Internal ERP - Connect to Bridge or Smartsheet API?

Ryan Sides

I’m struggling to understand the value of Bridge vs Smartsheet API when I need to connect to an internal ERP system.

We are looking to display a list of sales orders (from ERP) per each project (in SS). We have thousands of sales orders that are updated constantly and we’d like to see that data near real time

Would this be too much of a lift for bridge? Should we look to develop a custom application through the API?

Looking to understand the benefits of bridge in this particular scenario.

Any advice?

Grace F.

Hi Ryan,

Bridge is able to handle a large number of workflows that can respond to your changes on sales orders in one system to make needed changes in another system (e.g. from your ERP to Smartsheet).

However, Bridge isn't purpose-built to support real-time mirroring of datasets across two systems. I wouldn't recommend using Bridge if you need both systems to match in real time or if there are so many changes to a unique item that Bridge could write those changes in the wrong order (e.g. a sales order is edited in both systems at once and both systems need to reflect the latest changes).

If this sounds like your use case, I would recommend a custom API application instead.