Data. It runs everything. It is often used to determine employee performance, audit business operations, and report on resource utilization during major events via historical metrics. In just the ARCOS Resource Management Platform alone, our utility partners can work with real-time data on the go, such as responders being notified by ARCOS Mobile that they have a pending work opportunity, and managers seeing their acceptance immediately right in the app; crew leaders using ARCOS Crew Manager to view and record the status and attributes of their crews; and the ability to have external resource tracking options based on real-time location data in ARCOS sMART. But, how do you tie it all together?
There is a real critical need for operations to maintain and report on the vast amount of data points coming in, especially during an event. However, for most organizations, data is in a myriad of systems that do not communicate or play well with each other. Not everyone has the full ARCOS suite of solutions. Critical Infrastructure industries need a way to connect legacy, outage, work management and EAMS systems. With ARCOS, platform integration is possible through a powerful API.
The ARCOS Application Programming Interface, or API, allows third-party programs and data sources to interact directly with the data in ARCOS. ARCOS has made an industry leading bridge that connects your systems together. How does it work? Through three possible methods of integration:
REST – The first way ARCOS can integrate platforms is through the industry standard Representational State Transfer API, commonly referred to as REST. The core ARCOS Resource Management Platform offering is deeply integrated with REST and offers many exciting opportunities. Rest is just like visiting a website. ARCOS is provided with a URL and method that contains all the instructions and data detailing what should occur, and that action is executed in real-time – and rest assured your API and operational data are secure and locked tight.
SOAP – The second is another industry standard called Simple Object Access Protocol or SOAP. SOAP is primarily used for ARCOS RosterApps but has strong integration capabilities.
SOAP is like sending someone a letter in the mail. The integration will prepare an envelope that explains what methods you want to use to retrieve or input information. Inside the envelope, we’ll place additional instructions and data that needs to be handled during the transaction.
MULTISPEAK – Finally, the most recent technology ARCOS offers is support of the MultiSpeak standard for our Cooperative customers. MultiSpeak essentially allows ARCOS and customer systems to naturally speak the same language. MultiSpeak is an exciting new ARCOS integration on any project our utility partners would like to undertake.
So, what does all this mean? What kind of data are we able to manage via the API? Some of the most common integrations ARCOS has seen and supported are:
- Sending and receiving Work Order information from ARCOS Crew Manager or Mobile Workbench, such as automatically loading in Work Orders generated from an Outage Management System.
- Time and Availability data, such as loading accrual data to ARCOS Callout for sorting roster lists.
- Scheduling data to and from ARCOS, such as keeping a Click, Workbrain, or SAP scheduling system synchronized with the ARCOS schedule.
- Transferring historical callout data so it can be extracted for reporting and business intelligence analytics.
- The exciting capability to create and manage callouts from drafting to fulfillment. This means you could have the ARCOS API create, initiate, and track responses to callouts occurring in ARCOS in real time.
ARCOS also supports the integration of people data, such as employee demographics, hierarchical information, and contact device. This allows customers to maintain their staff in ARCOS based on Active Directly, ADP, and other Employee data systems. The same applies to resources in ARCOS Crew Manager and ARCOS Mobile Workbench. The ARCOS Resource Management Platform API allows the creation and full management of all resource data.
Last but not least, let’s not forget about reporting. The data you can access in the ARCOS Web UI or Mobile Application can be retrieved programmatically though the API, enhancing business intelligence across any enterprise. It enables trends to be spotted, service gaps to be identified, and historical records to be fashioned for easy analysis and retrieval.
If you would like to know more about these products and ARCOS’s exciting platform integration capabilities, contact ARCOS now. We’d love to tell you more.
