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Exact Online - Getting started in Peliqan

Exact Online - Getting started in Peliqan

Exact Online is the business software market leader in the Benelux. Exact Online is a go-to-provider for companies looking to automate their accounting, financial, ERP, HRM and CRM processes. Exact Online also offers a range of industry specific solutions to fully manage all of your business processes needs. Website: https://www.exact.com/

This article provides an overview to get started with the Exact Online connector in Peliqan. Please contact support if you have any additional questions or remarks.

Contents

Exact Online Data Pipeline

Connect Exact Online

Connect Exact online through the Peliqan Connectivity module:

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Configuration options:

  • Starting year
  • Country
  • (Optional) table selection via ‘Advanced’

Start the oAuth connection flow by selecting ‘Connect Exact Online’:

  • Provide your username and password
  • Authorize Peliqan to access your data

Select the required divisions you want the data to be synced from and select ‘Connect Exact Online’:

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Due to the heavy API rate limitations from Exact Online, It is advised to limit the data that will be synced by selecting the specific datasets and starting year. To ensure a minimal load on the Exact Online API’s, we set the default sync time to 6h and implemented when available: - Using Sync or Bulk API - Incremental syncs - Start date - Incremental through parent object (e.g. purchase entry lines) More information on rate limits from Exact: https://support.exactonline.com/community/s/article/All-All-DNO-Simulation-gen-apilimits?language=en_GB
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Exact Online does not allow 2 parallel connections with the same users and app. So adding the same connection (User - Peliqan) will result in one of the 2 connections to start failing due to invalid authorization tokens.
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Multi-User account (= shared account using Exact One Identity) are configured to be accessed by multiple users and are not allowed by API to make connections. API calls must be made using individual accounts for security and traceability reasons.

We would recommend creating separate Exact One Identity accounts for each user which they can use to authenticate API requests and create connections.

Exact Online data sync to a data warehouse

Peliqan offers an out of the box data warehouse. Optionally the user can choose to sync Exact online data to their own data warehouse such as Snowflake, Google BigQuery, MS SQL etc.

Data will be synced to the chosen data warehouse and made available through the Peliqan UI for exploration.

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With the Peliqan federated query engine, queries on the Exact Online data can be written and data can be transformed and combined with other sources.

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Configure custom sync frequency for selected tables

We’ve set the default sync frequency for the Exact Online connector to every 6hours due to the heavy rate limits Exact Online imposes.

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However for many cases it is required to have a higher sync frequency for a specific set of tables: e.g. TransactionLines. With the Peliqan data activation library you con configure a more frequent sync for desired tables:

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  • Some details:
    • ‣
    Code snippet
    ‣
    Where to find this function?
    ‣
    Where to find my connection name?

Exact Online Data Activation

Report Exact Online data to Spreadsheets and BI tools

With the Peliqan Excel add-in you can easily sync your Exact data or query output to Excel and use the powers of Excel to report on the data.

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Connectivity to a BI tool such as Microsoft Power BI can be setup using the Postgres datasource credentials in the connection module.

Data sync with google sheet can be achieved by a data app writeback script.

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Dealing with Documents

Peliqan offers Exact Online data activation functions for adding "Documents" and attaching files to documents. Attachments can be added to the document in the Base64 format after the document object has been generated.

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Please contact support if you want to sync to other objects in Exact Online.

Creating a Document

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Updating a document

With document_update endpoint we can easily update the document object details and verify them using document_findone method:

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Finding a Document

“FindOne Document” method allows user to find document based on Unique Document Name( Subject ). Name of document must always be a unique name.

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Upserting a Document

“document_upsert” method allows users to add or update an object if the document with provided unique document name is present. In the below example, we performed upsert on document with “Subject” as serachfield that represents document name, which first searches for document with name = “327_INV/2024/00003”, and once it founds the object it updates the document details.

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Now, again we perform upsert with document name “327_INV/2024/00003” as the name was replaced means no document object is present with the same. In this case upsert function creates a new document object with the same name.

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Finding Document Attachments

With Peliqan, Document Attachments can be found in two ways, either by providing Document Attachment ID or Document Attachment Name. Make sure that you provide unique Filename.

