Autotask

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Autotask Integration User Guide

Preface

Autotask integration is a licensed service that began in ChannelOnline version 5.7. For pricing information, please reach out to your ChannelOnline sales rep.

Overview

ChannelOnline now offers customers the ability to integrate with Autotask. The new Autotask integration offers synchronization of customer information, quotes, and sales orders from ChannelOnline.

The Autotask (AT) application provides resellers with functionality related tothe  service desk, contact management, outsourcing, contract administration, time tracking, billing, reporting, and business analytics. The Autotask Pro module also includes Expense Management, Quote Management, Project Management, Sales Automation, Inventory, and real-time integration with Microsoft Outlook for e-mails. Many ChannelOnline (COL) customers are looking to leverage the quote and order functionality of COL and the service and project elements of AT. To assist these customers, 1WorldSyncContent Solutions and Autotask have worked together to help our clients get the most out of the two applications. This effort has brought forth some effective ways to synchronize and exchange data between the platforms.

In general, resellers would like to be able to have products on a ChannelOnline quote or sales order integrated into the Autotask application as products on a quote, on an opportunity, or project. To facilitate this, the integration has focused on these key areas of data exchange: sales rep information, end customer company and contact information, products, quotes, and sales orders.

Key Integration Benefits

• Import/Export Customers and Contacts between Autotask and ChannelOnline
• Export Products, Quotes, and Sales Orders from ChannelOnline into Autotask opportunities

Requirements

• Autotask integration in ChannelOnline enabled
• Autotask service (Hosted or Local)
• Autotask user with full rights to assign in ChannelOnline’s Integration page

Accounts & Contacts

Account company information has a bi-directional exchange of data between the applications. We assume that the addition and update of all contacts will take place during an account update or mapping. Quotes and Sales Orders will NOT transfer if the account is not already synchronized between the applications. This exchange needs to be facilitated in the following ways:

1. Synced between COL from AT via a scheduled sync job
2. Synced between COL by calling an Account Name manually from an import AT account link in the All Customers tab in Admin
3. Mapped manually in the integration section of the Integration portion of COL

NOTE: In order to sync companies and contacts between these two applications, customers are required to have a work phone number associated with both the company and the contact. If a work phone number is not present, ChannelOnline will use the default number 555-555-5555 to execute the transaction.

Products, Manufacturers, and Categorization

Products and Manufacturers can be migrated from COL to AT for Quote/Sales creation in Opportunities. For this integration, COL is used as the master for all product information and any standardized service SKUs. For accurate categorization of SKUs in AT, the ChannelOnline category and sub-category must be constructed in Autotask. Without these, all products will be sent to the default category established during setup. The exchange of data and the associated attributes will be controlled by ChannelOnline. The following activities can be performed:

• Export product SKU from COL to AT when associated with a Quote or Sales Order document in COL.
• Call Labor and Service SKUs from AT through a Query and onto a COL Quote or Sales
Order.
• Create product Manufacturers in AT from COL.

Service / Service Bundle / Labor: These AT items can be queried from the Quote or Sales Order in COL, selected from within a new window, and added to the documents as it is being created.

NOTES

• The Service, Service Bundle, and Labor items are not added to the COL product catalog.
They can only be placed on the document. Reporting in ChannelOnline will not be available for these items.
• For products to successfully export, the category/sub-category must already exist in AT, or it
will be assigned to the default selected in Admin.

Quotes, Sales Orders, and Opportunities

The capability to send quotes and sales orders into AT is the main focus of the integration and provides resellers with the largest benefit of connecting the two applications. Unlike in COL, however, in AT all quotes and sales orders (sales orders are just a billing extension of a quote) documents are tied to an Opportunity entity. This integration allows the user to query for an existing opportunity in order to make an addition or modification to the quote or sales order associated with it. Additionally, it is possible to create new opportunities by using only the COL document number.

• Opportunity names can be queried, selected, and attached to a quote or sales order in
COL.
• New opportunities will be created in AT by COL when no existing opportunity is attached via the query.
• If an Opportunity already exists in AT, the COL quote will be added to it in AT.
• If a synced quote tied to an existing opportunity in AT is updated in COL, it will also be updated in AT.
• Shipping/carrier (Shipping Type) information is sent to AT with the Quote.

