Intuit Partner Platform team blog

IPP Developers Win $100,000 at Intuit Apps Showcase

What amazing day yesterday...the IPP team had a blast and all of the developers of the 30 apps that made the finals delivered awesome demos during the day.

Here's the official Intuit press release announcing the 4 winners - Corelytics, Bill.com, Postcard Services and Profitably - who each received $25,000 in prize money, and a special congrats to Corelytics who also took the grand prize - to be featured in a targeted marketing campaign that will promote the app directly to Intuit's 4.5 million QuickBooks(R) customers through its many marketing channels.

And a big thanks to all 30 developers, the ton of QuickBooks customers and Pro Advisors who made up the audience, the VCs who judged the competition - everyone who participated to make it such a sucessful and fun event. Rock stars!

We plan to make the video of the app demos available online soon, in the meantime check out their awesome apps!!

Looking forward to the next one!!!

IPP Team.

Partnerships, IPP + Windows Azure

When we started the Intuit Partner Platform, we had a pretty simple vision: To delight Small Businesses with an ecosystem of applications that solve lots of needs and work extremely well together. We set out to build a platform that would enable us to work with our partners to build more and better offerings for the small business community. 

Although the vision hasn't changed, the path along our journey has certainly evolved. Three years ago, platforms-as-a-service were nascent. To help accelerate our partners getting to market, we created and offered an end-to-end platform. This helped a number of our partners get to market, but it wasn't a perfect offering. It was a stack that solved the needs of a small set developers, but couldn't scale in features to meet the needs of all our developers.

While we've continued to invest in our native platform, other platforms have moved at lightning speed. Many of these platforms focus on what I'll call the "lower" end of the stack. This is the stuff a developer needs to build and deploy a saas or mobile app (hardware, database, etc.). These platforms have evolved way past anything we could create and honestly provide a better development experience than we could.

In parallel however, we've focused on our core assets and differentiators, and evolved the "upper" end of the stack. This includes access to QuickBooks data and key "go-to-market" services that make app integrations possible and delight small businesses. As you can see with our Beta release of Intuit Anywhere, we're continuing to push the envelope on providing ubiquitous data integrations and tightly integrated apps to our customers. That's what we're good at, and it's where we will focus now and in the future.

That brings me to a couple of announcements we shared at IPP CloudJam: First, we will no longer offer our "native development" stack for developers to build on. We are going to focus our resources on the top of the stack and make data and services for our developers the top priority.

So what should our developers who are looking for a PaaS offering do?

While we have always been and will always be an open platform, and we will always embrace applications built on any platform, we think it's important to help guide our developers who are looking for a PaaS option to what we believe is the best option on the market. So I'm pleased to announce that we will continue the journey we started with Microsoft last year and double down on our investment to tightly integrate the Windows Azure platform with IPP. The feedback from current developers using Azure and live on Intuit App Center has been extremely positive and we believe with additional investment in our Windows Azure SDK for IPP, we can make developing an app on Azure, leveraging Quickbooks data and IPP's go-to-market services, and getting into the Intuit App Center Channel, DROP DEAD EASY.

We've been extremely impressed with the dedication and quality of Microsoft's platform, their willingness to work closely with our existing partners, and their dedication to making developers successful. Microsoft has built a huge business behind their partner community – they just "get" how important partners are and how to treat them – and with our "native" IPP development option now gone, we think this is the best platform for our developers.

Read up Liz Ngo, Microsoft's business development manager on why we're doubling down on this partnership. 

Here is some more information on how developers can take advantage of our partnership, sign up for Front Runner for IPP. 

Look for new releases of Window Azure SDK for IPP in the coming months and if you have requests, feedback, or interest in learning more about Azure, please let us know!

Alex Chriss
Director, Intuit Partner Platfomr

Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online – Out of Beta!

Back in October 2010 we launched Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online in open beta with the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP). Since then, the QuickBooks Online (QBO) Web Services team has focused on developing new RESTful  APIs, stabilizing our platform, helping our first customers onboard onto Intuit Data Services (IDS) for QBO, and adding commonly requested functional enhancements to support you, our developers.

