Why integration Routes are essential

While Alumio helps make integrations simple, this doesn’t mean that integrations themselves are as simple as just connecting the APIs of two applications to ensure that they exchange specific data. Therefore, it’s important to first understand how complex and complicated integrations can be. Developing full-fledged integrations involves solving critical challenges by answering crucial questions such as:

What specific data do you want to send from application A to application B? What is the format of the data that comes in from A, and what format does it need to be when it reaches B? When do you want to enable data exchange? Does it need to be in real-time or scheduled over intervals? And how frequently do you want to repeat the data integration? Would you like to modify this data that’s coming in from A before it goes to B? Would you like to only retrieve specific parts of the data you’re pulling in from application A to send to application B, for example, orders or customer data filtered by specific regions, time periods, or other criteria?

Alumio Route-building ensures that users answer all these questions and tap into all these possibilities and more before they run an integration. In other words, Routes in Alumio involve defining the specifics of HOW data moves between integrated systems. Each Route is a workflow that details the journey of data traveling from a data source (Incoming Configuration) to a destination (Outgoing Configuration) via the Alumio iPaaS. As such, Routes help simplify, optimize, and limitlessly customize your data integrations.
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Integrate data entities in a modular way

When integrating systems with Alumio, it’s important to understand that Alumio focuses on specific data entities, not entire data sources or applications. Think of data entities as the building blocks of your integration—like orders, customers, inventory, or product details. Alumio allows you to configure integrations to pull only the specific pieces of data you need, rather than integrating entire systems in a bulk, all-or-nothing approach.

For example, instead of syncing an entire ERP system with an e-commerce platform, you can set up an integration to pull only new Orders from the e-commerce store, transform them into the correct format, and send them to the ERP. Similarly, you might choose to sync only stock levels from the ERP back to the e-commerce system. This targeted approach ensures precision and flexibility with integration workflows.

Furthermore, Alumio also provides transformers that can be used to flexibly filter, extract, and integrate specific parts of these data entities (orders, pricing, shipping). This includes modifying data elements (order details, currency, address, etc.), which can furthermore be modified at the level of data fields (Order ID, euros, postal code).

By working with specific data entities, Alumio provides a modular integration framework. This means you can build flexible integrations tailored to your unique business needs without overwhelming systems with unnecessary data or processes. In Alumio, it helps optimize and reduce your number of integration Tasks.
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Common use cases for Alumio Routes

1. E-commerce to ERP Integration:
   • Sync orders from your online store to your ERP system in real-time.
2. Inventory updates:
   • Keep stock levels synchronized across multiple sales channels.
3. Customer data management:
   • Schedule consolidation of customer information from different platforms into a CRM or business intelligence tool.
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Key components of Route building

Alumio is a low-code, API-driven integration platform that enables integrations between various systems, SaaS, applications, and data sources via APIs. However, to help users build clearly defined integrations, Alumio streamlines the development of integrations with its unique Route-building features.
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The key features of Route-building within Alumio:

1. Incoming Configuration: Determines what and how data is retrieved from the source application (e.g., your e-commerce platform) into the Alumio iPaaS.
2. Outgoing Configuration: This helps send the data that is retrieved and transformed within Alumio to the target system (e.g., your ERP).
3. Transformers: These can be used to modify the data being exchanged. They can be used to filter, map, or enrich data to optimize integrations. As such, they help determine the format, the type of data, and the data structure to ensure compatibility between the source and target systems.
4. Scheduler: This is essential to automate when and how often the Route runs, which could be weekly, once a day, every hour, or every minute. Or, it can also be used to run the Route in real-time!
5. Task Management: Each unit of data that a Route helps integrate between two applications is defined as a Task. For example, each Order sent from an e-commerce platform to an ERP via an Alumio Route counts as a Task.

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