Warning this posting is purely technical. If you are looking for a way to dial-in to ADP or Reynolds & Reynolds DMS system and download customer data, inventory, financial or anything else then you should read on.
To do this we need scriptable terminal program. Our options are:
Expect, tool for automating pretty much anything using Tcl. We won't be using it as I could not get it to work on windows. O'Reilly Expect programming book is available from Amazon if you like to go this option. Could not find it on
O'Reilly - Safari Books Kermit, offers interactive and scripted terminal emulation. I just could not figure out how to get this going... Kermit has lot of books available all published in 90's. Couldn't find any on
O'Reilly - Safari Books. Hmm I should just cancel my Safari subscription... any time I really need to find a book it is not there.
AccuTerm, I mention it here as a solution. Did not try fully as the trial is limited and does not allow dial-up's. Frankly if I was the owner I would make sure that my software has all the functionality in trial mode.
PowerTerm, now this is what we be using and for $149.00 it is worth it and you can download a fully functional 30 day trial. Kudos. It comes with a nice auto script record for the times you are stuck. The documentation is complete. Has nice examples and possibilities are endless. Quick note... I could not get the Creative USB modem to work with the program.
and many others Google for it.
Lets gets started... In this example we are going to dail-in to ADP system, enter our credentials, select reports, select our inventory report, capture the output and turn it into XML and save for processing. Assumptions that we are making are:
1. You can actually dial-in... By the way don't forget to support
Open Secure Access 2. You have already created a report and saved it on system.
3. The report is the first thing in your report list... could be any record... but name it so it is first thing. Hey if you are up to it write another script that will create the report on the fly for you and share it with me. :)
Open notepad or
notepad2 and create new file and cut and paste the the code from the following URL.
http://www.autojini.com/blog/powerTerm_example.txt You will likely need to modify this to match your needs. I have documented the code well and you should be able to make sense of it. If you are lost or can't figure it out and need our help
give us a call we can write the script for you.
This is how we load the inventory at Crown Motors website [URL]http://crownmotorsredding.com/used/[/URL]
For example:
select @id, stock.no, coded.cost from uvinventory where stat.code = '1' toxml
Would return:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ROOT>
<UVINVENTORY _ID = "120309" STOCK.NO = "120309" CODED.COST = "11988"/>
<UVINVENTORY _ID = "120312" STOCK.NO = "120312" CODED.COST = "14988"/>
<UVINVENTORY _ID = "515277" STOCK.NO = "515277" CODED.COST = "16988"/>
<UVINVENTORY _ID = "120313" STOCK.NO = "120313" CODED.COST = "14988"/>
...
This makes the database structure the XML tags, saving you and I alot of time!
Oh and the best part, you do not need to install any software to get the data, in Windows you can use telnet from the command line. CMD->telnet
We do support OSA, all Automotive Dealerships should!
You still have to work by VPN if you are outside of the dealership.
Last time I VPN into a dealership my system was all messed up... sonicwall VPN client messed up my networking and kept on getting virus alerts. I doubt that in the near future I will ever VPN into a dealership to grab any data. I can't afford to have my system down.