We’ve expanded our web services with five new publically available entity and transaction APIs during that time, and we have more new APIs and enhancements forthcoming. The broader team also added an IPP toolbar to the core product. It’s been a busy time for us and we have learned a lot – thanks for sticking with us through it all! There are always opportunities to improve, but with our v41 product release we reached our defined quality goals and have declared Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online ‘out of beta’!!

What does “Out of Beta” mean?

We looked to internal and external best practices to define our process for moving an API out of beta, and settled on quality criteria in three key areas: performance, test coverage, and defect management. Performance and test coverage in particular are key concerns for any best-in-class web service, and our APIs are doing well against our internal metrics.

While all our APIs have passed beta-level testing and performance criteria before being publicly exposed, we’ve focused our release-quality testing efforts on the Money-In APIs. This is where we saw the vast majority of usage during our beta, and we wanted to prioritize the completeness and stability of those APIs to enable your applications to go to market sooner. Money-Out APIs, as well as newly exposed APIs, will be transitioning out of beta on a case-by-case basis in the coming months. We encourage you to use all of our documented and released APIs, beta or not, and welcome your comments on them!

Even though we’ve already achieved release quality you should expect to see continuous improvement in performance and test coverage. Release-by-release we are tuning and optimizing our web services and database layers, and our test coverage grows daily – speed and stability will help our developers deliver better applications to the end user, and that’s good for all of us.

Where we are: Launched and Learning

We spent our first six months in open beta so that we could make sure we were solving both for our developers and for the end users of your (and our) applications. There were some big surprises and challenges, but we think the platform is headed in the right direction. We’ve got a backlog of feature and data requests, and it is revisited regularly when the team plans out our releases.

Just because we’ve moved our primary APIs out of beta doesn’t mean we’re done asking questions, listening to feedback, and trying to improve our services. Our team has adopted the mantra of “Launched and Learning” – we’ve launched, but want to make sure we continue to learn and improve the way we did during our open beta. Keep giving us your suggestions, comments, and feature requests – we want to make our APIs the best they can be for our developers, and we adjust our roadmaps based on our day-to-day learning.

There are currently nineteen APIs available for your use, and you can find out more about them at our documentation page.  Speaking of documentation – we’ve heard your comments and are hard at work improving our current documentation and processes to maintain quality for the future. The docs should have improved in detail, accuracy, and clarity over the last couple of releases, and you should expect more improvements soon.

There are already 6 great QBO-enabled applications live on the Intuit App Center, built by some awesome third party developers. A big thanks to Bill.com, Expensify, AuditMyBooks Analyzer, Quickbooks Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Transaction Pro Importer and Full Slate for being early adopters! And there's more great apps in the works.

Where it’s headed

Over the next few months you can expect to see work on new APIs and enhancements continuing. Time Activity, Reporting, Jobs, and moving OAuth for QBO out of beta are all projects in the pipeline so you should be looking out for them soon. We’re still evolving our longer-term roadmap, so please let us know if you’ve got requests – you can get them on our radar by posting to our “Change Requests - QBO data” thread on the IDN Forums. There is a great group of developers building additional applications on top of our web services, and we hope to see them going live to customers soon.

If you haven’t already started developing with us, would you like to learn more? You can get started building apps for small businesses nationwide by reading our documentation page, and by checking out the Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online forum over at IDN. Let us know if you run into any problems by posting on the forums – we’re actively monitoring them and a QuickBooks Online web services engineer will get back to you as quickly as they can. We hope your application is the next to go live for on the Intuit App Center with Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online!

Thank You

Intuit Partner Platform and QuickBooks Online teams

App Center Applications - What do Customers Want?

Developing an App Center application on the Intuit Partner Platform represents a unique and powerful business opportunity to sell your application to millions of QuickBooks users. As a developer, you may have the ability to build an app; however, the challenge sometimes lives in figuring out exactly what kind of application to build, identifying the customer opportunity or finding the app gaps.

Here’s some information to help get you started.

