VL OMNI Dashboard: What is the Difference between a Session and a Workflow?

At this point in your journey interacting with the VL OMNI Dashboard, you might begin to have some technical questions. Integration can be difficult for the layperson to understand. So in this blog, we are diving deep to clarify some technical jargon, so you can be empowered to use the Dashboard to its fullest potential and understand your business integrations at a deep level.

One of the first questions customers often have is: “what is the difference between Sessions and Workflows? These two pages may seem similar, but from an integration perspective, they serve very different purposes.

Let’s waste no time and get right into it! Keep scrolling to learn more.

On the VL OMNI Dashboard, you can find the Sessions page, indicated on the left navigation bar with the orange-colored icon. The Sessions Page contains all the operations executed by VL OMNI’s workflows. The page allows you to check if your fulfillment, order, product, and inventory updates are successful.  But what exactly makes up a Session?

Sessions on the VL OMNI Dashboard

A Session is a collection of Workflows: Sessions are timed intervals where the VL OMNI Platform is actively moving data into, out of, and between applications. Each Session consists of at least one Workflow, but can also include many Workflows that initiate and run Transactions through our VL OMNI Connectors.

So, what exactly is a Workflow?

In the context of the VL OMNI Dashboard, a Workflow is the act of invoking one or several Connectors in order to move data between applications, as configured and managed by VL OMNI. With that basic understanding of terms, let’s understand what the benefits of using the Sessions page regularly are:

Benefits of Using The VL OMNI Dashboard Sessions Page

• A single point of access
  The Sessions Page serves as a living log of all Workflows that actively move, transform, and connect applications together through data as a part of the Connectors active in your business’ integration instance.
• Resolve data issues
  For Sessions containing Transactions with errors, the Dashboard is extremely useful for quickly locating and resolving data issues outside of the VL OMNI Platform. By looking at the details in each error, you can quickly diagnose where the issue lies and adjust it.
• Discover more benefits of the VL OMNI Dashboard here.

Advanced information on your integrations

The Sessions page also contains a lot more information regarding your integrations, such as:

• Individual Sessions correlated against a time and date stamp
• The Workflow/data movement type contained in each Session
• The number of Transactions contained in each Session
• The status of each Session; either complete or in an error state with easy-to-see visuals on those Sessions that require user attention

More on Locating Errors and Adjusting Them

The key to the Sessions page is the ability to locate errors in the middle of applications within your integrations. This can empower your business to understand how your data is moving through your chosen applications.  If one application has incorrect data, you can see that piece of data integrated into the other application. Keeping an eye on your data errors early and having the initiative to fix them early on will save you business order issues and overall bad customer experience.

We at VL OMNI recommend that all VL OMNI platform account users log into their Dashboard regularly. This is the best way to observe data moving through your account and to note different data statuses for quick action or strategic improvement.

Ultimately, if you still have any questions about how to use the VL OMNI Dashboard or would like a one-on-one walkthrough with our team, contact us:[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1593183911662{background-image: url(https://vlomni.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Blue-banner.png?id=21801) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″]