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1 - Architecture Overview

The diagram below show how all components interact together.

2 - Frontend App(s)

The frontend applications are interfaces between the users - customers, staff, partners - and the actual Maestrano platform. While most implementations only include one frontend application - usually a customer portal/marketplace/dashboard - one could decide to create a different application for staff users such as support or administrator people. One could also decide to use the Maestrano platform in order to serve multiple business purposes - multiple business units - and create multiple frontend applications accordingly.

Maestrano supports multi-tenancy out of the box. This means that frontend applications can be setup with access to the same customer base or different customer bases (isolated frontend applications).

Frontend applications are lightweight, dependency-less Ruby on Rails (RoR) applications connecting via API to MnoHub (see section below). Frontend applications do not need a database such as MySQL or Oracle to function as all data are accessed via API from the hub. A database can always be added if application specific data or metadata need to be stored.

While Maestrano provides a RoR template to build frontend applications, one could easily choose another application stack to build their own frontend as the only hard dependency is to be able to consume the MnoHub JSON REST API.

3 - MnoHub

The Maestrano Hub acts as an orchestrator for the whole platform. It holds any data related to customer identification, billing and product purchase/subscription. The hub is also responsible for maintaining the Access Control Lists (ACL) for all platform users.

The hub contains customer related application logic exposed via two different APIs:

  • The HUB API is used by frontend applications (see section 1) to retrieve and update customer data.
  • The Developer API is used by third party applications to query data about their customer portfolio as well as submit bills for any subscription that users may have taken inside their app

The hub also acts as a Single Sign-On provider for accessing Cloud and Hosted application (= not "data only" or "connector" applications such as QuickBooks). Users coming from frontend applications and wishing to access an app are redirected to the hub wish then handle authorisation as well as single sign-on handshake with the applications.

Finally, the hub also contains an authorisation API called "IDM" (Identity Manager) that can be used by other services - such as Connec!™ - to authorise API queries. This is typically the case when users load their Impac!™ dashboard. A session token is enclosed in the query and transmitted through Impac!™ to Connec!™ which then contacts the hub to verify that the provided token (user) has access to the data.

4 - Connec!™

Connec!™ is Maestrano's data sharing platform. It seamlessly synchronise data between applications in real-time so that users do not need to re-enter data twice in different applications.

From the outside Connec!™ is an API platform allowing applications to submit data updates when then get propagated to other applications via webhooks. Connec!™ API also feature powerful querying functionalities as well as reporting endpoints - typically used by Impac!™ for aggregated reporting.

Connec!™ also has the ability to synchronise data from external services exposing public APIs (instead of integrating via our SDK). This is typically the case for "Connector Applications" such as QuickBooks or MYOB. Connec!™ runs internal algorithms and synchronisation processes allowing it to detect changes in data and automatically retrieve these changes from these remote services.

From the inside, Connec!™ has powerful API definition and routing capabilities. One can easily configure how data should be shared between applications.

Connec!™ also features audit capabilities. Every transaction inside Connec!™ gets recorded internally, which allows one to easily track changes and rollback transactions if required.

Connec!™ is stateless from an authorisation point of view. Any API query gets authorised by contacting the MnoHub IDM which then handles authorisation. This makes ACL management much easier to maintain from Connec!™ point of view.

5 - Impac!™

Impac!™ is Maestrano's reporting engine and frontend. It allows users, application providers and enterprise customers to retrieve aggregated data from Connec!™ around Finance, HR, Payroll, Sales and more. Data can be either nicely presented to end users using a series of widgets or be directly accessed via API.

Impac!™ is essentially a reporting engine exposed via API. It retrieves data using Connec!™ transactional and aggregated API and runs aggregation/calculation algorithms to extract meaningful summaries and KPIs to be presented to users.

Impac!™ is stateless from an authorisation point of view. Any authorisation header sent to Impac!™ gets delegated to Connec!™ when retrieving data. Connec!™ then delegates authorisation to MnoHub via the IDM.

Impac!™ also features a JavaScript based frontend called "impac-angular". This frontend is directly loaded by the browser and is completely stateless from a data point of view. This project is a User Interface allowing to access the Impac!™ API where the user can create dashboards and add widgets and KPIs to it. The widgets display data calculated by the Impac!™ API, and KPIs are key performance indicators. Impac-Angular is available as open source on github under Maestrano's profile.

While Maestrano publicly provides Impac-Angular as a convenient way to display data provided by Impac!™ engine, one could easily choose to implement their own frontend using any technology/framework that they may see fit.

6 - External - Cloud Applications

Cloud applications are online services that have used Maestrano's SDK to integrate with the platform and enable features such as Single Sign-On, Single Billing and Data Sharing. They reside outside of the Maestrano infrastructure but are still considered part of the ecosystem.

Because they integrate with the platform, customers do not need to signup separately to these services. Using Single Sign-On customers can automatically get setup on these kind of services.

Cloud applications are expected to communicate with two components of the platform: MnoHub and Connec!™. MnoHub is used by cloud applications to retrieve information about their customers as well as submit bills related to customer subscriptions. Connec!™ is used for Data Sharing, meaning that cloud applications are expected to send data updates to Connec!™ when records are updated on their side as well as receive updates whenever things get updated on the Connec!™ side (= data pushed by another application).

7 - External - Connector Applications

Connector applications are online services that exchange data with Connec!™. These applications did not integrate using one of Maestrano's SDKs. Instead Maestrano connected them to Connec!™ using their public APIs.

These applications do not feature any Single Sign-On or Single Billing capability. Customers are required to have an account on these services before connecting them to the platform.


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