Cassell Consulting Cloud Reporting

Updated: Monday, 19 July 2021 at 03:12PM

Author: Eric Vasbinder

Support Status: Supported

Integration Method: ODBC Direct Database

Connection Method: IPSEC VPN

Hosted: NO

Additional Charge: YES - IPSEC VPN

Product Use Case:

Cloud reporting solution for the aggregation of data from multiple locations.

Similar Products:

This product is similar in operation and feature set to PowerBI or Prophix.

ERP Connection Overview:

As per many other server-side integrations to third-party products, this product is designed to talk to Vista's database directly using ODBC. This connection requires that the Vista server be "visible" to the third party system. To ensure that the two systems can communicate, we set up a server to server IPSEC VPN between our cloud and the customer environment.

Deployment Methodology:

We do not support hosting of this product in our cloud. As such, the customer must continue to host the actual program (i.e. "bits") in either their on-premise environment or in another cloud. As a result, since this product and Vista will be on separate networks, a VPN is needed to bridge the gap between the two networks. This solution uses a data connector ("shim") between the Vista server and other components.

Detailed Instructions:

1. Stand up IPSEC VPN between hosting location of third party product and customer's Vista environment in our cloud: How do I set up an IPSEC VPN to access my Vista database directly?
2. Create SQL account to allow third-party to authenticate to Vista: I need a dedicated SQL account for my integration to Vista in your cloud. How do I set that up?
3. Configure the third-party solution to talk to the IP address of the new Vista server in our cloud.

tl;dr: All programmatic components of this solution must be hosted externally to Viewpoint's cloud environment. Customers who need to integrate this solution with Vista in our cloud need to purchase an IPSEC VPN. Once the VPN is configured and in place, we stand up a SQL account to allow communication with Vista. The customer and/or partner then configures this solution to point to the new IP address of Vista in the cloud.