Integrating with eSquiggles

To maximise return on investment and usability of mobile working, many organisations require eSquiggles to integrate with their existing infrastructure and back office IT system. In some circumstances the processing of your data is reliant on existing processes and systems which the eSquiggles web application may not include.

For this reason, we have constructed a feature-rich Web Service API which can be used to enhance or extend your existing applications, providing the middleware required to make your data available on mobile devices and vice versa.

Web services are an industry recognised means of efficient integration, and are platform independent. The eSquiggles solution can either be used via a secure connection to our hosted platform as a gateway. Another term for this architecture is Service Oriented Architecture (or SOA).

eSquiggles technical staff can either liaise with you to review and assist with clarifying your exact requirements, or the web service API can be interfaced to directly by your own development team.

The API has been defined in such a way to allow you to leverage as much or as little of the eSquiggles functionality you require.

An example of how the integration can work is shown opposite. This demonstrates a very simple scenario, however the API allows for more complex situations by allowing you to use the API within your own business logic layer.

Scenario 1

Automatically sending “jobs” to and from specific devices from within an existing application.

In this scenario, data from the existing application can be queried and sent to eSquiggles at key stages in their life-cycle. For example if a job has reached a certain status and has been allocated to a certain user, then the eSquiggles API can be invoked and the job sent to the specific user’s PDA / mobile device. Then, eSquiggles can inform the application when the job has been completed.

For this scenario, we have an intelligent “agent” which manages the flow of data between the application and eSquiggles, or if you prefer you can implement your own integration components using Webservices directly. The topology for this scenario can be seen opposite.

While this scenario demonstrates how eSquiggles can act as part of an existing system with no need for users to access the eSquiggles web application directly, there may be scenarios where users wish to use some of the features of the website. For example when tracking the progress of jobs, or for allocating to users based on their resource plan.