NOTES

• Be sure to connect the appropriate opportunity for the customer, matching both the document in ChannelOnline and the Opportunity in Autotask.
• Only a single quote can be associated with an opportunity in AT. It is a one-to-one
relationship.
• Payment terms need to be selected on the document for quotes and sales orders to export.

Employees (Sales Reps)

For the successful export of quotes and sales orders, employees from Autotask must be directly associated with Sales Rep users in ChannelOnline. This is a one-to-one connection.

• Contact date format must be set to the location default mm/dd/yyyy in Autotask for exports to be successful.

Integration Setup

Autotask  integration instructions:

In ChannelOnline:

Creating a document-level custom field

1. Go to Admin -> Company Settings -> Global Custom Fields.
2. Create a new Custom Field at the Document Level. This field will be used for the AutoTask Opportunity ID, so please name it accordingly. It will be of type Text Input and will have a length of 0 to 200 characters. Under Usage, check the boxes for Quotes & Orders and Invoices.
3. Click Save in the left column, then go back to this field and check Enable, and then click Save at the bottom of the page.

Entering Autotask credentials

1. Go to Admin -> Integrations. If presented with multiple Go to integration links, click the one for Autotask.
2. Click the box for Enable.
3. Enter the Login ID and Password of an Autotask API user (a user with API-only permissions). If you have not made one yet, you can do so right now. Please see below for those steps:
4. Select the custom field that you just made in the dropdown for Use <field> to store the Opportunity ID from Autotask.
5. Check the box for Show Export to Autotask on each document…
6. You can ignore the section for Edit Taskfire…
7. Click Save.

Notes on the tabs:

• From now on when you go to Admin -> Integration (if you have only one integration set up) or Admin -> Integration -> Go to Integration for Autotask, you will be brought to the Dashboard.
• Dashboard:
  • This section gives you a brief overview of the number of items that have synced in the past 7 days. Currently, all values read None because nothing has been synced, but once you start syncing items, these will change to numbers. Clicking on the number for a corresponding item type will bring up a more detailed view of the synced items. While in that screen, you have the capability of searching among all synced items, going back further than 7 days, and deleting synced item entries (Deleting a synced item will not delete the item from ChannelOnline or from Autotask. Rather, it will simply delete any record of the item having ever been synced. This is helpful because, in the future, we may encounter a debugging matter that involves syncing the item for the “first time” and that can be encountered by making sure no synced item entry exists for this item.)
• Settings:
  • Connection
    • Clicking Edit will bring you to the first screen from when you initially clicked the Enable
  • Settings: To be discussed one section at a time soon.
• Data Transfer: This is where you will go to run jobs where you are mass exporting/syncing customers or quotes. We recommend not utilizing this at the moment (instead, sync one document or customer at a time while you are getting a feel for the synchronization).
• Tools: We will go over the Map Customers section in further detail later when we are mapping already existing customers.
  • Complete Reset: The link in this section will be utilized for completely resetting your settings, and details, and clearing out your Synced Items list for this integration for you to start from scratch. One example of when this would be used is switching to a new company ID, where you will have to reestablish products and customer synchronizations.
  • Tax Group Mapping: To set up tax transfers properly from ChannelOnline into Autotask.
• Sync Log: Where you go to view messages and errors associated with mass export jobs. Will most likely not come into play since messages associated with single syncs will show in a pop-up notification within the browser.
• Mapping: This page is a series of read-only pages that show what values from ChannelOnline map to which values from Autotask for each of the different types of objects that can be synced. If a value does not show up in this section, there is a good chance it is not taken into account during synchronizations.

SalesRep Mapping:

Note on this screen: If you wish to not map every value, you can refrain from doing so and just map one or two for the sake of testing later.

1. Go to Settings, and then click on Map SalesReps within ChannelOnline to Autotask Users. This screen is used to map sales reps between ChannelOnline and Autotask for the sake of automatically determining who the account managers for customers are and who the Sales Reps on opportunities are.
2. For each SalesRep in ChannelOnline, select the corresponding Autotask Username in the Autotask Employee.
3. Click Save.
4. Note: If you add new sales reps to ChannelOnline, you will have to go back to this screen and map them accordingly.

