End of an era

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Dear friends 

They say all good things must come to an end and it’s time for me to spread my wings and soar into some exciting new adventure. 

I joined MYOB late in 2012, well before terms like apps & ecosystem were really a thing. There were a couple of hundred developers in the MYOB developer program and ~25 approved add-on solutions. I leave at the end of 2018 with over 10,000 developers in our developer program, and nearly 350 apps in our ecosystem. 

Even better than that, we’ve hundreds of thousands of AccountRight & Essentials files connected and using 3rd party apps each and every day. 

It’s been an amazing journey, one that has seen our developer community impact and transform not just MYOB but the entire accounting industry. Cloud, connected advisory, smart tools, apps and add-ons are now as common in discussions as GST, budgets and reconciliation. 

I’ve made friends, I’ve supported businesses, I’ve shared in your lives - and for this privilege, I thank you. 

For me, I’m not sure what 2019 holds, I have no firm plan for me right now outside of some consulting work (reach out if you want to chat), I’m excited to take a pen to the blank page that is the future and see what comes out. Do keep in touch (TWITTER - LINKEDIN - KERANMCKENZIE.COM), I’d love to see where your journey takes you. 

For continuity here at MYOB you can continue to connect with Nigel Tiley and Ria Russell for Apps and Ecosystem conversations. For API Developer Support the team continue to support you through apisupport.myob.com. 

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For now, it’s time to spread my wings and soar.
If I may borrow a famous line - “so long and thanks for the fish” 

Love, 
Keran McKenzie

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Welcome Nigel

Exciting news time, we’ve hired someone awesome to come and join us in the MYOB Ecosystem. Please welcome Nigel Tiley to the team.

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We’re lucky to have Nigel joining us, coming from the ecosystem having worked for both Kounta and more recently Deputy. Many of you will have, no doubt, met Nigel at many of the MYOB and industry conferences and events proudly wearing the Deputy badge and sharing their story.

Nigel brings a strong background in partnerships, technology and the connected accounting ecosystem. We’re really stoked to have him in the team, taking on the big role of Ecosystem Partner Manager.

Connect with Nigel on LinkedIn or Twitter - he’d love to know more about you, your tools, services and offerings within our ecosystem.

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Improving support

Support for an API is an ever-changing and challenging area. With many frequent support requests being very similar and yet just different enough to require a little care and attention to help solve the hiccup.

To continue to help us to provide top-notch support to you, we’ve recently released some new support tools for you.

Postman API collections

Postman is an API client that allows you to quickly and easily explore an API without writing code. It’s a powerful tool for exploring various endpoints, JSON payloads and authentication headers.

Check out our MYOB AccountRight Postman Collection here or MYOB Essentials Postman Collection here.

API Knowledge Base beta

We’ve also started building out an api knowledge base based heavily on common support requests, community forum posts and general advice for working with our APIs.

This knowledge base is in early stages, but already is starting to help speed developers along their api journey with us. This knowledge base is linked to our support ticket system so it can offer suggestions to help you.

Check out the MYOB API knowledge base now.

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DSP Operational Framework - Update

Anyone working with our API and with the ATO will no doubt be familiar with their DSP Operational Framework. This is a framework provided by the ATO for working with data across various networks and providers.

All digital service providers wanting to use the ATO’s digital services will now need to meet specific requirements as defined by the ATO, which can include, but is not limited to:

·         Authentication

·         Encryption

·         Supply chain visibility

·         Certification

·         Data hosting

·         Personnel security

·         Encryption key management

·         Security monitoring practices.

The ATO’s website includes the reasons for creating the framework and the related requirements:https://softwaredevelopers.ato.gov.au/operational_framework

MYOB will be making changes to our MYOB APIs to adhere to this framework. The Product and Engineering teams are currently working with the ATO on what is the best approach to this. This will primarily affect the TFN (Tax file number) currently shared with our API users.  We will notify users through a blog post, forum update and newsletter before this change goes to production so you can prepare for it.

Are you a product that uses the TFN (or other personal data that might be covered by the DSP Operational Framework) from our API? We’d love to hear from you and understand better how you use this data, and the impact of having it removed or masked might be on your clients. Fill in our quick form here so our product team can be in touch should they want more details.

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TLS1.0 - No longer supported

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As you will no doubt be aware, security on the internet is an ever evolving activity, and as such TLS1.0 is actively being retired from many services. This is due to known vulnerabilities that directly impact the integrity and security of communications, and these vulnerabilities are unable to be fixed in this older version of TLS.

