Integrating Meridian Products: Proliance to Prolog

Integrating Meridian Products: Proliance to Prolog (Brian Rothery and Scott Wielt, Meridian)

This session was mainly about the specific Proliance-Prolog Connector that is being built for GSA, but kinds of gives a hint of what is to come.

• Proliance users are typically "Owners".
• Prolog users are typically Contractors.
• The GSA's customization of Proliance is called ePM. They are comissioning/funding a connector so that Proliance documents can be imported by Prolog Converge. (Aside: It seems like one underlying reason is that GSA doesn't want duplicate entry by contractors to be a reason for their overhead costs??)
• The Connector is currently in a pilot phase. Documents in the scope of the first phase are RFIs, Meeting Minutes, Submittals, and DWJs. They hope to go live with this in Q4.
• The user (contractor) opens the Connector application and is prompted for their Prolog login and their ePM login.
• They then select the the projects and document types they want to import.
• Only documents that the user can see in ePM are imported into Prolog. (Instance level security rules in Proliance are honored.)
• Some initial setup/configuration is needed to map Proliance fields to Prolog fields. Exceptions can be handled as well.
• The link between the two is maintained in several user defined fields in Prolog
• Subsequent imports can overwrite or update the records in Prolog

Some Limitations

• The flow of data is one way (ePM --> Prolog Converge). Updates must be made in ePM.
• There is no Proliance --> Proliance connector
• Attachments and linked documents are not imported
• List of documents that can be imported is limited.

It seems like Prolog and Proliance will both continue to be future Meridian products since they have different user bases. (They also have separate product teams.) This app is the bridge between the two. It sounds like this is "the start of something big". In the future, the limitations listed above could be tackled.

Applicability to WESTON

• None right now.
• If we do work for the GSA, we might be interested in a Proliance-Proliance connector
• If our subs are Prolog users, they/we might be interested in the Proliance-Prolog connector.