Please give more insights on the benefits gained with Sitecore Connect features and capabilities
Sitecore Connect enables customers to easily integrate Sitecore products with thousands of applications. It provides efficiency, speed, and different values for system integrations including:
- Maximum connectivity, minimum overhead: Streamline integrations between Sitecore products and wider markets – overcome complexities and differences in authentications, formats, and connecting methods.
- Automation scenarios for marketers: Easily automate data and business processes across your customer experience tech stack using intuitive visual canvas. Different drag and drop flow blocks including integrations conditions, repeat actions, and more.
- Flexible data transfer points: Start your data communication from different points including trigger within your systems, periodic schedules, webhooks, using external APIs, or using Slack bots.
- Convenient data mapping: Smart prediction of your data entity mapping complemented with drag-and-drop manual fields mapping if needed.
- Active Control Dashboards: With active monitoring of all your projects and Recipes, you can easily spot and fix issues before they impact your operations.
What are the cost benefits for using Sitecore Connect over building custom integrations?
Sitecore Connect enables you to save a lot on the initial, development, and maintenance cost as it is easy to build, and setup savings in all these costs areas Sitecore using Sitecore Connect connectors and recipes. Sitecore Connect is most cost efficient when deployed to back-office data integrations, batch/bulk data integrations that move and transform large sets of data file processing, on a scheduled or triggered basis. It can also work well for low volume events triggered integrations (e.g., content publishing event).
What is the relationship of Sitecore Connect to Workato?
Sitecore Connect is a white labeled instance of Workato, the market leading iPaaS platform. This version of Workato is seamlessly integrated into the Sitecore Cloud and provides integrations to all Sitecore’s products. Customers license Sitecore Connect directly from Sitecore and do not need an additional license or agreement with Workato.
Sitecore Connect enables customers to purchase connectors and a robust integration workbench as part of a single vendor relationship with Sitecore.
Are there any considerations if I use Sitecore Connect compared to if I license Workato directly?
Sitecore Connect provides billing & support by Sitecore for customers who desire for single vendor relationship. From a feature perspective, the main difference is that Sitecore Connect only should be leveraged to integrate between Sitecore to third-party products. Sitecore Connect is not meant for integrating third-party to third-party use cases unrelated to Sitecore implementations.
Will Sitecore-developed connectors and recipes be available for all Workato customers?
We plan to make the connectors available to all Workato customers. Sitecore is evaluating whether to release the recipes designed and curated by us for use by Workato customers who do not have a Connect license.
Which Sitecore products will you develop connectors for?
Not all of these will be in the January 2023 release but will be added over the next weeks/months after release. We are working on launching connectors for:
- Sitecore CDP (Customer Data Platform) & Personalize
- Send
- XM Cloud
- Content Hub ONE
- Content Hub
- Search
- OrderCloud
- xConnect
Can you list use cases where customers benefited from Sitecore Connect?
Customers are covering multiple integration scenarios and requirements using Sitecore Connect. One of our customers is using Sitecore Connect to send and synchronize Sitecore Content Hub products to their own systems. Another client is using Workato connections to synchronize Salesforce CRM to Sitecore XP xConnect. Flexibility and wide range of covered scenarios is one of Sitecore Connect main values.
Will you build connectors for Sitecore Personalize (standalone) or would that be covered by CDP connector?
We are considering batch decision/flow Sitecore Connect integrations. Personalize (standalone) still has its own method of ingesting data and experiences through direct API/UI integration methods.
Can I use Sitecore Connect to build real-time integration scenarios?
Technically, you can build real-time integration. For example, Low volume real-time integrations, which in the case of a content life cycle event, can be easily achieved with Sitecore Connect. However, depending on your real-time integration scenarios, you should pay attention to cost usage. For example, tracking highly visited websites with Sitecore Connect can get prohibitive costs faster with the more visits and you are more likely to quickly exceed your consumption limits. Consider batching Sitecore Connect recipes executions to lower the amount of consumption.
Can I use Sitecore Connect to build third-party to third-party solutions?
Sitecore Connect is licensed for integrating Sitecore to/from external systems, i.e. A Sitecore product must be present in every Sitecore Connect recipe. Customers looking to solely integrate non-Sitecore systems with other non-Sitecore systems may consider other options such as directly licensing the Workato platform.
Can I use Sitecore Connect to build Sitecore-to-Sitecore connections?
Sitecore products will natively integrate through the Mesh (Sitecore solutions integration platform) and direct API/UI methods. However, this does not entirely prevent customers and partners using Sitecore Connect to build Sitecore-to-Sitecore integrations only when implemented as an option to bridge integrations between our products or when we have not provided a productized solution.