1. Check out our Intuit Customer Data on the IPP Developer Center. We’ve listed some valuable information for our developers that gives customer identity information by product and industry segment and also by the types of applications our customers are looking for. If you're an IPP/IDN registered developer you'll want to make sure you're logged in so you can see all of the data. 
2. Review this list of applications the developer relations team knows customers are looking for when they visit App Center. Some we may already have on App Center and some may still be gaps (review #3 to identify app gaps).
   • Customer / Contact Management:  Customer management, sales cyle/leads, marketing integration
   • Reporting:  Custom Reporting, Business Reporting, Business Planning, Financial Forecasting
   • Warehouse / Distribution: Inventory, EDI, Barcoding/Labels, Shipping
   • Manufacturing: ERP/MRP, Quoting
   • Construction: Estimating, Bidding, Job Tracking, Project Management and Resource Allocation, Government Contract Management
   • Retail: Webstore, ECommerce, Inventory Sync, Shopping Cart Integration, Commissions
   • Professional Services: Time Cards, Time Tracking, Billing/Invoicing, Accounts Receivable Management, Scheduling, Expenses, Collaboration, Employee Management
   • Field Services Management: GPS, Dispatch, Route Optimization, Inventory, Job Tracking, Service Agreements, Credit Card Processing, Equipment Tracking, Equipment Management/Maintenance
   • Non-Profit: Membership Management, Fund Accounting, Donation Tracking, Event Planning
   • Data Import / Export / Sync
   • Property Management & Real Estate: Online Reservations, Field Services/Dispatch, Scheduling, Work Orders, Commissions
3. Check out Intuit App Center and identify the app gaps. Now that you know a little bit more about the QuickBooks customers and more about what they need, check out Intuit App Center and see what’s missing.  It’s also important to remember that multiple applications in the same space can co-exist (even if one of those applications has been built by Intuit.)
4. Get your app on App Center and start selling it to millions of QuickBooks users! Get started building your IPP Application today by visiting the IPP Developer Center!  You can choose to Build Natively on the Platform or Federate your existing SaaS application.  

See you on App Center!

Announcing IPP v2.14

Happy New Year! IPP v2.14 is now live and available for Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) partners. This release is another in a series focused on extending developer tools and data services, as well as improving the shopping, buying, and user experience for end customers on Intuit App Center.

IPP v2.14 CONTENTS

1. INTUIT APP CENTER END-USER ENHANCEMENTS

• Ability to serve customized IPP marketing landing pages from within QuickBooks
  IPP now has the ability to serve customized IPP marketing landing pages from within QuickBooks. Previously, the in-product placements for Intuit App Center took a user to the homepage. All users will now be taken to a landing page that can optionally be customized to the specific QuickBooks industry the user has selected (Finance, Construction, Services, etc.).
  This will present a more appropriate entry point to Intuit App Center from within QuickBooks and allow direct marketing exposure for select applications.
• 1-Click Sync / Simplified Data Setup
  Starting with QuickBooks 2011 R3 or later, IPP will have the ability to initiate QuickBooks file sync from the checkout process on Intuit App Center. Users with QuickBooks 2011 R3 or later will not need to switch back to QuickBooks from the Intuit App Center web flow to setup file sync. IPP will automatically detect a user starting from within QuickBooks and will launch Sync Manager using a custom protocol handler (quickbooks://).

Please review the release notes for more information on Intuit App Center Enhancements.

2. PLATFORM ENHANCEMENTS

• Updated IPP Documentation: Static, Searchable Docs
  As an IPP Developer, you can now search the documentation using any external search engine, and all pages are static, wiki pages hosted on developer.intuit.com. These documents were converted from the previous framework that generated the docs dynamically, making them impossible for you to bookmark or for external search engines to index. We’ve also renamed some document titles for greater clarity and brevity. The old documentation will be available through the general Documentation page, but links on the site will point to the new documents.
• New Confidential Information Role
  We’ve created a new confidential information role. Company tax ID or social security number or Vendor tax ID or social security number will require this permission for viewing. Permission is allowed for Administrators.
• New Mappings for QBO Data
  The application setup process now includes selections that let you map your application’s roles and permissions to QuickBooks Online roles and permissions.

Please review the release notes for more information on Platform Enhancements.

