAP APIs in real-time

There are several different types of integration types that may be required. Typically, you will want to ensure that your backend SAP and your Salesforce use the same master data and so setup appropriate data synchronizations. When you want to enable advanced reporting or show additional information in the application, e.g. sales order history, then you might use Overcast’s real-time integration or optionally Overcast’s Salesforce Connect APIs (allows Salesforce Connect to talk to SAP without SAP coding) . Once basic data integrations are done, you might want start to integrate business processes – something that Overcast supports particularly well.

No work on SAP side required

Overcast’s great strength is that it works with any of SAP ERP’s 30’000 public APIs out of the box (BAPIs, RFCs) and with all customer-developed BAPI/RFCs. In addition, any SAP table can be replicated or accessed in real-time. All point-and-click. Most importantly: no work required on the SAP side, no requirement for SAP Netweaver, everything is 100% in Salesforce.

Secure connectivity – nothing to install

Connect Salesforce.com and your on-premise systems via a secure site-to-site VPN, or establish a secure gateway by using Overcast’s Secure Agent. This unique offering is another great strength of the solution and will save you the hassle of opening up ports in your firewall or otherwise spend a lot of time on establishing basic connectivity.

Fully automated technical integration

Integrating your on-premise system to Salesforce is fully automated. Overcast reads and interprets API metadata and converts data types and protocols so that integrating a list of products from SAP, say, can be done in 5 minutes and is as simple as selecting the right BAPI. Natively supports posting to complex SAP business objects (e.g. header, item, schedules, texts) as one transaction.

Drag-and-Drop mapping

Once data is being replicated to Salesforce, map the it to the corresponding Salesforce standard objects (or vice-versa). Use Overcast “Object Mapping” or any standard Salesforce tool to do this (Process Builder, APEX code, etc). The “Integration Object Viewer” provides tooling to test the integrations, save test data, run integrations and monitor responses.

Scheduled or event-driven integrations

The Overcast data synchronization scenarios can be run manually, configured to run on a scheduled basis (e.g. once every hour), or run based on trigger events (e.g. “new account was saved” can replicate single records or entire business objects).

Monitoring & alerting infrastructure

All integration runs are logged and can be monitored entirely from within Salesforce, and reruns easily triggered. Technical errors (“system not reachable”, etc.) and business errors raised by the APIs (“cost center not valid”) can be separately routed to different e-mail recipients.

INTEGRATION SCENARIOS

Overcast integrations connect Salesforce to your backend systems, whether by referencing through a call, or replicating the data into Salesforce. While Overcast provides a rich suite of pre-built integrations (Overcast Components) for Salesforce-SAP process integration, the Overcast Integration App gives you the ability to quickly and easily create your own integrations. The SAP integrations support S/4HANA in addition to SAP ECC, and we can also integrate with other systems via REST, SOAP, and OData web services, as well as database integrations such as SQL Server and Oracle DB.

Real-Time Integration Scenarios generate Apex classes to reference data in the backend system, and can support complex APIs.

Data Synchronization Integration Scenarios copy data from one system to another, but allow your data to stay in sync in both systems.

Real-Time via Salesforce Connect Integration Scenarios can be done with an external object generated by Overcast that represents the backend data.

REAL-TIME INTEGRATIONS

Auto-generate Apex classes that allow you to access data by reference instead of by copying data. Read or write data to any backend system, such as SAP, web services, databases or connect via existing ESBs such as SAP CPI or Mulesoft. Data displays instantly in real-time, and there’s no storage, so these integrations are simple to implement and support. With the help of the Component Builder, build your own real-time Overcast Components in no time.

Overcast effectively removes backend complexity: leave secure connectivity, protocol conversions, logging, high-availability and performance considerations with Overcast and focus on building user experiences and connecting business processes on top of the Overcast Integration Classes (Apex). Abstract all your backend systems from SAP to Oracle to mainframes and build out a collection of Overcast Integration Classes that act as a proxy to the backends.

