Sensor on Admin Consult

Maintaining data consistency across multiple systems is challenging, but essential. When data conflicts between systems, you can expect confusion and errors leading to wasted time and causing frustration – especially when you can’t immediately pinpoint where the explanation lies. The best approach is to decide which software should be the authoritative ‘single source of truth’ for each type of data. Once you’ve identified where each data set should live, you can start connecting other systems to this primary source and start sharing information, for consistent data flows.

Our Ledger Labs team built a connector that allows primary data sources to push updates to all linked downstream tools at regular intervals. Using the leading system’s REST API, it checks for new ‘events’ every minute. When changes are detected, this sensor triggers the appropriate processes or so-called ‘jobs’ to keep information synchronised across all platforms. In this specific implementation, customer and project master data are synced every minute to both the client’s accounting software and CRM system. In addition, the project managers receive email notifications whenever there’s a significant update to the projects under their purview. The real strength of this sensor or connector lies in its flexibility: our client is able to define virtually any action, trigger or notification to respond to any type of event triggered by a data change.

To build this connector for our client, we chose to use Dagster. Its built‑in sensor functionality proved to be a perfect fit for our client’s needs. Dagster is an open‑source data orchestrator that’s free to use for organisations that are able to manage their own infrastructure. It also comes with an intuitive web portal that allows you to analyse the performance of your connections and data pipelines at a glance.