I have been given a new challenge for a website that I administer that is going to stretch my ability to operate Matrix to its limits.
The website is for a charity not-for-profit support group. I have previously set up a system for members to register, including paying membership dues using an ecommerce form asset. That seems to work just fine. The new member chooses their membership level and fills out the form with their details. Their credit card gets charged and an email is sent to the membership administrator.
The next step for the group is to take the details in the form and enter them into their CRM database. They are using Raiser's Edge as their CRM. The group would like to be able to automate this step. Ideally, Matrix would talk directly to Raiser's Edge.
What would be my options here?
I see that it is possible to set up a submission action to make a SOAP call once an ecommerce form submission is made. My feeling is that this is the most natural way for Matrix to communicate ecommerce form orders with other systems. I don't know if Raiser's Edge can receive SOAP calls and I don't know anything about configuring SOAP functions (would it require me setting up a SOAP server asset?), but if this is the best option, then I can make an effort to get this to work.
When an ecommerce submission is completed, an order asset is created. Would it be possible to transmit the data contained in a newly created order asset to the CRM? It is not clear to me how the data is stored in an order asset or how to extract it. Would it be possible to create an XML or CSV file of the answers to the ecommerce form?
Is an ecommerce form even the best way to implement a membership registration system? I am aware that an 'ecommerce order' asset generated by a cart/checkout system natively generates an XML format representation, which might be more usable.
Thanks for your help.