Installation

To install and run SSIS Integration Toolkit for Parature, your system must have the following components installed. 

  • A supported SSIS design-time or run-time, which can be one of the following:
    • SSIS 2017
    • SSIS 2016
    • SSIS 2014
    • SSIS 2012
    • SSIS 2008 R2
    • SSIS 2008
    • SSIS 2005

    For SSIS runtime, the installation should be done by using the corresponding SQL Server installation media (most likely in CD/DVD format), and you must select the "Integration Services" component during the installation (as shown below).

    Integration Services Runtime Selection

    Note that for SSIS runtime, SQL Server Standard Edition or above is required to run our software. SQL Server Express or Web editions are not supported due to their own limitations.

    Note that when using SQL Server 2014, a cumulative update is required (a recent service pack, such as one of the following, is more preferred) in order to run our software during runtime.

    For SSIS design-time, you should be installing the version of SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools) or BIDS (Business Intelligence Development Studio) that aligns with the SQL Server version that you plan to use for your final deployment (the runtime).

    • When targeting SSIS 2017 or 2016, you would use SSDT for Visual Studio 2015 available for download at https://msdn.microsoft.com/mt186501.aspx
      • Note that this SSDT installation can be used to target SSIS 2014 or 2012 as well.
    • When targeting SSIS 2014, you can use either one of the following:
    • When targeting SSIS 2012, you can use any one of the following:
    • When targeting SSIS 2008 R2 or earlier, you would have to install the Business Intelligence Development Studio that is shipped with the installation media of the corresponding SQL Server version. 
  • .NET Framework
    • For SSIS 2005, .NET Framework 3.5 is required.
    • For SSIS 2012 or later, .NET Frame 4.5 is required. 
  • Windows Installer 4.5
    • If you are using Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012 family of operating systems or later (including Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016), you do not need to do anything since the latest Windows Installer has been installed by the operating system.
    • If you are using Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems (including Windows XP), you should install Windows Installer 4.5 by downloading it from Microsoft website.

When you have confirmed that your system satisfies the above prerequisites, you can navigate to the KingswaySoft website at http://www.kingswaysoft.com to download the installation package. In the download page you will find two download links. One for x86 systems and one for x64 systems. Make sure to choose and download the correct package for your system. 

Download options

After you have downloaded the package, you can install the software by following the installation wizard. 

Using the Parature Connection Manager

The Parature Connection Manager is an SSIS connection manager component that can be used to establish connections with Parature.

To add a Parature connection to your SSIS package, right-click the Connection Manager area in your Visual Studio project, and choose "New Connection..." from the context menu. You will be prompted the "Add SSIS Connection Manager" window. Select the "Parature" item to add the new Parature connection manager.

New connection

Select Connection Manager

The Parature Connection Manager contains the following three pages which configures how you want to connect to Parature.

  • General
  • Advanced Settings
  • More Info 

General page

The General page on the Parature Connection Manager allows you to specify general settings for the connection.

Parature Connection Manager

Base URL

The Base URL field allows you to specify the Parature instance URL. It should be in the following format.

  • https://<instancename>.parature.com/ or https://<instancename>.prod.parature.com/
Account Id

Enter your Account Id. Your Account Id can be found under 'My Settings' after you have logged in to Parature.

Department Id

Enter your Department Id. This can be found under 'My Settings' after you have logged in to Parature.

Authentication Token

API Authentication token used to authenticate to the API services. This can be found under 'My Settings' as well after you have logged in to Parature.

Timeout (secs)

The Timeout (secs) option allows you to specify a timeout value in seconds for the connection. The default value is 120 seconds.

API Throttling Rate (requests/sec)

The API Throttling Rate is based on the Throttle Limits in Parature. This rate is set to 2 requests per limit, by default, to respect the Parature API Throttle limit. If the API Throttling Rate exceeds 2 requests per second, the Parature server may limit your request to 1 request every 2 seconds for two minutes.

Test Connection

After all the connection information has been provided, you may click the Test Connection button to test if the user credentials entered are correct.

Advanced Settings

The Advanced Settings page on the Parature Connection Manager allows you to specify some advanced and optional settings for the connection.

Advanced Settings - Parature Connection Manager

Port (Proxy Server Information)

The Port option allows you to specify port number of the proxy server for the connection.

Username (Proxy Server Authentication)

The Username option allows you to specify the proxy user account.

Password

Using Password option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user's password.

NOTE: The Proxy Password is not included in the Parature connection manager's ConnectionString property by default. This is done by design for security reasons. However you can include it in your ConnectionString if you want to parameterize your connection manager. The format would be ProxyPassword=myProxyPassword; (make sure you have a semicolon as the last character). It can be anywhere in the ConnectionString.

