ConnectALL helps to integrate systems for Medavie Blue Cross

Medavie Blue Cross uses ConnectALL to synchronize its application lifecycle management (ALM) and Jira environments. The company selected Go2Group to install and configure ConnectALL and to assure a smooth, high performance integration of the two environments. Go2Group will continue to provide ongoing support and consulting services to Medavie Blue Cross.

Background

Medavie Blue Cross provides health insurance, life insurance, and travel planning services throughout Canada. Its insurance products include plans for individuals, groups, and government clients. The company processes claims for services, handles payments to service providers, manages benefit programs, monitors prescriptions, and provides a broad range of additional services.

Challenges

Medavie Blue Cross has been using HP ALM for its software testing. The company’s development teams use Jira. Historically, the company has attempted to integrate the data produced by ALM and Jira using third party defect synchronization and mapping software. However, according to Alan Chilton, Manager of SCM & Operations at Medavie Blue Cross, these attempts at synchronizing the two systems have “been unstable, mostly because differences in the data types between Jira and ALM were not effectively translated.” According to Chilton, the failed translations resulted in “synchronization stoppages and frequent support calls in the middle of the night.”

Additionally, migrating data from the company’s previous synchronization packages and Atlassian’s ConnectALL, installed and supported by Go2Group, made it important to avoid transferring defects produced by the inadequate synchronization software into ConnectALL.

Solution

A search for alternative integration products as part of a Jira upgrade project “led us to Go2Group and the ConnectALL product,” Chilton said. According to a Product Engineer at Medavie Blue Cross, “some major issues we’d encountered with our previous synchronizer … have been addressed through ConnectALL, allowing a more seamless, accurate synchronization of the data. The interface is quite easy to navigate and offers a convenient cloning option for the application links, easy viewing of logs, and clear error messages.”

The Product Engineer who was involved in evaluating Go2Group’s support and the ConnectALL product noted that he had to “communicate with Go2Group’s support a number of times and … found the service to be quick, helpful, and friendly.” The contact methods used to contact Go2Group’s support services include:

Support ticket
The Project Engineer used “Jira support to create a ticket regarding connection issues, and was contacted within a few hours” by a technician “who quickly spotted the issue” and immediately resolved the problem
The chat service on the Go2Group site
The Medavie Blue Cross Product Engineer made contact with a Go2Group support technician, using the chat service on the Go2Group site. The Go2Group support technician set up a web meeting, during which configurations were reviewed and problems were resolved.The Medavie Blue Cross Product Engineer noted that the Go2Group technical specialist “took the time to check some configurations … and point out some important files / directories”.
Live phone calls
The Medavie Blue Cross Product Engineer worked with Go2Group to set up scripts for migrating to ConnectALL

I am happy to see that some major issues we’d encountered with our previous synchronizer (in particular in relation to memo fields from ALM) have been addressed through ConnectALL, allowing a more seamless, accurate synchronization of the data. The interface is quite easy to navigate and offers a convenient cloning option for the application links, easy viewing of logs and clear error messages. Segregation of the application links and user permission options will allow us to explore more options to potentially allow our project teams to manage their own links directly.
Alan Chilton Manager, SCM & Operations

Conclusion

According to Chilton, Medavie Blue Cross has completed its testing and has successfully piloted the migration of its existing projects “with excellent results.” The company is in the process of purchasing a permanent license and is looking “forward to setting up our production ConnectALL instance.”