iMIS Integration: FAQs

In this article are answers to frequently asked questions about the iMIS integration.

What if I am upgrading soon?

Contact Higher Logic support as soon as possible so we can confirm compatibility and schedule your upgrade.

Why didn't my member record update in the community?

Did the member record recently update?
Have you checked the Sync External Database page? There may be many contacts syncing.
Did you check the Changed Since Date in the GetChangedMembers stored procedure? Does it have a date of today?

How do I upload members?

With an integrated community, members are uploaded via the integration.

Can I add to my community a member who isn't in iMIS?

Unless you have Higher Logic events enabled, members are not added to the community unless they exist in iMIS.

Why wasn't my member added to my community?

Is Limit by Security Groups enabled? View the report, Security Groups Summary (Users > Reports > People Reports). In the upper part of the report, if the value in the Limiting Security Groups field is True, check the adjacent field, List of Security Groups Allowed to Sync to Higher Logic: Does the iMIS Contact field for membership match any of those values?

I don't have Limit by Security Groups enabled, or my contact record for my member is listed in the "List of Security Groups Allowed to Sync to Higher Logic" box. Why wasn’t my member added to my community?

Is your member active? Check the Status field in iMIS = Active.
Has your member’s expiration date passed? Check whether your member is expired.

When I try to refresh a member or display back-end data, why do I see "There has been an issue retrieving data from the web service."?

Did you check to see if this Integration Key exists? This record may not have been synced to Higher Logic, it may have been deleted in iMIS, or merged. Whatever the reason, that Contact ID from iMIS is no longer available.

Why does the refresh take so long?

The iMIS SQL integration with Higher Logic is built off a system of stored procedures and views that are installed on the iMIS SQL database. The HL API bridge provides a direct connection to the iMIS SQL database. By making API calls utilizing the Higher Logic API bridge, data is returned and transformed when being imported into the Higher Logic Community site. The data is used to create all the relevant Higher Logic objects such as communities, demographics, security groups, calendar events, and user profiles.

The member refresh is responsible for pulling user information and generating all the other Higher Logic data objects mentioned above.

Each member refresh sends a series of API requests responsible for each separate data object to the Higher Logic API bridge. Each section requires a specific stored procedure and API call to extract the relevant information.

Hence, the sync with the AMS depends on several factors such as:

How fast the connection is to the webservice
How quickly we can page through the results that are the result of the stored procedures.
The speed of our own refresh servers. Hence when we do global refresh, we move the customer's tenant to a dedicated server to ensure the refresh completes faster than expected. However, this dedicated server is only for global refresh.

The following articles have supporting information for the iMIS integration.