Tasktop Sync Gateway : The Basics

The basic premise behind Tasktop Sync Gateway is that it enables to connect the various tools within your typical DevOps stack, with ease.  Prior to Tasktop Gateway, the various tools in a DevOps stack are connected to each other by any number of Bash or PowerShell scripting combinations. Usually requiring your Operation team members to familiarise themselves with the various API models of the ALM tools.

Integration scripts often take time to knock up, and in vast majority of cases are fragile to say the least.  Often not very scalable and dependent on a particular version of API the tools exposed at the time.

Tasktop Sync Gateway, dramatically simplifies the integration point, by literally enabling you to create API integrations between applications with a simple to use Web UI.  At it's core Tasktop SYnc Gateway, enables the sending of JSON payload of data via REST API calls, and transform the Payload to an Object or Model your target application understands, and enabling the Update and creation of artefacts.

The key to understanding Tasktop Sync Gateway is to learning a few basic concepts and terms.  If you are already familiar with Tasktop Sync,  then you'll already be familiar with them.

 

Repository

• Any system that contains artefacts to be used in an integration (e.g. defects, bugs, issues, requirements, etc.)
• Repository Connection - A connection to a specific instance of a given repository that permits Tasktop to communicate with that repository

[ebs_thumbnail target="_self" alt="Tasktop Sync Gateway Repository Connection" src="https://garywoodfine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Repository-1024x368.png"]

Model

• Introduces an artefact to be used in an integration
• Defines the information attributes to be captured
• Normalizes a data object that becomes common between different systems

[ebs_thumbnail target="_self" alt="Tasktop Sync Gateway Model" src="https://garywoodfine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Models-1024x429.png"]

Artifacts

• A certain record type generated during the development of software

 

Collections

• A set of artefacts from repositories

[ebs_thumbnail target="_self" alt="Tasktop Sync Gateway Collection" src="https://garywoodfine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Collections-1024x560.png"]

Integration

•  The flow of information between 2 or more systems.
•  the flow of information, defined by the flow specification, between two or more collections.

[ebs_thumbnail target="_self" alt="Tasktop Sync Gateway Integration" src="https://garywoodfine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Integrations-1024x407.png"]

 

Just a few clicks of the mouse, and entering some basic details you will have created an API integration point, you can use to send a JSON payload of data from virtually any DevOps tool including Vagrant, Grunt,  GitHub, Subversion,  Nant etc, to any number of ALM tools including Jira, HP ALM, LeanKit, IBM RTC (There over 35 end points to choose from! )

 

The benefits to using this approach is not only is it simple and easy to do, but Tasktop worry about all the API integration complexities so you don't have too!