3. INTUIT DATA SERVICES ENHANCEMENTS

• Expanded Data Services and Documentation for QuickBooks Online Data (Beta)
  Receive Payments for read, create and update operations is now available as an additional data entity. Developers can also now review expanded documentation within the Getting Started Guide, including greater details within new sub sections.

• Expanded Data Services for QuickBooks Desktop Data
  • New production quality APIs for the following data objects are being made available in this release:
    • New QuickBooks Desktop Entities and Operations: Accounts Receivable and Time (Money In
    • Class Read
    • Customer Type Read
    • Item Receipt Create and Update
    • Job Type Read
    • Other Charge Item Create and Update
    • Other Name Read
    • Sales Order Create and Update
    • Sales Rep Read
    • Ship Method Read
    • Unit of Measure Read
  • Data entities that contain small data sets do not support the full set of standard filters. These small entities include PaymentMethod, Terms, ShipMethod, CustomerType, JobType, VendorType, Class, UOM, CustomerMessage, and SalesTaxCode. They support only the ListIdSet, ActiveOnly, and Name filters and sorting.
  • TimeActivity Query has been enhanced to allow query for an ID set to narrow down the workers (employees and vendors) in the result set.
  • Expanded Reporting
    • Reports now available:
    • 1099 Report with QuickBooks Report Mappings
    • Standard Balance Sheet
  • Reports updated:
    • Profit & Loss Accrual report
    • This report has been updated to allow it to be rendered for companies that have cash basis as their accounting preference. The previous endpoint has been retained, but an additional query has been added to support the access to the reports for cash basis companies.
  • QuickBooks Custom Fields
    • QuickBooks Custom Fields read has been made available for customers using QuickBooks 2011. The feature will be made available for QuickBooks 2010 customers in Q1 2011. Read has been made available for Pro, Premier and Enterprise editions for names, items, transaction headers, and transaction lines.

Please review the release notes for more information on Intuit Data Services Enhancements.

4. SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES
For a complete list of software updates / fixes included in IPP v2.14, please review the Intuit Partner Platform release notes.

Announcing IPP Support for QuickBooks Online - Open Beta

It's been a while coming, but we're very excited to announce that the Intuit Partner Platform is now well on the way to expanding its support beyond the QuickBooks Desktop product to also support QuickBooks Online.

Today, the IPP Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online API is now available as an open beta for all developers building applications on IPP, and you will be able to start selling your QBO-integrated IPP apps through the Intuit App Center by January 2011.

About the QuickBooks Online Customer Base

Intuit’s small business customer base is increasingly moving online to manage their front and back office functions. Intuit has seen this trend firsthand with the impressive growth of QuickBooks Online. In one year, QuickBooks Online has doubled their customer base...and 80% of these customers have not previously used QuickBooks Desktop.

As an IPP developer you now have the opportunity to provide additional value through building applications that integrate with QuickBooks Online (QBO) data, filling key customer needs and providing great solutions to Intuit's fast growing QBO customer base.

We'll be driving a ton of users to your apps: with one click, a QuickBooks Online user will be able to immediately access (try and buy) a list of IPP apps that specifically integrate with QBO data - all while using their existing QBO username and password.

Benefits of Early Adoption

Our main PR launch is currently scheduled for January 2011. Get in early to be part of this exciting launch which will include direct access to our QuickBooks Online customers through in-product links.

As an early adopter of IPP's Intuit Data Services (IDS) for QBO API, you’ll also help shape our development roadmap. We’re very interested in learning what you need as we expand and evolve our offering.

We’re very interested in your feedback on documentation, the data objects you'd like supported, and API functionality. Discuss feedback at the IPP forum.

About the API

Many IPP developers are already familiar with the Intuit Data Services API that supports the QuickBooks Desktop data model. For QBO, we're following the same REST-based, broad data model, however there are some key differences.  Over time, we aim to make these differences even smaller.

The initial set of objects we have in the beta today are those that we plan to be in the final V1 release, and each today have full CRUD operations. These objects are:

• Account
• Bill
• BillPayment
• CashPurchase
• Check
• CreditCardCharge
• Customer
• Employee
• Estimate
• Invoice
• Item
• PaymentMethod
• SalesTerm
• Vendor

Filters and Sorts are available for each, see docs for details.

