Behind the Scenes Magic: RepairEngine®'s 'Live Data' Exchanger

Filed under: Barcode Scanner Repair, intermec, Barcode Printer Repair, symbol, enterprise mobility equipment, Announcements

Some of Lexicon's customers have been asking us HOW RepairEngine® seems to know so much, and so quickly about all of the activities and transactions related to the repair and maintenance of their Symbol Motorola MC9060s or Intermec CK terminals, or any of the hundreds of other enterprise mobility devices and scanners and barcode printers we service.   From repair history to warranty status, from repair process status to shipment tracking, and from invoices to payments received -- RepairEngine® always seems to have information that is "up to the minute".  Can that be?

Well the answer for the last couple of months has been "yes" -- we went live with a robust and powerful new data exchanger system (we're going to call it 'LiveData' Exchanger when we issue the press release) which our team developed for RepairEngine® and rolled into production in September.  'LiveData' replaced our "old reliable" data comm technology which utilized multiple updates occurring at regular intervals throughout the day.  Our "systems of record" -- service center management and accounting, for example, would sync with RepairEngine® throughout the day to get relevant information onto the web, and available for Lexicon clients. 

Not anymore.  Now RepairEngine®'s 'LiveData' Exchanger uses its State Manager to detect any change that occurs in our web database or in one of our host systems instantly.  We use a Connection Manager to keep a connection between the systems always open (and recover it when necessary), and a Data Translation Rules manager to "tell" 'LiveData' what to do with a given transaction (for example, 'LiveData' Exchanger knows that a bit of data is a repair status update or a new routing rule for shipment processing or a payment -- and sends it along, accordingly), all essentially in real-time.  XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used to help standardize the communications that take place between our systems or between RepairEngine® and the incident management systems employed by Enterprise-level customers, for example.

It's leading edge stuff, we think and we're proud of it.  'LiveData' will open up important  integration opportunities for RepairEngine® and other useful repair management systems -- to benefit Enterprise Mobility customers in ways that haven't been possible before -- and we believe that costs can be taken out of existing processes for our customers, as a result.  And that will make it a winner.