Boomi Tips from the Kitepipe Team

I recently polled the growing Kitepipe Certified Boomi Developer Team for Boomi Development tips that I could post in our Blog.  Here is what they shared with me:

As you may be aware, The Dell-Boomi Atomsphere IPAAS is a deceptively deep and subtle product. Attending the Developer one course is just the beginning of your Boomi journey.  I've been building Boomi integration processes for five years now, and I learn something new about the product on every project.

So, exchange of tips and techniques is an important job at Kitepipe, and we do this at our weekly team meeting.  This week I asked the team for some tips for the Blog:

Rich: Boomi is Best When Integrations are Small & Manageable

When you have a particularly complex integration, break it down into smaller, manageable parts and use your favorite graphical charting method to diagram the individual segments and the overall solution.  This not only helps you to uncover the subtle "gotchas" of the problem, but provides a roadmap and documentation for your solution.

Jacques: Proper Setup for Personal Boomi Testing Atoms

If your Boomi account has environments activated, and you have created your own personal atom for testing, always place that atom in its own environment that has the "Test" classification.  If your personal atom remains unattached to any environment, the Boomi Platform treats it as a Production atom and sends error alerts any time your computer powers off.

Phyllis: Improving Boomi Try/Catch Error Captures

when using a try/catch on a process with sub-processes, make sure you un-check the "abort if process fails" on the subs.  Otherwise, the try/catch will not capture the sub's errors and throw them down the catch path.

Larry: Avoiding Connector Calls in Business Rules or Decisions

When building a process, I try not to put connector calls in Business Rules or Decisions.  Usually you can put a needed Connector call in the upstream map.  Connectors in a business rule are easy to forget, and can cause problems if you need to swap them out when preparing for deployment, or need to update profiles due to endpoint changes.  In a map, they are easy to see.  In a User defined function, I’ll put CON in the name of the function to remind me that a connector call is hidden in there. Yes you can use Where Used to find connectors, but it is quicker to just be able to easily locate all of them.

Part of my role at Kitepipe is training customer developers, and advising customer management how best to build an effective internal Boomi development team.  If you are considering the Dell-Boomi platform, give me a call!