Bitrix24 & Citrix: the one-way custom integration for automating the work of a product company

Despite the similarity of the names Bitrix24 and Citrix, they are completely different platforms, each of which has its own advantages and characteristics and cannot replace the other. If Bitrix24 is needed for automating business processes and conducting business online, Citrix provides for the creation of a virtual workspace with workplace visualization in a fairly broad sense of the term. However, each system has its own unique capabilities, and their combination can solve many business challenges that cannot be solved alone.

Prerequisites for creating integration

Avivi was approached by clients from the USA who have been working with Bitrix24 as a CRM system for a long time and are constantly looking for ways to develop their business. The company offers its customers special information products consisting of consultations, e-books, videos, various manuals and other materials. Some of them are sold to customers, others are provided on a subscription basis. At the beginning of its activity, the company's employees managed all the processes manually: they accepted payment, provided access to materials and monitored the terms of their use. But that was a long time ago and over time the number of customers has increased hundreds of times. Fortunately, there are new opportunities for automating business processes, most of which Bitrix24 took on. However, the subscription issue remained relevant, as it was quite difficult and expensive to implement such a scheme as a full-time system function.

The clients use Bitrix24 on-premises which enables Avivi developers to implement any functionality. However, in a specific case, custom development costs many times more than custom integration with a third-party service that can do what Bitrix24 can`t. Such a platform turned out to be Citrix, which has open and described APIs. Thanks to this, it was possible to satisfy the request from customers by creating a custom one-way integration.

What have we done at Bitrix24?

For further explanation, you should understand what is happening in the client's CRM. So, when the customer of the company chooses the product he needs, a Deal is created in the system. Here, the customer's data and the products selected by him, which may be one or more, are indicated. Each of the products is entered in the CRM as a "Product" entity, so there are no difficulties in automation. When the client has decided on the list of desired products from the company, the system generates an invoice and waits for payment. The Deal is in the "not paid" status until it receives confirmation of the credited funds.

It should be noted here that such confirmation is also provided automatically and is a consequence of integration with the payment system. But for now, this is a side topic, which we will talk about in detail in another article on the Avivi blog. Now let's just conclude that the notification from the payment system is the trigger that runs the automatic change of the status of the agreement to "Paid". It serves as a "trigger" to launch the execution of the integration code with Citrix.

Avivi developers created a new custom class for Bitrix24's EventHandler , which handles static events in the system. All the necessary actions performed in the conditions of one-way integration are indicated here. Based on the API, Bitrix24 creates a request to Citrix that states:

●     Client's name;

●     The client's e-mail;

●     List of files to be transferred to Citrix storage;

●     The term of access to files for viewing or downloading.

This completes the business processes on the Bitrix24 side.

What's happening at Citrix?

For the implementation of this project, we used only a small part of Citrix's file sharing capabilities. When the system receives a request from Bitrix24, a new folder with the name of the client's email is created in the "Personal Folders" section.

In general, you can configure a different name, but for automated business processes, this does not matter at all. Received files are loaded into the folder, for which access terms are specified. Client`s administrators can view the entire database in Citrix and make adjustments as needed. However, the system works harmoniously, so there is no need for manual control.

As you can see, Citrix has built-in timers for access control. The image above shows a list of users for whom various materials are available. Activity is measured arbitrarily: from years to minutes. There are also possible restrictions on the number of file downloads: one time or a certain number.

The last step in the process is to send a personalized letter to the client's email. Here is a notification about available materials and links to them.

Although the integration consists of many sequential steps, the execution of the algorithm takes fractions of a second. Therefore, the company's clients get access to the purchased information materials almost instantly after payment. And the most pleasant thing for our customers is that all this is completely automatic and does not require human participation at all. So the combination of Bitrix24 and Citrix capabilities shows a really great result. And there are many opportunities for the collaboration of these systems. Avivi managers will be happy to answer your questions about possible integrations for your business.