We’ve spoken to the team at EKegPlus and do plan to add an integration to allow syncing of beers between the two systems.
We’ve also spoken to them about sharing the fill and delivery data, but this gets far more complicated and to be honest, we didn’t really come up with an answer. The difficulties stem from which system is used to confirm a container is filled:
- If you tell Breww a container is filled - Breww could tell EKegPlus, but they are not comfortable with taking this information from us as this is how they bill you. Any disputes could then get complicated and to be honest, we don’t really want to get in the middle of a billing dispute between you and EKegPlus either! If this part could be resolved, then we would need to add support for scanning their RFID tags to our app, which is something that we haven’t yet investigated. We’re not sure to be honest if this would even be possible with the hardware built into normal Androids and iPhones, but it might be.
- If you tell EKegPlus a container is filled - They could tell us a create the racking in Breww. Again in theory this could be done, but it creates a number of issues. Their app only currently (as far as I remember) asks for the batch number, but in Breww, we know which vessel you’re racking from (as a batch can be in multiple). We also ask lots of other questions along the way, such as stock items used, delayed releases (i.e. cask conditioning), etc. We can also validate that you’re not trying to rack 1,000L when you only have 800L in the vessel. If we accepted racking data from them, we’re concerned that this could cause no-end of problems if what’s given to us doesn’t pass our validation, and this would result in the two systems then being out of sync anyway.
We didn’t manage to come to a perfect solution to the above but would love to hear anyone else’s ideas on this, as we’re keen to work with you, and EKegPlus to make an integration that saves everyone time and reduces mistakes. One possible idea would be that you complete the racking in both apps, but some data is shared, for example:
- In the EKegPlus app/device, you confirm you’re doing a Breww racking of batch 123 and start scanning containers.
- After racking in EKegPlus, you go to the Breww app and import this data (maybe the EKegPlus produces an on-screen barcode, which you scan on the Breww App). This could put you directly into the racking process in Breww for the right batch and have all the container codes loaded in. You can then complete the process in Breww, with all of our validation, stock items, delayed releases, etc.
This would mean that Breww knew the container codes and could report deliveries to your customers to EKegPlus and save some duplicated work. Again this would require EKegPlus to “trust” Breww to give accurate data and I know that having accurate location data is extremely important to them.
To summarise, I think a simple integration on the beers (and possibly customers list) side could be done and this would save you a small amount of time, but in all honestly, I don’t think this is the big win here that everyone who’s voted for this is looking for. We’re going to be launching an API that EKegPlus could use for this (we’ve been in talks with them about this).
To me, the big ticket item here is reducing the duplication of racking/delivery data and this will rely not just on technical work from both the Breww and EKegPlus team, but EKegPlus to “trust” us to give them data that they can then bill you upon, and for this, it’s over to them to decide what they’re comfortable with really. If we make any progress on this with EKegPlus directly, we’ll let you know.