“No software is an island.”
When your interview subject is paraphrasing English poet John Donne, you know it’s probably Friday afternoon at PaperCut head office after a hectic week in integration land.
Ryan Reichenberg is the newest member of the greatly expanded Integrations team. The team’s grown 200% this year.
Which, to be honest, sounds more impressive than it is. In truth, the old Integrations team (Alec Clews) now features Ryan and Dipto Pratyaksa. Maths hey.
I’m chatting with Ryan because I want to understand the growth in the Integrations team. Are more workplaces looking to connect PaperCut to their other software solutions? Is the developer network expanding? Is Alec just too busy [speaking at events]() nowadays?
Here’s what he said to me…
Ryan, why does PaperCut need an Integrations team?
Nice to meet you too, Al!
Oops… hi Ryan
The Integrations team helps customers and partners with all their integrations needs - from implementation design to general API questions.
PaperCut’s growth has meant an increase in the number of customers wanting to integrate PaperCut into their existing systems. The demand has somewhat escaped Alec capabilities and therefore - all new team!
In a nutshell, we harness the power of PaperCut and tailor it to fit our customer’s needs.
What are some of the problems you solve for businesses?
Integrations ultimately allow for an amalgamation of software. This can definitely decrease the overhead of external systems that employees need to monitor and be aware about. The flow-on effect is an increase in productivity and efficiency and reduction in strain.
For example, an integration that allows university students to log in to their student portal and automatically refund their PaperCut balance will reduce the strain on student services, who may otherwise have to manually issue hundreds of refunds.
“No software is an island” to paraphrase John Donne; all workplaces need to connect together the software in our organisations. This reduces costs and help customers get the most value from solutions like PaperCut – so it’s really important that we do all we can to help folks get the most from their integration work.
What’s some of the cool integrations stuff the team’s worked on lately?
We’re currently field testing a new network payment API for payment gateways. It removes the need for developers to write a Java plugin. Instead, developers can use whatever development tools they prefer.
This ultimately means easier deployment as no additional software needs to be installed with PaperCut MF. Payments occur across the network in real time. It’s pretty cool.
I believe you! What’s the most common problem you hear?
People want to connect their in-house user management system with PaperCut and don’t realise they can build a simple user synchronization and authentication utility.
Fortunately, we have a knowledge base (KB) article on it.
What’s your hot tip for an integration people might not know of?
When you use our web services API, make sure you use a preconfigured auth token, not the admin password. It’s about 3-10 times faster! See the Top Tips for using the Public Web Services API KB for more info!
I think all integrations are pretty cool. Integrations allow developers to extend and build on top of their favorite software. PaperCut is already super powerful, so it’s really cool to see how the community build on top of PaperCut and make it even more powerful.
One last one from me. Alec goes by the handle AlecTheGeek on Stack Overflow and Twitter etc. Is he actually a geek?
Oh definitely! The other day, I heard him reminiscing with a colleague about some old school computing hardware. I’ve also seen him celebrating about solutions to complex bugs in his code. Definite geek.
NOW READ: An interview with Alec the Geek
I end our conversation there. Ryan’s sneaking in one last ticket before the day ends. Or maybe one more after that.
The Integrations team is standing by to connect PaperCut to your technology stack. Hit them up at integrations-dev-support@papercut.com .