How to get more info on the open beta:

• Review the IPP Intuit Data Services (IDS) for QBO API documentation
• Attend the IPP IDS QBO API overview webinar (Friday, Oct 8, 2010 10AM-11AM PDT) - Register here
• Meet with the IPP team - Sign up for the IPP CloudJam at Intuit's offices, Nov 17-18 2010, Mountain View, CA - (We’ll be doing sessions on the QBO API).  Tickets are limited (we only have 25 left) so register asap.  

Thanks,
The Intuit Partner Platform Team

Announcing IPP v2.11

We’re excited to announce that IPP v2.11 is now live and available for IPP partners. This release is another in a series focused on extending developer tools and data services, as well as improving the shopping, buying, and user experience for end customers.

IPP v2.11 CONTENTS

1. SERVER BUSINESS LOGIC TOOLS AND SERVICES - BETA
Server Business Logic (SBL) enables developers to deploy server-side java servlets on IPP servers and publish their own APIs. Developers can also use SBL to replace client-side logic, which allows you to manage and maintain one set of code to support multiple client side applications that span devices and application instances.

For example, a web app, mobile app, and desktop plug-in can all rely on a single set of server-side logic for key functions. Processing data operations using IPP’s server- side business logic engine improves application performance and reduces network traffic. Key use cases supported include PDF or Excel output generation or aggregation of data calls, so that instead of six client-side calls an app can make one call to SBL, with SBL then retrieving and aggregating the data sets into a single client side response.

This release of IPP SBL includes the following capabilities:

• Tooling-integrated Eclipse plug-in
  • Right-click deploy
  • Continuous integration build-to-deploy
• Built-in authentication and identity
• Access to other web services
  • Internal proxy to Intuit data and auth services
  • Outbound proxy to access external services
• Managed container
• System monitors CPU, memory, returned bytes; if thresholds are exceeded, request is stopped

SBL is now available in public Beta. Review the documentation and register for the SBL webinar to learn more.  For those unable to attend the webinar, we’ll post it on the IPP Webinars page after it has aired.

2. OAUTH SERVICES - BETA
OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method across applications. OAuth is a simple way to publish and interact with protected data.

• OAuth support for unattended scenarios
  • Allows unattended scenarios for secure IPP data access and update when customer is not present within application enabling event driven or time based features
• Sign-in with integrated OAuth for Mobile and Desktop Connected Apps (gadget/plug-in)
  • IPP supports mobile and connected applications that work with web apps (i.e. not stand-alone). This release includes easy “sign-in” with mobile-optimized sign-in pages. Sign-in uses our new OAuth standard and allows long lived access tokens for use up to six months. In the future, IPP will expand this to include sign-up/account creation.

OAuth is now available in public Beta. Review the documentation and register for the OAuth webinar to learn more.  For those unable to attend the webinar, we’ll post it on the IPP Webinars page after it has aired.

3. INTUIT DATA SERVICES FOR QUICKBOOKS DESKTOP DATA
There are a number of new data sets. We’ve also made enhancements and improvements to Intuit Data Services (IDS) for QuickBooks desktop data.

All of the new objects and behaviors listed below work with v2 of the IDS API. Developers must use v2 of the IDS API to utilize these new services. Previous IDS versions (e.g. v1) are supported but will not include new objects/behaviors; developers are urged to migrate to the latest API version at their earliest convenience.

The following data elements and methods have been exposed via REST API as well as added to the IPP Flex framework. These data elements and methods previously released in BETA quality as part of previous releases.
New IDN objects / methods now in production quality:

• Names
  • Company update
• Accounts Receivable and Items (money in)
  • Invoice update
  • Estimate update
  • Sales tax code read
• Time
  • Timeactivity create and update

Other IDS enhancements available:

• Reporting data services
  Developers can now access summary report data for the following reports:
  • Profit and Loss Standard Report
  • A previous bug has been fixed now allowing access to a standard P&L report
  • Custom Transaction Detail report
• Transaction numbering generator
  IDS now generates unique transaction document numbering in the cloud for web applications. This allows QuickBooks users to distinguish transactions created outside of QuickBooks desktop. It generates a web-based number that will be separate from QuickBooks desktop — a unique prefix-based numbering with a sequential numerical increment for each transaction type with one shared schema per realm.
• Random Access Iterator
  Random Access Iterator allows requests for a designated number of query results in output, allowing support for scenarios in which devices or connections timeout. This provides seamless re-requests for query output. This feature is especially valuable to provide an enhanced experience for mobile data scenarios.