Miscellaneous Field Mapping:

Note on this screen: If you wish to not map every value in every section, you can refrain from doing so and just map one or two for each section for the sake of testing later.

1. Click Map Payment Terms, Delivery Methods to Autotask Items.
2. Map Customer, Document & Product Defaults:
   1. Select the default types, stages, and statuses for customers, opportunities, sales orders, and products accordingly.
3. Map Payment Terms: Each active payment term in ChannelOnline will have to correspond to a payment term in Autotask. Please map them accordingly. If you wish to configure your available payment terms in Autotask, go to the A in Autotask, then click on Admin. From here, go to FINANCE, ACCOUNTING, & INVOICING and select Payment Types.
4. Map Delivery Methods: Each active delivery method in ChannelOnline will have to correspond to a shipping method in Autotask. Please map them accordingly. If you wish to configure your available payment terms in Autotask, go to the A in Autotask, then click on Admin. From here, go to FINANCE, ACCOUNTING, & INVOICING and select Shipping Types.

Mapping customers:

1. Do you have existing customers in your Autotask environment that also exist in your ChannelOnline one? If so, you will need to map them accordingly. Please go to Settings and click on Customer Import Settings. Here, you will select the customer types that you wish to bring into ChannelOnline for mapping. Please also set Import Customers Using to AccountName. Finally, click Save. Note: Even if you do not have existing customers to map, please do the Import Customers Using step and click Save.
2. Go to Tools and click on Import and Map Customers from Autotask. What this will do is run a job that will go into your Autotask environment and do one of two things:

1. If it encounters a customer in Autotask that is not mapped, but whose Account Number value is the same as a ChannelOnline customer number, those customers will be mapped automatically.
2. If it encounters a customer in Autotask that is not mapped and whose Account Number value is not found in ChannelOnline, it will be shown in a list on the next screen and you will be able to specify which customer from ChannelOnline this Autotask customer maps to by typing the name into a field.

Clicking on just Map Customers instead of Import and Map will bring you to the Map Customers screen without running the job.

Individually Syncing a customer

To sync just one customer at a time from ChannelOnline to Autotask, go to the customer page and click on the link that says Export to Autotask. This will create in Autotask both a new customer entry and all new contacts under this entry. If the job is completed successfully, you will remain on the same page and a message will pop up showing this was synced successfully. If the job is not successful, you will see a pop-up notification informing you so.

To sync just one customer from Autotask to ChannelOnline, you can go to the Customers Tab in ChannelOnline and click on Import From Autotask. You will be asked for the customer name (Note for Support: the message will still say AccountNumber but because of the settings from before, we are actually looking for the account name. Also, if the Autotask customer does not have an Account Number, this may result in an error).

Update since ChannelOnline version 7.9: Select contacts to be imported from Autotask if you don’t want all the contacts in ChannelOnline. When importing an account from Autotask uncheck the ‘Import all Contacts’ checkbox. After the account info has been imported you will be able to import contacts using the ‘Import/Map Contacts from Autotask’ button on the account view.

Individually Syncing a document

First, please ensure that the customer and contact have been synced. Then, go to the document and click on the link that says Export to Autotask. If the job is completed successfully, you will remain on the same page and a message will pop up showing this was synced successfully. If the job is not successful, you will see a pop-up notification informing you so.

Depending on the ChannelOnline document type, the resulting Opportunity will show as an Opportunity in various statuses depending on what you specified as the default status and type.

Update since ChannelOnline version 7.9: You have the ability to specify a custom opportunity name in ChannelOnline for the Autotask doc; there will be both an input field and a search button.

Note on syncing contacts for customers that were mapped using the Map Customers screen

When you sync a customer using the Map Customers screen, the customer/company will be synced automatically but the contacts will not. To sync contacts for already-synced customers, verify that the contacts in both environments have the same email address, and then use “Import from Autotask” on the Customers screen. Attempting to use Export to Autotask on the individual customer will duplicate the entry.