Retry on Intermittent Errors

This is an option designed to help recover from possible intermittent outages or disruption of service so the integration does not have to be stopped because of such temporary issues. Enabling this option will allow service calls to be retried upon certain types of failure. A service call may be retried up to 3 times before an exception is fired. Retries occur after 0 seconds, 15 seconds, and 60 seconds. Warning: Although we have carefully designed this feature so that such retries should only happen when it is deemed to be safe to do so. However, in some extreme occasions, such retried service calls could result in the creation of duplicate data.

More Info page

The More Info page shows some basic information about the toolkit. In this page, you can find the version information of the toolkit.

More Info - Parature Connection Manager

Adding SSIS Components to Business Intelligence Development Studio's Toolbox

SSIS Integration Toolkit for Parature includes two data flow components for use with Parature. They need to be added to the SSIS toolbox before you can use them in a SSIS data flow task.

NOTE: If you are using SQL Server 2012 or later development environment, you should not need to do this, as SQL Server 2012 or later automatically lists all available pipeline components by scanning the system. 

To add the data flow components, create a new data flow task if you do not have one yet and switch to the SSIS data flow page. Right-click on the toolbox area to bring up the context menu, where you can select the "Choose Items..." option as shown below.

Choose Items

You will be presented with a window called "Choose Toolbox Items". Switch to "SSIS Data Flow Items" tab, and select Parature Destination and Parature Source components from the list. 

Add Data Flow Components

Both data flow components should now appear in your SSIS Toolbox, where you can drag and drop any of them to the design surface of your SSIS data flow task. 

Using the Parature Source Component

The Parature Source Component is an SSIS data flow pipeline component that can be used to read / retrieve data from Parature.

The component includes the following two pages to configure how you want to read data from Parature.

  • General
  • Columns

General page

The General page of the Parature Source Component allows you to specify the general settings of the component. 

Parature Source Editor

Connection Manager

The Parature source component requires a Parature connection in order to connect with Parature. The Connection Manager drop-down will show a list of all Parature connection managers that are available to current SSIS package.

Source Entity

The Source Entity drop-down lists all of the currently supported entities which you can read from.

Batch Size

The Batch Size lets you specify how many records to retrieve per service call to Parature.

Filter Parameters

You can specify filtering parameters so that the source component only returns those records that satisfy such filtering parameters.

Refresh Component Button

Clicking the Refresh Component button causes the component to retrieve the latest metadata and update each field to its most recent metadata.

Columns page

The Columns page of the Parature Source Component shows you all available attributes from the entity that you specified on the General page. 

Columns - Parature Source Editor

Using the Parature Destination Component

The Parature Destination Component is an SSIS data flow pipeline component that can be used to write data to Parature. You can create, update, soft delete, or hard delete objects with this component. There are three pages of configuration:

  • General
  • Columns
  • Error Handling

The General page is used to specify general settings for the Parature Destination Component. The Columns page allows you to map the columns from upstream components to Parature fields in the destination entity. The Error Handling page allows you to specify how errors should be handled when they occur. 

General page

The General page allows you to specify general settings for the component. 

Parature Desintation Editor

Parature Connection Manager

The Parature Destination Component requires a Parature connection. The Parature Connection Manager option will show all Parature connection managers that have been created in the current SSIS package or project.

Action

The Action option allows you to specify how data should be written to Parature. There are currently five (5) supported action types available.

  • Create - Create new record(s).
  • Update - Update existing record(s). The primary field is required.
  • Soft Delete (Trash) - Moves record(s) to the Trash.
  • Hard Delete (Purge) - Deletes record(s) from the system permanently. Please note that for many entities (Ex. Account), in order to hard delete the records from the system, a Soft Delete must be performed prior to the Hard Delete action.
  • Run Action - Performs workflow actions
    • Support for the ticket (or case) and asset entity
    • The ActionId would be the action you are trying to perform. If you are not sure what this value should be, try entering any value for the ActionId field, and the error message should display all possible options
Destination Entity

The Destination Entity option allows you to specify which entity to write data to. A drop down with the available entities are listed here.

Refresh Component Button 

Clicking the Refresh Component button causes the component to retrieve the latest metadata and update each attribute to its most recent metadata.

Map Unmapped Fields Button

By clicking this button, the component will try to map any unmapped Parature attributes by matching their names with the input columns from upstream components. This is useful when your source component has recently added more columns, in which case you can use this button to automatically establish the association between input columns and unmapped destination attributes.

Clear All Mappings Button

By clicking this button, the component will reset all your mappings in the destination component.