DATA SYNCHRONIZATION OF BUSINESS OBJECTS

Reliably synchronize data to and from Salesforce and keep all your systems in sync. Securely connect SAP, web services, databases or connect via existing ESBs such as SAP CPI or Mulesoft. Overcast handles synchronizations of complex, hierarchical business objects to and from Salesforce. Salesforce or backend triggers can be used to synchronize data in near real-time, and all monitoring and logging can be done in Salesforce.

Overcast is designed for the most complex integrations, i.e. the data synchronization of SAP’s complex business objects. Configure Overcast to reliably synchronize data between Salesforce and all your backend systems with ease and implement data synchronizations in a few hours that would otherwise take weeks or months to implement. Do all that without writing thousands of lines of middleware script or code and with zero footprint on the SAP system side.

Transform data inside Salesforce with the help of the visual Overcast Object Mapping tool, with Salesforce formulas and, if required, with Apex scripts. There is no limit to the type of transformation possible this way and most importantly, all integration-related business logic stays inside of Salesforce.

Overcast provides all typical data SAP data synchronizations as ready-to-use Overcast Components that can be installed and used productively in minutes.

REAL-TIME INTEGRATIONS VIA SALESFORCE CONNECT

With Salesforce Connect, external data is viewed as if it were Salesforce data and thus allows you to write SOQL against backend data or use it in Salesforce Reports. Overcast acts as a Salesforce External Data Source and solves the problem with Salesforce Connect that there are almost no out-of-the-box data sources when connecting an SAP system: simply select the SAP table or API that you want to connect to and generate Salesforce External Object in minutes.

Logging/Monitoring

Overcast has a logging and monitoring and alert system built and will notify you if there are connectivity issues as well as if there business related errors arise (e.g. cannot create Salesorder because of failed customer credit check, etc.). Our approach to data set management means that it is easy for people or processes to re-run/re-trigger an integration scenario as needed and not worry about polluting new input data or result data being processed at the same time.

Overcast Benefits

80% of your Salesforce-SAP integration requirements are provided out-of-the-box
Overcast provides a data access layer (DAL) like easy access to SAP data (vs. a middleware/bus)
Calling backend APIs and tables in real-time as easy as calling Salesforce APIs and tables
Key integration steps are fully automated by Overcast – the rest is point & click, not code
Saves you many thousands of lines of code or script on the SAP, Salesforce and middleware side
All business logic related to integration is in Salesforce
This simplified, mixed real-time/data-sync architecture reduces development, support & maintenance drastically

CONNECTION STRINGS (One-time Setup)
First, connect all systems you want to integrate. The Overcast Integration App can be securely connected to your on-premise network in as little as an hour.
INTEGRATION SCENARIO (Step 1)
Chose if you want to do a data synchronization or do a real-time integration. With Overcast, real-time integrations and data synchronizations are configured in minutes without expert know-how.
INTEGRATION SCENARIO (Step 2)
Search for and select the API, the table or the view in your on-premise system to connect to. Then, hit save and Overcast automatically does the rest – you are done! Works the same whether integrating databases, web services or SAP systems.
OBJECT MAPPING (Step 3a)
When synchronizing data to or from Salesforce, map backend data to Salesforce objects – or vice versa. Use Salesforce formulas or APEX scripts to do advanced transformations.
OVERCAST COMPONENT FRAMEWORK (Step 3b)
When doing real-time integrations, select the fields to display, chose a layout (list, tile, etc.) and add the finished component to the Salesforce page layout. The Overcast Component Framework enables end-to-end zero to low-code development.

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The #1 Salesforce-Native Integration App

Overcast is a Salesforce-native cloud integration service that lets you quickly and easily connect Salesforce to your SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and other on-premise applications.
No on-premise software or middleware installations.
Thousands of SAP business objects can be integrated in a point-and-click fashion.