Oracle Fusion Applications give you lots of tools for connecting to different parts of your technology ecosystem. Understanding these integration capabilities is essential to making the most of Fusion Apps and your other enterprise apps, too. And using the right tools for the right job will help minize complexity, maximize performance, and manage costs.

Read on for a crash course that will get you up to speed. It contains key concepts and links to a series of articles where you can find additional details. (Note that linked articles follow a logical sequence, so we recommend reading them in order.) 

Part 1: Connecting and extending Oracle Cloud Applications

This article covers foundational topics and explains how Fusion Apps can integrate with any external business application.

Summary: Fusion Apps use a variety of techniques to streamline the flow of data to and from all the systems that you use to run your businesses. In addition, Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) can support and simplify Fusion Apps’ connectivity with other applications, data sources, and/or cloud services. This is useful for organizations with hybrid and multi-cloud integration requirements (i.e., most organizations). 

Part 2: Integrations with on-premises systems, non-Oracle clouds, third-party systems

This article explains Fusion Apps’ built-in functionality to facilitate integrations with a wide variety of systems. It includes links to resources for readers who want to dive deeply into the technical details.

Summary: Integrations aren’t all the same—the tools and techniques vary widely based on use case. Fusion Apps provides you with many options, including: 

Data and reporting extracts

  • Bulk data loads automate the import of file-based data into Fusion Apps for a variety of purposes, using predefined import templates and embedded web services.
  • Bulk data extracts are a common requirement for loading data generated by Fusion Apps into external applications or databases. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Connector (BICC) and embedded web services are used for these purposes.
  • Report data extracts offer a way to send data from Fusion Apps to external reporting tools. Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher extracts data and formats it as CSV or XML files for downstream reporting.
  • Excel integration is self-explanatory, but exceptionally useful since it saves time and eliminates tedious data re-entry.

Real-time integrations

  • Inbound/outbound REST APIs can support real-time transaction processing like reading, writing, updating, or deleting information about a customer order or inventory. 
  • Inbound/outbound SOAP web services are like supercharged REST APIs: they specify multiple operations at once (e.g., both load AND import data), which makes them more automated and improves performance.

B2B integrations

  • Businesses exchange important information about orders, shipping, invoices, and more with customers and suppliers using standards-based file formats. Fusion Apps includes Oracle Fusion Collaboration Messaging Framework (CMK) which supports the exchange of XML messages based on the Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS) standard.

Part 3: Creating integrations with OIC and Fusion Apps

This article explains how Oracle and its partners use OIC and the tools embedded in Fusion Apps to create prebuilt integrations. It also explains how you can build your own integrations, and how OIC can help. 

Summary:

  • Oracle and its partners build and publish reusable integrations for common scenarios like integrating Fusion Apps with popular banking services, tax systems, employee benefits providers, foreign exchange systems, and more. Some integrations are available for purchase on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
  • Fusion Apps’ integration tools (described in the articles linked above) are available directly to customers who want to write their own integrations to custom apps, industry-specific systems, or third-party cloud services.
  • OIC provides the added benefits of a visual development tool for designing and building integrations, reducing the need for manual coding, as well as a secure file-transfer server for improved scalability and security of inbound and outbound data.
  • OIC-specific integration capabilities include:
    • Recipes: Downloadable sample or template integrations that you can use as guides when creating your own integrations.
    • Accelerators: Fully built, downloadable integrations for common use cases; they are ready to run after completing minimal setup and configuration.
    • Adapters: Application constructs for streamlining connectivity to applications, databases, and more.
    • Events: Listeners for specific, real-time updates within Fusion Apps that can trigger downstream processing such as launching an inbound interface or sending data to an external application.
    • B2B: Goes beyond the OAGIS XML formats supported directly in Fusion Apps by adding the ability to read, translate, and exchange data in other standards-based formats (e.g., Electronic Data Interchange). OIC gives you more ways to automate interactions with suppliers, customers, and third-party service providers.

Conclusion

Fusion Apps include a rich variety of capabilities for facilitating systems integration. OIC capabilities go even further, offering expanded options that provide even higher levels of automation and performance. Learning which tools to use and when will help you improve Fusion Apps connectivity while minimizing cost and complexity.

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