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Adding Attachments to a Document

Attachments/Files data are converted to Base64 byte Object and passed along with Document object ID & unique attachment Name

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Delete records in the DWH that were deleted in Exact Online

The table deleted provides a list of records that were deleted in Exact Online. In order to delete those records in the Peliqan data warehouse, you can run the below script on e.g. a daily or hourly schedule. This script performs a JOIN with the table entitytype:

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# This script will delete records in the DWH that were deleted in the source (Exact Online)

schema = 'exact online'

st.write("Getting most recent deleted records from Exact Online.")
pq.run_pipeline(connection_name = 'exact online', is_async = False, tables="deleted")
st.write("Done getting new deleted records.")

dbconn = pq.dbconnect(pq.DW_NAME)
schema = '"' + schema + '"'

ts = pq.get_state()
if not ts:
    ts = "2020-01-01 00:00:00"

query = f"""
SELECT d.entitykey, d.division, e.name as entityname, d._sdc_batched_at
FROM {schema}.deleted d 
INNER JOIN {schema}.entitytype e
ON d.entitytype = e.number
WHERE d._sdc_batched_at > '{ts}'
ORDER BY d._sdc_batched_at
"""

rows = dbconn.fetch(pq.DW_NAME, query = query)

st.write("Deleting %s records." % len(rows))

for row in rows:
    table_name = schema + '.' + row["entityname"].lower()
    id = row["entitykey"]
    division = row["division"]
    
    delete_query = f"DELETE FROM %s WHERE id='%s' AND division=%s" % (table_name, id, division)    
    result = dbconn.execute(pq.DW_NAME, query = delete_query)
    st.write("Deleting %s with id %s in division %s: %s." % (row["entityname"], id, division, result["status"]))

if len(rows):
    pq.set_state(row["_sdc_batched_at"])

Custom ETL pipeline to sync a selection of divisions from Exact Online

The standard ETL pipeline from Peliqan can sync either All Divisions or one specific Division. If you have hundreds of divisions in Exact Online, and you want to sync a selection only, you can use the below custom pipeline script. This script uses a table as input.

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# This script will sync only selected divisions from Exact Online.
#
# Uses a table as input, set table name below.
# Also set correct connection name below.
# Add a new Exact Online connection for only one division id.
# After first run, disable the ETL scheduler and use the scheduler of this script.
#
# Add a schedule "every minute" to this script (to process "Sync now")

table_name = "exact_online_divisions_to_sync.divisions"
connection_name = "Exact Online"

import time, datetime, pytz
dbconn = pq.dbconnect(pq.DW_NAME)

st.write("Syncing divisions with 'Sync enabled' and last sync more than 24 hours ago, and also divisions with 'Sync now' enabled.")
query_divisions_to_sync = """
SELECT 
   division_id
FROM {table_name}
WHERE 
(
   sync_enabled = TRUE AND 
   TO_TIMESTAMP(last_sync, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') < NOW() - INTERVAL '1 DAY' 
)
OR sync_now = TRUE
""".format(table_name = table_name)

# Get divisions to sync from table, run pipeline per division, and update row in table
rows = dbconn.fetch(pq.DW_NAME, query = query_divisions_to_sync)

for row in rows:
    division = row["division_id"]
    st.write(f"Running ETL pipeline for Exact Online division: %s" % division)
    try:
        run_pipeline_result = pq.run_pipeline(connection_name = connection_name, is_async = False, categories = str(division))
    except:
        st.write("A pipeline for Exact Online is already running. Will try again on next run.")
        exit()

    run_pipeline_details = pq.get_pipeline_runs(connection_name = connection_name, run_id = run_pipeline_result["run_id"])
    status = run_pipeline_details["data"][0]["status"]
    ts = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Europe/Brussels'))
    
    update_query = f"UPDATE %s SET sync_now = FALSE, last_sync = '%s', status = '%s' WHERE division_id = %s" % (table_name, ts, status, division)
    dbconn.execute(pq.DW_NAME, query = update_query)
    time.sleep(10) # Avoid error that pipeline is still running

Need further help

Please contact our support for any further assistance via support@peliqan.io.