General Forum Question: What Contact Synch Method Are You Using?

Question

This is a question directed towards all forums members using SynchManager to synchronize B2B customers between Web Tools and SAP Business One.
Of the four possible methods listed below:
- WebTools UserID Field
- Email Address
- BusinessOne InternalCode
- Seek and Choose
Which one are you using to synchronize your data?
We're trying to decide between Email Address, BusinessOne InternalCode, and Seek and Choose.

Answer 1

Hi Micheal,
I can not tell you what people are using, but the pros and cons are as follows:
Webtools UserID (the exposed field on the BP contact)
This is the best option if you are willing to do the work of setting this property for all of you users in a meaningful way.
Pros:  Allows you assign a meaningful login name for users of the website
Cons:  You have to assign he userids (a lot of work if you have 10s of thousands of contacts)
EmailAddress
Pros:  hopefully, everyone knows their email address.  So this is a meaningful login name.
Cons: B1 does not require email address, so the user will probably end up with an OCPR ID if they don't have an email address.
B1 internal code
Pros:  it always works
Cons: no wants to be a number.  Your login name will be "1234", password = "whydoIhavesuchahorriblelogin"
Seek and Choose
I consider this the best option, unless you have a better algorithm to populate NPUserID than described below (let me know if you do )
The seek and choose routine works as follows:
1.  if they have an NPUserID, user that
2.  if they have an email address, user that
3.  use the B1 internal code
Pros:  User will have the best possible login name. 
Cons: You do not know which option the user ended up with
One last note:
v630 (p10--or whatever we are calling it these days), has added a login name to the Webtools user.  This addresses the glaring problem of not being able to change login name.  Now the user can change their own login.  (why did this take 5 years?).  Hopefully, this will make this decision less daunting.