For more information on IDS capabilities, please review the platform release notes.

4. INTUIT APP CENTER END-USER ENHANCEMENTS
Enhancements have been made to Intuit App Center improving the end-user experience. This release includes enhancements to detect existing accounts earlier in the process and enhancements to prevent users from creating additional accounts.

• Action Required: Updated and finalized new toolbar design
  Design for the new toolbar has been updated and finalized. Developers will have time after the release of 2.11 to do final testing (please contact developer relations for information on the new toolbar). The new toolbar will be enabled for all end-users once it has been tested and verified by developers.
• Redesigned Sign-Up/Sign-In (SUSI) first screen
  The first SUSI screen has been redesigned incorporating both the login and new account functions. Users now follow a single flow with both options (instead of separate flows previously). This change detects an existing account in the first step; previously users would go down the new account flow and would only be notified of an existing account after completing the new account screen.
• Improvements in detecting and notifying users of existing accounts
  The new account page has also been enhanced to detect existing accounts upon exit of the first email address field. Users are prompted with a “speech bubble” on detection of existing account and can go back to login or recover a forgotten password.
• Improvements in messaging IE6 as an unsupported browser
  The end-user messaging for unsupported browsers has been redesigned from a pop-up to a separate web page. Because the default settings for IE6 blocked pop-ups, users would only see the unsupported browser messaging by viewing the alert from the alert bar. Now the messaging is displayed in a standard web page and not subject to pop-up blocker settings.
• Upcoming changes to streamline QuickBooks data setup
  A new streamlined data setup process will be released as part of a forthcoming QuickBooks update (currently targeting end of October). The update will enable a handoff between IPP and QuickBooks to launch data setup directly from IPP. Current QuickBooks data setup is initiated from QuickBooks and requires manual intervention by the user.

Visit the Intuit App Center.

5. SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES
For a complete list of software updates / fixes included in IPP v2.11, please review the Intuit Partner Platform release notes here.

Announcing IPP v2.9

We’re excited to announce that IPP v2.9 is now live and available for IPP partners. This release is another in a series focused on extending developer tools and data services, as well as improving the shopping, buying, and user experience of end customers.

IPP v2.9 CONTENTS

• Kingussie Flex framework improvements
• New and improved developer tools
• Intuit App Center end-user enhancements
• Software updates/fixes 

1. KINGUSSIE FLEX FRAMEWORK IMPROVEMENTS

Intuit’s Kingussie framework for Adobe Flex allows developers to quickly develop and publish applications on IPP’s native development platform. Kingussie improvements for v2.9 also include greatly improved startup times. As a result of reducing server roundtrips and optimized server-side APIs, performance is now three times faster for Kingussie-based applicaitons at both initial launch and subsequent start-up.

For more information on these and other new Kingussie Flex Framework capabilities, take a look at the IPP Development Tools Release Notes.

2. NEW AND IMPROVED DEVELOPER TOOLS
The IPP V2.9 release includes the following enhancements to developer tools for IPP Federated apps:

• Expanded Azure SDK
  The expanded Azure SDK includes additional sample applications using data services and the alpha version of the Visual Studio plug in.  
• Updated .NET and Java developer toolkits
  We’ve updates toolkits to align to latest releases and enhanced for bug fixes.

For more information on these and other new IPP developer toolkit information, follow these specific links:

• IPP Developer Toolkits project on code.intuit.com
• Windows Azure SDK for IPP
• Azure Toolkit Project on code.intuit.com
• Java IPP Devkit Wiki
• .NET IPP DevKit Wiki

3. INTUIT APP CENTER END-USER ENHANCEMENTS

Recent enhancements we’ve made to Intuit App Center improve the review process for applications and notify users of upcoming changes in Internet Explorer 6 support.

