You are viewing limited content. For full access, please sign in.

Question

Question

Looking for Information on Integration with Ellucian Colleague

Laserfiche Version 11 Integrations
Updated March 27, 2024
asked on March 26, 2024

I am looking for any information I can get regarding integrating Laserfiche Avante on-prem with Ellucian Colleague. From some Google searching I see that LF has integration, IF you use Cloud. I am wondering if integrating on-prem with Colleague is possible or has been done with the LF Connector or APIs, etc. (either a pre-built solution available to purchase, or able to be written by us or a VAR). I want to gather whatever information I can to pass on. Thank you.

0 0

Answer

SELECTED ANSWER
replied on March 26, 2024 • Show version history

Gotcha. It's definitely possible. While I haven't personally worked on a Colleague integration, I'm aware of dozens of integrations between on-prem/self-hosted Laserfiche systems and other Ellucian products (most commonly Banner) and hundreds with other ERP systems such as SAP and Microsoft Dynamics.

In short, there are many integration options available to you on both sides. These tend to be generic/API/standards-based and thus highly flexible but involve at least a little bit of "re-inventing the wheel". I prefer to think of it as "tailoring to the use case". 

Our experience with pre-built integration connectors is that even when they're designed to be flexible, like the Laserfiche Cloud/Colleague one you linked, their specific functionality doesn't (fully) address an organization's use case a significant proportion of the time. With a few exceptions like the official DocuSign integration, most of the app-specific integration connectors we've built over the years have had disappointingly low usage relative to the number of customer using those apps. Accordingly, we put most of our efforts into enabling the versatile generic integration methods and making it easier to use those.

I will also note that Laserfiche Avante is simply one licensing model (a la carte) for self-hosted Laserfiche software. As long as you are licensed for the relevant Laserfiche software components (Forms, Import Agent, etc.), integration advice for self-hosted systems licensed under the Rio or Subscription models applies just the same. It's the components and their functionality that matter for integrations, not which license model gives you access to those components.

0 0

Replies

replied on March 26, 2024

Hi Mark,

We can more likely productively assist if you can describe the desired integration functionality and flow at a high level. Knowing the use case(s) is always helpful as there are often many different ways to integrate to achieve a desired outcome. For example:

  1. What direction should the integration go?
    1. Ellucian Colleague connecting to Laserfiche to send or retrieve information?
    2. Laserfiche connecting to Colleague to send or retrieve information?
    3. Both ways?
  2. Which Laserfiche components might be involved? Are you trying to:
    1. Send documents from Colleague to Laserfiche and have Laserfiche return links to those documents?
    2. Retrieve data from Colleague to populate Laserfiche entry metadata? 
    3. Auto-fill Laserfiche Forms fields will Colleague data?
    4. Embed Laserfiche Forms and/or document viewers in Colleague web interfaces?

Laserfiche and Colleague (and ERP systems generally) are so versatile, can perform so many different functions, and integrate in so many different ways, it's difficult to provide useful guidance without knowing something about the intended use case(s).

Cheers,
Sam

0 0
replied on March 26, 2024 • Show version history

Thank you. I don't have a use case right now, as I am just trying to gather general information on whether or not it is possible to integrate Colleague with Laserfiche on-prem. We are in the beginning stages of implementing Colleague so I just want general guidance.

I found this page:

Ellucian Colleague Integration (laserfiche.com)

However, it applies to LF Cloud. I am just trying to determine if, when the time comes, we can use either some pre-built Colleague connector, or the generic LF Connector with something we build, to do anything we need to do to tie the systems together. I guess I was hoping we wouldn't have to "reinvent the wheel" and maybe there was existing connection functionality between the systems, since the companies are partners. Since we are on-prem I was asking the question since what I have found so far seems to be LF cloud only.

0 0
SELECTED ANSWER
replied on March 26, 2024 • Show version history

Gotcha. It's definitely possible. While I haven't personally worked on a Colleague integration, I'm aware of dozens of integrations between on-prem/self-hosted Laserfiche systems and other Ellucian products (most commonly Banner) and hundreds with other ERP systems such as SAP and Microsoft Dynamics.

In short, there are many integration options available to you on both sides. These tend to be generic/API/standards-based and thus highly flexible but involve at least a little bit of "re-inventing the wheel". I prefer to think of it as "tailoring to the use case". 

Our experience with pre-built integration connectors is that even when they're designed to be flexible, like the Laserfiche Cloud/Colleague one you linked, their specific functionality doesn't (fully) address an organization's use case a significant proportion of the time. With a few exceptions like the official DocuSign integration, most of the app-specific integration connectors we've built over the years have had disappointingly low usage relative to the number of customer using those apps. Accordingly, we put most of our efforts into enabling the versatile generic integration methods and making it easier to use those.

I will also note that Laserfiche Avante is simply one licensing model (a la carte) for self-hosted Laserfiche software. As long as you are licensed for the relevant Laserfiche software components (Forms, Import Agent, etc.), integration advice for self-hosted systems licensed under the Rio or Subscription models applies just the same. It's the components and their functionality that matter for integrations, not which license model gives you access to those components.

0 0
replied on March 27, 2024

Thank you. That gives me enough to help get started. As we get further into things we can check back here or work with our vendor.

1 0
You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Sign in to reply to this post.

Details
Related Posts
Loading ...