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Introduction

The Field Mapping Tab is shown below. Notice, in the top window pane, all of the available fields appear from their respective applications. As mentioned before, these fields may or may not depend on the metadata you selected previously. For example, in the case of HP QC, the fields selected may differ, if the issue type is 'defect' or 'requirement'.


To map fields, select the entity from each application and then select the desired direction of the flow. For instance,

  • "<>" is a bi-directional integration. 
  • ">" integrates from left application to right application. 
  • "<" integrates from right application to left application.

Once the fields and directions are chosen, click the Add Field Mapping button on the right side of the screen to add this Field Mapping pane below. The field items will be removed from the available fields in the top of the screen and appear down in the bottom of the screen under the Field Mapping Properties pane below:



Once the fields are displayed in the Field Mapping Properties pane, notice on the right-hand side there is a Delete and an Edit icon. If you delete the Field Mapping, then the fields will become available again (as shown above) under their respective products to map. If you click the Edit icon, the fields will be editable in the Value Mapping window. Click here for more information on Value Mapping.

Save Mapping

When all value mappings are completed, click either the Save Mapping button, or the Save As New Version button.

The Save As New Version button only creates a new version of the mapping and doesn't make it live. This mapping may be edited it in the future by clicking the Modify Application Link button. Once the mapping is saved, it is live as shown below.

Active Directory Lookup for User Fields

When trying to map user-related fields and want to integrate Active Directory Lookup/Search, then the same can be enabled and configured using field configuration as below:

If you are enabling the AD Lookup, then two inputs have to be given.

  • "Search Field" - AD identifier against which the input received from the source application will be searched. 
  • "Value Field" - AD identifier from where the destination application value has to be retrieved.

In the example below, the "Assignee" received from Jira will be searched against "sAMAccountName". From the result returned from the search, "mail" value will be sent to the VisualStudio "Assigned To" field.

The AD lookup only happens on the outgoing end, not at the incoming end as well. In the example below, if Assigned To is changed in HP, the new Assigned To value is sent to Jira's Assignee field without going through an AD lookup.



Note that source and destination values determined from such search results are saved in the field's value mapping (and will be visible in the UI as described above). If a value mapping is available, then the AD search will not be done. This gleaning of value mappings improves performance over time since stored mappings are faster than AD lookups.

AD Lookup Enable

Please ensure that AD/LDAP is configured using the LDAP Configuration screen in ConnectALL and AD Lookup user search is enabled.

Read-Only Type of Fields

When user tries to map the Read-Only fields in Field Mapping, then ConnectALL will warn the user if the field is mapped bi-directionally or the sync direction is selected inappropriately. It is up to the user to select the direction (or up to the adapter behavior) to accept values for Read-Only type fields.

Note
  • In an app-link, you will be able to set the direction of synchronization as bidirectional or unidirectional. In some applications, when the field that you are trying to map is read-only, the sync direction in ConnectALL will be unidirectional. ConnectALL allows you to change this to bidirectional (you will see a warning when you try to do this) and save the changes. This is allowed because some applications allow their read-only fields to be edited. Note that if you change a truly read-only field to bidirectional, attempts to synchronize that field will fail.

  • You will not be allowed to edit the sync direction of a row that has read-only fields. If you need to edit, delete that field mapping row, add it back, and select the desired sync direction.

Missing Fields Configuration

While modifying an app-link, there could be situations where a mapped field (in an app-link) could have been removed from the original application and it may not be available to be retrieved anymore. Such fields are displayed under the Missing Field Mapping section in the Field Mapping page as displayed below.

Similar to a Field Mapping Properties section, in the Missing Fields section also, a cogwheel is displayed against the mapped fields. The exclamatory mark icon next to the cogwheel denotes that there is a missing field and when you hover the mouse over it, a tooltip that provides information about the missing field appears.  You can either delete that field mapping row or choose to save the app-link retaining that particular field mapping. Note that if you don’t delete, the fields will not be used for synchronization.

To include the field back in the field mapping, make the required amends in the original application to ensure that the field is available to be retrieved, and modify the app-link to include the field. The field will be again displayed in the Field Mapping section and will be available for synchronization.

Synchronize Attachment URLs

An entire file is synchronized between applications with Attachment Sync. If desired, only the url of the file can be stored in the remote application. To enforce url sync, the source field will be the attachment, and the destination field will be a large text field. For example:

Note:  The mapping must be one direction ONLY.

Mapping a Field Multiple Times

Starting with version 2.10.26.2, ConnectALL allows you to map a field multiple times in the field mapping screen. This is achieved by using the reference fields configuration feature and is possible in three adapters and for a specific datatype in each adapter, namely ServiceNow (Reference), Salesforce (Reference), and VersionOne (Relation).

When you map a field multiple times using the reference field configuration feature, there are a couple of ways you can do it. We discuss these scenarios below.

Scenario 1: Mapping the Reference Field once with/without Reference Field Configuration.

 

In this scenario, all the three mapping directions are supported. 

Scenario 2: Mapping the reference field more than once with/without reference field configuration

In this scenario, bidirectional mapping is allowed only in one row. In other rows, the mapping should be uni-directional. This is explained with examples below.

Example 1: In the below illustration, note that the assignment_group field is mapped thrice. Twice with reference field configuration (uni-directional mapping), and once without reference field configuration (bi-directional mapping).


Example 2: In the below illustration, all the three rows are mapped using the reference field. However, in only one row, the mapping is bi-directional.

Note
  • In the above scenarios, mapping a reference field more than once with bi-directional mapping or mapping in the wrong direction is not allowed. An error will be displayed if you try to do so.
  • If you are upgrading to version 2.10.26.2 — If you have used reference field configuration in the business scripts, ensure that you change the reference field's configured field ID in the business script. For example, if it is 'fieldID', change it to 'fieldID^^^refFieldId'.