• Improved application review interface
  

  We’ve simplified the interface for submitting applications reviews, making it easier for customers to submit a review. Customers now only need to submit five pieces of information (instead of 12) to complete an application review.    

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 customer notification
  

  Starting with this release, we’ll show a message to Internet Explorer 6 users notifying them that we’ll discontinue IE 6 support in September 2010. The message will include links to the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

4. SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES

For a complete list of software updates / fixes included in IPP v2.9, please review the release notes here.

Thanks,
—The Intuit Partner Platform Team

The IPP team will be at TechCrunch Disrupt. Will you?

Join us at TechCrunch’s Disrupt Conference in New York City, May 24-26, 2010 and get involved in the variety of discussions about the evolving and challenging landscape between media and technology. TechCrunch Disrupt is the only conference that gathers both Web innovators disrupting media and technology and also executives successfully navigating disruption to talk about turning change into opportunity.

The Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) is a Product Sponsor at Disrupt so please stop by our table and say Hi! We’re eager to give you the latest news about the IPP, provide technical assistance, and learn more about you and how we can work together.

Check out TechCrunch’s blog about the Intuit App Center and the Intuit Partner Platform today.

Announcing IPP v2.7

The Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) team is excited to announce that IPP v2.7 is now live and available for IPP development partners and includes the following updates:

• New Workplace App Center application toolbar
• New BETA-quality extension to Intuit Data Services
• AppCenter enhancements to improve the application shop and learn experience
• A variety of platform and IDS issues / defects

NEW INTUIT WORKPLACE APP CENTER TOOLBAR 

A new Intuit Workplace App Center toolbar will be introduced to customers in production in the 2010 Q3 timeframe.

The new toolbar allows partners greater control over the look and feel, and provides greater configurability while still providing users easy-to-use navigation between App Center apps and services.

Access to the new toolbar capabilities are being provided to IPP developers in this v2.7 release and are asked to test the new controls and configure their applications to work correctly with the new toolbar by July 31, 2010.

Benefits include:

• App Center application footer is removed 

  The new version of the toolbar will replace the function of the current standard Workplace application footer. This will reduce the real estate dedicated to Workplace navigation elements by more than 50 percent.

• Option to have toolbar scroll with the application interface 

  Developers can configure their application to allow the new toolbar to scroll with their application window contents. The default behavior is for the new toolbar to remain fixed at the top of the application window (for backwards compatibility).

• Control over application brand / name and toolbar background color 

  Developers can include a custom logo in thae toolbar, as well as control the background color of the interface.

• Greater control / configurability over stand menu options 

  Developers can include custom links to a variety of standard menu options, including options for HELP, FEEDBACK, ADD USERS, and MANAGE USERS.

• New Expiration Messaging for Applications 

  New dialog boxes have been added to each of the different plan expiration scenarios. Users are now presented with messaging that more clearly indicates which expiration scenario has been triggered:

  • Beta period expired: The application is no longer available for beta testing.
  • Trial period expired: Free trial period has ended; user is prompted to purchase a subscription.
  • Application subscription has been cancelled: Application is no longer available for use.

To access and test against the new toolbar, please submit an IPP Support Incident.

NEW BETA-QUALITY EXTENSTION TO INTUIT DATA SERVICES 

A number of new data sets, enhancements and improvements to IPP Intuit Data Services (IDS) are now available in BETA-quality.

Production-quality versions of these services—along with Flex tool updates that support these services—will be delivered in IPP v2.8, scheduled for release later in May.

Developers must use v2 of the IDS API to utilize these new services. Previous IDS versions (e.g. v1) is currently supported but will not include these new objects/behaviors; developers are strongly urged to migrate to the latest API version at their earliest convenience.

The following data elements and methods have been exposed in BETA quality. 

