Managing data streams from various master data sources as well as content flow outward from Drupal can be easily implemented using Drupal's Migrate API. We present some use cases based on business need and outline how to design the solution for your requirements.
We would like to point out three cases of digital transformation for which we have developed Drupal-based solutions. First, services by a business or an organization need to be offered and managed in the digital realm. The second one is about interacting and building a presence in the digital world. Thirdly, an enterprise or large global organization often needs to integrate several digital platforms and move content (or other data) between them.
For the first case, the actual services obviously can be also delivered digitally or not, but in any case customers want to gain access to the services using digital tools. E-commerce is obviously one such case but not in the scope of this talk. Our example comes from a government agency needing to present their services and prices for online. There are separate collections and master data sources involved for descriptions of digital services and the prices for products, and all sources are consumed by other systems independent and even unaware of the official public site.
The second case is a more commonplace one, but from a Drupal platform perspective does not have very good solutions available. There is somewhat of a conflict between a business building a case portfolio and recruitment site, and using social media to attract visitors to their site. The site is supposed to deliver a unified experience to the visitor and it's aligned to the company brand. But then there is a social media service branded widget showing what the marketing department is lifting up just now, not fitting the site overall design. There shouldn't be news on the site and news on the social media, but just one stream that appears the same. The visitor needs to be able to engage in the discussion or follow the links, no matter where the original publication was.
The third case is an important factor in working with complex environments. There are existing platforms, new ones are introduced, and they all need to coexist peacefully and work together so that it is possible to align corporate communication and manage information resources together. O the other hand, one part of wise corporate platform management planning is to always have an exit strategy from the very beginning for any platform that will be chosen. We take pride in that if a client to our sadness one day chooses to part ways with Drupal, we can assist them to take their data and move somewhere else (provided the somewhere else is able to take the data).
Our solution for all three of these cases lies in utilising Drupal's Migrate API, that provides a framework to fetch, process, save and update data. One can build reusable components to handle and transform the data to be imported (or exported!) to simplify creating new integrations. We will not dive into the depths of technical detail, only cover enough implementation to convey the idea and provide a proof-of-concept level demonstration to convince everyone of the usefulness of the approach. There will be talk of plugins, REST APIs, master data, JSON, XML and CSV, but the essence is about solutions and concepts.
Our session will be interesting foremost to decision makers and architects on both Drupal system's user and provider side, digital leaders looking for solution concepts for complex environments and handling master data sources on a web platform. Also interested will be lead developers creating solution technical designs who are yet to learn the power and versatility of Drupal 8 Migrate API.
The session will be suitable to anyone who understands the business needs in managing data over separate services and managing an organisation's offering on digital platform. Some technical background is useful to cover the occasional details but not required to gain insight from the session. The attendants will be able to walk out of the session with a vision on how to design their multi-platform environment, manage the digital portfolio of their services, or how to implement all this to a client. And to pick Drupal as the platform to do it.
