9 Things I Love About Magentrix

Recently, one of my clients wanted me to build a customer portal for him. Normally, I would not think twice before recommending Salesforce Communities but this case was a tad different. My client needed cost-effective licensing for his portal which would enable him to provide role-based access to his users. Additionally, he needed the portal to be completely branded as per his company guidelines. This would be time consuming to achieve through Salesforce, as Salesforce does not have in-built support for JavaScript and Bootstrap. So I decided to use Magentrix for implementation of this portal.

Magentrix: A Quick Overview

Magentrix is a useful technology for setting up customer, partner and employees portals. It is also used to set up cloud-based mobile apps. These apps and websites help in collaboration, process integration and drive user engagement through a highly secured, web-based, mobile-optimized cloud platform.

Portal Implementation Made Easy

Let me elucidate on some features of Magentrix which led to the success of this project.

1. Pre-built components for customization

Magentrix is very similar to Salesforce communities in functionality. However, what differentiates Magentrix is the pre-built components and out-of-the-box features which enable you to use Salesforce without having to log in or code in Salesforce.  All Salesforce objects sync with Magentrix every 15 minutes, when a scheduled job is run to sync the changes and pull the updated changes in the Magentrix records from Salesforce.
It is smartphone and tablet-enabled, thus providing mobility to your portals. As there is very less or no development required, the portals were implemented very quickly, thus benefitting my client immensely.

2. Low cost

Thanks to the availability of pre-built components, Magentrix has the in-built ability to build portals with minimum or no code. Additionally, the licensing costs is considerably less than what you would normally incur with Salesforce, all of which led to minimal expenditure for maintaining and operating the portals.

3. Easy for the end users

Magentrix is completely user-centric, with easy, intuitive UI, and familiar social collaboration features that you use every day, which is why the time taken to train the users was less and user-adoption was quicker and more comprehensive.

4. Integration

Magentrix has a RESTful API which simplifies integration with other external systems. With its bidirectional sync, Magentrix enables near real-time sync of your portals with your CRM system. And if this were not enough, Magentrix also supports data migration with other system.
This was quite useful for my project as apart from the customer portal, my client also had a Salesforce-based CRM and needed the data to be consistent across both these locations. Magentrix’s complete integration with Salesforce CRM and bidirectional sync of data ensured consistent and accuracy of data across both the portal and the CRM.

5. UI elements

My client wanted the UI of the portal to be as per his organization guidelines. The limitation with Salesforce is that you can customize the UI only to a certain extent. Magentrix’s UI and visual elements are completely customizable, which enabled me to build the required layouts and make personalized branded themes for my client easily, exactly the way he wanted.

6. Self-Service ready

My client wanted his customers to be able to service their own requests. Magentrix is built on a platform that is capable of handling multiple customer requests at all times of the day. It can handle the questions your customers ask regularly and store them in an internal repository which helps you to refer to past conversations.  It also supports multiple languages which helps you address customers in different countries. Additionally, Magentrix also provides you intuitive visual apps to create online communities, discussion forums, ideas, articles and blog posts helping in communication with your stakeholders. Thus, I was able to implement a portal that was self-service ready in the true sense of the word.

7. Mobility

Magentrix has an in-built support for jQuery, JavaScript and Bootstrap, building a powerful mobile platform which helps you to build useful and responsive apps without worrying about the compatibility with different devices and responsiveness of the apps.

8. In-built SSO

Magentrix has an in-built capability to enable Single Sign-On (SSO) with your existing infrastructure using SAML 2.0, an XML-based protocol that uses security token consisting of assertions to pass information. Magentrix also provides SSO with leading social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, enabling you to reach multiple avenues through a single log in.

9. Security

Magentrix sites and apps are secured with 128/256-bit SSL, bank grade encryption. Magentrix is hosted in SAS 70 Type II certified data center, so you can be absolutely sure of your data’s security.

My Vote for Magentrix

Building a portal outside Salesforce in Magentrix was challenging because my client’s CRM was on Salesforce and Magentrix does not support Apex and Visualforce pages. Although Magentrix is not a substitute for Salesforce Communities, it has some exciting features which enabled me to cater to client’s requirements, without compromising on the quality that a typical Salesforce Communities portal provides. You can try Magentrix for yourself; just go to http://www.magentrix.com/aspx/trial, and choose the option that best suits you.  And once you have done that, don’t forget to tell me all about your experience.



Written by Twinkle Panjabi,  Salesforce Developer at Eternus Solutions