New IDS Objects / Methods

• LISTS
• Create Method for SalesTaxItem, Item Discount, and Item Fixed Asset
• Create and Update method for Payment Item
• ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE
• Update method for Invoice, Estimate and Sales Receipt
• ACCOUNTS PAYABLE
• Create method for Bill Payment Check, Bill Payment Credit Card, and Vendor Credit

Other IDS Enhancements available in BETA with IDS v2.7 include:

• Developer control over customer data connectivity options 

  Partners can now configure which IDS connectivity options their application subscribers can select from. Options include: Enter Data Directly, Use Sample Data, and Use My QuickBooks Desktop Data. By default, users are presented all three of these choices for any IDS-enabled application.

• Reporting data services beta 

  Developers can now access QuickBooks summary report data via IDS services for the following reports providing a summary view of data:

• Profit and Loss
• Balance Summary
• Sales Summary
• Account Balances
• Customers Who Owe Me
• Income Breakdown
• Top Customers by Sales

Methods are also available that allow developers to request reporting data for specified time periods or predefined subset (e.g. top 20).

• Enhanced query and sorting filters 

  IPP v2.7 introduces a variety of expanded sorting and filtering options. Developers can specify sort order, filter results by the synchronize flags, and get the number of objects returned by a query for all IDS objects. Name, Accountant, and Item objects can also be filtered by the active flag.

• Additional data validation rules for IDS operations 

  IPP v2.7 adds new validation rules to improve IDS data quality / consistency as well as to improve QuickBooks desktop sync reliability.

Partners should review their application to ensure their products conform to the following rules and properly handle the following error conditions when storing data to Intuit Data Services.

Examples of these new validation rules include:

• Names must be unique across names objects (Customer/Employee/Vendor/other names objects).
• Transactions (Bills, Invoices, etc.) must have at least one line.
• Email address must be in standard Internet format.
• Cannot reference both an Accounts Payable object and an Accounts Receivable object in a single General Ledger Journal Entry.
• Journal Entries must be in balance (Sum of Credits equal to Sum of Debits).
• For Accounts Payable transactions, a vendor must be referenced in the header.
• For Accounts Receivable posting and non-posting transactions, a Customer reference must be provided.

Other IDS enhancements include

• View-only User Roles 

  We’ve added new application roles that allow developers to provide read-only access to different classes of IDS objects. A new Confidential Reporting role has also been added to support the new reporting data services.

• Improved initial sync performances for customers 

  Performance of initial synchronization has been improved by 20 percent for improved customer experience.

For more details, including data validation rules and known issues please refer to the v2.7 IDS release notes and IDS Programmers Guide.

INTUIT WORKPLACE APP CENTER IMPROVEMENTS 

There are a variety of enhancements and modifications to Intuit App Center to improve the overall shopping flow and experience.

• New “All Apps” Page 

  A new “All Apps” page to the site providing an easy way for users to see a comprehensive list of all available applications. An “All Apps” link has been added to the top blue menu bar for easy access to the new page. The list of applications can be sorted by a particular column by clicking on the sorting triangles and multiple columns can be sorted by holding down the shift key while clicking a sort triangle.

• Clarifying Default Sign-Up Options for Applications 

  The Sign-Up Options for applications have been clarified through new terminology and graphics. Users are now presented with clearer messaging and graphics which indicate what evaluation option a particular application supports:

  • “Get it Free:” Application offers a free baseline subscription plan.
  • “Try it Free:” Application offers a free trial period; a purchased subscription is then required.
  • “Buy it Now:” Application does not offer any free trial or baseline plan and requires a purchase.

• Additional Help for QuickBooks Sync Manager Issues 

  Additional links have been added to the Frequently Asked Questions page in the top blue menu bar for issues with QuickBooks Data Synchronization. Users can now link directly to resources focused on QuickBooks Data Synchronization issues.

• Design improvements to Solution Category Pages 

  Design improvements to the Solution Category Pages (Run My Business, Manage My Work, Grow and Manage My Customers, Reduce My Costs) to simplify user navigation. The information presented has been streamlined and issues with lists scrolling have been addressed.

SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES 

For a complete list of software updates / fixes included in IPP v2.7, see the release notes.

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The Intuit Partner Platform Team.