How to integrate Ignition with your ERP

Build a safe Ignition to ERP integration

1. 1Decide direction and ownership first: the ERP owns work orders, routings, items and BOMs; Ignition owns machine states, counts, cycle times and operator inputs. Write that down per data element.
2. 2Create a dedicated database connection in the Ignition Gateway (Config, Databases, Connections) pointing at a staging schema, not the ERP production schema.
3. 3Create a staging table such as mes_event with a GUID event_id, work_order, operation, event_type, qty_good, qty_scrap, reason_code, event_ts, status and error_text columns.
4. 4Write events from Ignition with a Named Query (system.db.runNamedQuery) or a Transaction Group, with a unique event_id so a retry cannot double-post.
5. 5Pull open work orders into a local cache table on a gateway timer script, reading from an ERP view or REST endpoint through a read-only account.
6. 6Run a poster outside Ignition (ERP API call, stored procedure, or integration platform) that reads status = 'NEW' rows, posts them, and marks them 'POSTED' or 'ERROR' with the message.
7. 7Add a Perspective or Vision screen for supervisors showing ERROR rows with a retry button, so failures are visible and not buried in a log.
8. 8Test the failure cases: ERP down, work order closed, quantity over-report, duplicate event, and gateway restart in the middle of a post.

Ignition-side mechanics

# Gateway script: queue a production event with an idempotent key
import uuid
params = {'eid': str(uuid.uuid4()), 'wo': wo, 'op': op, 'good': good, 'scrap': scrap, 'ts': system.date.now()}
system.db.runNamedQuery('MES/insertProductionEvent', params)

-- Staging table (SQL Server flavour)
CREATE TABLE mes_event (
  event_id UNIQUEIDENTIFIER PRIMARY KEY,
  work_order NVARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
  operation INT NOT NULL,
  event_type NVARCHAR(20) NOT NULL,
  qty_good DECIMAL(18,4) NULL,
  qty_scrap DECIMAL(18,4) NULL,
  reason_code NVARCHAR(20) NULL,
  event_ts DATETIME2 NOT NULL,
  status NVARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'NEW',
  error_text NVARCHAR(500) NULL
);

Error handling and reconciliation

Common pitfalls

• !Writing directly into ERP tables from Ignition, which skips costing, inventory and audit logic and can break on upgrade.
• !Posting without a unique event ID, so a gateway retry or restart double-counts production.
• !Running ERP calls inside client or Perspective session scope, so closing a browser aborts the transaction.
• !Hard-coding ERP credentials in scripts, or using an ERP admin account for the integration.
• !Using one huge polling query against the ERP every few seconds instead of a cached read-only view on a sensible interval.
• !Having no reconciliation, so drift between floor quantities and ERP quantities is found at month-end.