Columns page

The Columns page of the Parature Destination Component allows you to map the columns from upstream components to destination attributes. 

In the Columns page, you would see a grid that contains four columns as shown below.

Columns - Parature Desintation Editor

  • Input Column - You can select an input column from an upstream component here.
  • Parature Field - The Parature field that you are writing data. 
  • Data Type - This column indicates the type of value for the current field.
  • Unmap - This column can be used to unmap the field from the upstream input column, or otherwise it can be used to map the field to an upstream input column by matching its name if the field is not currently mapped.

Note that the destination component comes with an implicit text lookup feature for drop-down or lookup reference fields. What this means is, you can pass in either an integer value (bigint to be more accurate) or a label value as the input for lookup reference fields (including some drop-down fields such as Sla). In the case when an integer value is received, the destination component will pass the value to Parature as it is, otherwise if it is a string text value, the component will perform a lookup by finding the reference record's ID before passing it to Parature. The following is the list of the text lookup behavior.

Lookup Entity
Lookup Field
Account Account_Name
Article Question
ArticleFolder Name
Asset Name
Csr Full_Name
CsrStatus Name
Customer Name
CustomerRole Name
CustomerStatus Name
Department Name
Eula Shorttitle
Product Name
ProductFolder Name
Queue Name
Role Name
Sla Name
Status Name
Ticket Ticket_Number
TicketStatus Name

Text lookup is not available for all other lookup types, which means that you have to pass in the lookup record's ID as the input.

Error Handling page

The Error Handling page allows you to specify how errors should be handled when they happen. 

Error Handling - Parature Desintation Editor

There are three options available. 

  1. Fail on error
  2. Redirect rows to error output
  3. Ignore error

When the Redirect rows to error output option is selected, rows that failed to write to Parature will be redirected to the 'Error Output' output of the Destination Component. As indicated in the screenshot below, the green output connection represent rows that were successfully written, and the red 'Error Output' connection represents rows that were erroneous. The 'ErrorMessage' output column found in the 'Error Output' may contain the error message that was reported by Parature or the component itself.

Error Output

NOTE: Use extra caution when selecting Ignore error option, since the component will remain silent for any errors that have occurred.

Enable Columns for Default Output

  • ParatureRecordId - Contains the newly created Parature's record's ID, which you can use to write to log or further process using additional data flow components

License Manager

SSIS Integration Toolkit comes with a license manager program which helps you manage and activate the product license key to be used for the toolkit.

Without a commercial license, SSIS Integration Toolkit will operate under the Developer License which is free to use for development or evaluation purpose. Under the developer license, you can use the software within the development tool (SSDT-BI, BIDS, or Visual Studio). 

KingswaySoft License Manager

The only limitation with the free developer license is the inability to run the software outside of the development tool (SSDT-BI, BIDS, or Visual Studio). If you would like to run the software outside the development tool, such as running SSIS packages on a scheduled basis or from a command line, you will need to acquire a license from us.

If you want to test out the functionality by scheduling your SSIS packages, a trial license can be requested. To do so, you can launch License Manager program, then click "Change License Key" button, where you can request a free trial license after filling out the necessary Licensee Information.

KingswaySoft License Manager

If you have received a product license key from us after placing an order through our online shopping cart system, you can also click "Change License Key" button and enter the product license key in order to activate the software to use the fully-featured commercial license. 

To request a free trial license or activate a product license key that you have received, you can use Web Service option to complete the process by sending the request to our license server directly. An Internet connection is required when Web Service option is used. This is the option that we recommend.

Alternatively, you can choose the Email option so that the license manager will generate an email for you which you can send to us. The Email option should only be used if your system has no Internet access. It requires manual processing so please expect to wait for 24 to 48 hours before receiving a license file from us. Once you have received the license file from us from through email, you can save it to a local file, which you can then install by clicking "Install License File..." button in License Manager.

If you have acquired a perpetual license from us, once the software has been activated, your license manager will be shown as something like below.

KingswaySoft License Manager

You can see your Support Expiry Date or Maintenance Expiry Date in the License Manager program if you are using a perpetual license. By default, your perpetual license comes with a one-year maintenance and upgrade, which entitles you to use any version of the software released before your Support Expiry Date or Maintenance Expiry Date. You can extend it by entering a new maintenance license key that you have acquired from us.

KingswaySoft License Manager

If your commercial license is a subscription license, you will not see the Support Expiry Date or Maintenance Expiry Date option in the License Manager program, since your subscription license comes with maintenance and upgrade for the entire subscription period.

Note: You must run License Manager program under a local administrative account due to the privileges required to write license file to the system.

Contact Us

If you need any further assistance with the toolkit, please don't hesitate to contact us