How to connect Magento with SharePoint

This "how-to-connect" documentation will explain the initial configuration of an example connection from Magento to a SharePoint Online List in Office 365. We will be synchronizing data stored in Magento.

This guide presupposes that you have installed the Layer2 Cloud Connector and that you are familiar with its basic functionality. The Layer2 Cloud Connector User Documentation will provide you with all necessary information.

The data provider for Magento Integration is included in the ShareWare and Enterprise Editions of Layer2 Cloud Connector. The ShareWare Edition is limited to synchronize 25 items.

Contents

1. Configuring Magento

2. Configuring the Layer2 Cloud Connector

2.1 Creating a new connection

2.2 Configuring the Data Entity 1

2.3 Configuring the Data Entity 2

2.4 Running your connection

3. Hints and known issues

3.1 Connection direction

3.2 Data model

3.3 Description column

1. Configuring Magento

Log in into Magento as administrator and go to System / Integrations:

Click on Add New Integration and provide the information below:

After saving your new integration, you will see that it is not activated yet. Click on Activate / Allow. You will get the Consumer Key and the Consumer Secret. Copy these values.

2. Configuring the Layer2 Cloud Connector

2.1. Creating a new connection

Create a new connection by using the Create New Connection option in the Actions pane (right-hand side). The new connection will appear at the bottom of the Connection Manager List (left-hand side). Click on your newly created connection to open the connection configuration settings.

Choose a meaningful name for your connection and replace the current "New Connection" Connection Title with it.

Connections to Magento can be bi-directional. An initial connection should always be uni-directional to assure that both data entities are identical before switching to bi-directional. Therefore, choose Left to Right as Direction. You can change this setting after your initial synchronization finished successfully.

2.2. Configuring the Data Entity 1

We will now set up our Data Entities. Go to the data entity “Data Entity 1” to open the configuration settings.

Choose a Data Entity Title. It is recommended to give your entities meaningful names to maintain an overview when you decide to set up multiple connections.

Select the Data Provider for Magento from the data provider list. You can search for Magento by typing into the selection box.

For the Connection String, we need information from step 1. You can copy the below connection string and adjust it to match your gathered information. Use the Verify Connection String option to evaluate if the provided connection string is valid.

OAuthClientId=clientid;OAuthClientSecret=clientsecret;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;URL=http://localhost/magento/;User=youruser;Schema=magento2;CallbackURL=http://127.0.0.1:33333;	

• "OAuthClientId=consumerkey;" this property should be set to the consumer key from step 1.
• "OAuthClientSecret=consumersecret;" this property should be set to the consumer secret from step 1.
• "InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" this property says that a new token must be generated after the authentication.
• "URL=http://localhost/magento/;" this property should point to the IP address from your Magento installation.
• "User=youruser;" this property should contain a user with access to Magento.
• "CallbackURL=yourcallbackurl;" this property must be set to the same Callback URL from step 1.

Enter the user account's password into the Password field. The field masks the value for better security.

The Select Statement text box is used to define specific data queries. We will be gathering some fields from the table Products. You can copy the below select statement and adjust it to match your needs. Save your changes by using the right-hand pane option Save Changes.

SELECT ID, Price, Material, Description FROM Products WHERE ID < 10

To check if all necessary columns are received, you can use the Preview Data option on the right-hand pane which will provide you with a pop-up window showing your sample data from your Magento entity.

2.3. Configuring the Data Entity 2

We are going to send the data to a custom SharePoint Online list. It's required that you set up this list prior to the next steps. Your list should contain matching columns according to your source entity.

Use the left-hand pane to switch to the data entity "Data Entity 2". We will be using the Layer2 SharePoint Provider for this setup. 

For more information about the SharePoint provider visit:

https://www.layer2solutions.com/support/cloud-connector-faqs/layer2-csom-sharepoint-ado-net-provider.

You can copy the below Connection String which contains the minimum of required properties to connect to your custom SharePoint Online list.

URL=https://your_custom_sharepoint_list_url/AllItems.aspx;Authentication=Microsoft_Modern;

• "URL=https://your_custom_sharepoint_url/AllItems.aspx;" this property defines the URL of your custom list that will be addressed.
• "Authentication=Microsoft_Modern;" this property will determine the authentication method used. Microsoft_Modern is the default authentication method to access Microsoft Office 365 / SharePoint Online and should work in most cases, even if the SharePoint site is connected to an ADFS. This authentication does not need any further connection string settings, other than the URL of the connected system.

Save your changes by using the right-hand pane option Save Changes.

In the next step, we will configure our mapping settings. Click on the Mappings option on the left-hand pane. If your fields from SharePoint are named identical to the fields from your source system, the Enable Auto Mapping option will match those columns. Disabling this option allows you to match your columns as needed. We enabled auto-mapping in our setup. Save your changes by using the right-hand pane option Save Changes.

2.4. Running your connection

To run your connection switch back to the main connection configuration node and use the Run Now Button located on the bottom of the setup page. The Run Synchronization Toolbox will also display the synchronization process. 

Below is a data preview of the information we access in our source entity:

This will be the result in our SharePoint Online list after our initial successful synchronization:

If you want to use a bi-directional synchronization, you can now switch your connection direction after our first initial synchronization run finished successfully. See section 3.1 for further information.

3. Hints and known issues

3.1. Connection direction

As far as tested, this connection supports uni-directional as well as bi-directional synchronizations. 

After adjusting the direction to bi-directional, you should check your Mappings settings again because some systems might include read-only columns that cannot be mapped directly.

We also recommend choosing a Conflict Resolution that matches your environment's needs. You can find out more about the different conflict resolutions in our Layer2 Cloud Connector User Documentation.

3.2. Data model

To see all the tables and views you can access with the Magento provider, use these queries in the Select Statement:

SELECT * FROM sys_tables

SELECT * FROM sys_views

If there are more tables or views available, you can load them with the option "load more" in the popup window.

3.3 Description column

If you try to get the column <Description> from the Products table from Magento you will get an error saying that the column exceeds the max length limit. The provider has a limit (2000 chars) for the set text from Magento. You can try to set the property DefaultColumnSize to a higher value in your connection string like this:

Other=DefaultColumnSize=8000

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