Overcast for Salesforce

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 a middleware.

A Salesforce-native App

Overcast is 100% cloud native and built as a Salesforce.com application. It is installed as an app from the Salesforce AppExchange and its UI, data and logs are all in Salesforce. Vigience fully manages, updates and maintains the full solution, all for a competitive monthly subscription fee.

Leverage your Salesforce know-how

From within Salesforce, you search SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and other on-premise applications for available APIs, tables, views or files. Interact with your backend data using Salesforce tools: map data to Salesforce objects, build Flows, or write your own APEX code to manipulate the data.

The Fastest and Safest Way to Integrate

Being native to Salesforce, your staff does not need to learn a third party tool where you create more business logic that you later have maintain. Overcast is simple by design and 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 business process integrations between Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc and does this really well – rather than trying to be all things. Overcast provides a secure link from Salesforce to the on-premise world and is the only solution that provides true real-time, properly authenticated integration to the backend.

Real-Time Data and Process Integration

The Overcast Components are powered by the Overcast Integration App which quickly and securely connects Salesforce to your SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and other on-premise applications. No on-premise software or middleware installations are required.

With Overcast, you can easily and reliably:

  • Synchronize your on-premise and cloud data with Salesforce
  • Visualize on-premise data in Salesforce and update it
  • Create seamless process flows between Salesforce and on-premise
Real-Time Data and Process Integration

Vigience Overcast Features

Overcast provides a single solution for ALL your Salesforce integration requirements.

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

Realize advanced integrations within days that would otherwise only be possible with massive subject-matter expertise and a lot of hand-written code.

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.

Vigience Overcast Features

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

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.

Auto-generate Apex classes

Overcast real-time integrations can be used to virtualize data, to create components that post data or to trigger a business process.

Overcast real-time integrations

for more information on building Overcast components

Overcast Component Builder

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.

Reliably synchronize data to and from Salesforce and keep all your systems in sync

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.

Overcast is designed for the most complex integrations

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
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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.