MYOB is dedicated to ensuring the security of our client’s data and in 2017 our API infrastructure was upgraded to support TLS1.1 and TLS1.2 while allowing TLS1.0 connections as a fallback. Now is the time for us to remove this fallback, so as of 30th September 2018 the MYOB API will no longer accept connections using TLS1.0.

What will happen?
If you are using TLS1.0 and you choose to do nothing, your TLS1.0 calls to our API will be blocked and will fail. These calls will be considered insecure and will be blocked at the gateway.

What do I need to do?
You need to upgrade your infrastructure to ensure your API calls are using TLS1.1, TLS1.2 or greater, you will no longer be able to use on SSL3 or TLS1.0. Your teams will need to look at the impact of this and the change required for your calls to the MYOB API. 

Once you update your servers to support TLS1.1 or greater, there is nothing else to change. 

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Looking for you … Ecosystem partner manager

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Originally posted by csabaklement

The opportunity

Are you passionate about cloud and making an impact in Australian and New Zealand SME businesses? Are you excited by seeing problems and hassles in business, solved by smart use of awesome connected tools? Do you delight in helping people discover solutions they didn’t know exist? Then we want to chat with you. We’re looking for someone passionate about technology, business and making an impact in everyday business life.

The role

You’ll be working with our Head of Ecosystem to further build out our partnerships with some of Australia and New Zealand’s best business software vendors. You’ll be discovering the impact these amazing tools make in everyday businesses and helping businesses, advisors, bookkeepers and accountants to understand the value smart tools bring to business today. You will also be working closely with the internal MYOB teams to look for and discover the crossover impacts where the ecosystem supports, augments and extends the MYOB product range.

Sound cool?

Why not check out our advert and apply?

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Time for a farewell

Never underestimate the power of a single coffee conversation. I’m not gonna lie, I’m not sure I was ready for the epic journey, one that would give such a roller coaster ride. Rollercoasters create fun times in life when you realise what is important. Yes, of course, there are times of down and up and each carries with it a special note.  A memory, a moment.

Never would I realise the advantage of someone who constantly says “I’m gonna just do that”. So it is with a sad tone, that today the MYOBapi team let you all know that Jack Skinner is moving to a new adventure. When you process this it could be easy to let the emotion drive you to feel down, but this is an exciting time for Jack.

Never one to let life hold him back Jack has continually lived that “I’m gonna do it” mindset in everything. A smile and his energy would see Jack run from event to event as he tweeted up a storm. Always one for a flight around Australia & USA with Virgin Australia, or NZ with Air NZ (oh hey and let’s not forget those status credits). Many a steak along with the odd desert & cheeky whisky, has helped create friendships and moments that you will remember forever.

Never has our twitter seen so many tweets nor have we all said: “Not gonna take another selfie are you Jack?” so often. While he helped us make better integrations, Jack changed the way we at MYOB supported you on this ecosystem journey. I know saying goodbye may well make us cry, but we will always have his new tweets & selfies.

Never forget the moment when last minute I called to say “Jack I’m not gonna make it to NZ, can you fill in for me?”, Jack was always there ready to say “Yes I can do that” and fill in for me. So when it comes to saying goodbye, well my friends …

I have to say, I’m “Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you” - it’s hard, really hard to say goodbye.

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Farewell Jack - you’ve left one heck of an impression on MYOB, the API and our entire ecosystem. We love you and wish you all the very very best as you head into new adventures. Keep the music in your heart, the beat in your step and Party like Gatsby!

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MYRIAD, TechWeek NZ and the Future

Wow, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me hitting the road and talking all sorts of things tech and future.

I was asked to attend MYRIAD to run a workshop on the Future of Money. I gathered together some experts facing hassles with the current world money & payments and with a room full of attendees we discussed the current frustrations and future tech/processes and tools that might change this in the future. The surprising outcome was just how quickly people think this change is coming! To find out more, read my latest article on the Future of money and payments.

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I was also asked to host a fireside chat with Dave Lennon from Business Aspect exploring “Startup vs Corporate - the innovation story”. You’ll never guess who is the startup in the picture above right *hint* it’s not me!

TechWeek NZ 
How awesome is it when a country puts on a tech event? Over 540 events all around the country over 5 days! MYOB hosted or engaged with many of these events. I had the honour of presenting at 6 events over 7 days, covering topics like What the ____ is Blockchain (watch a previous recording here), Data - unlocking the power of transformation and Visions of Future Success (watch a recording of it here).  

NZHerald took the opportunity to pick my brains about the top tech trends that will impact businesses. You can read more about that here.

The future is exciting - made even more so by all our amazing developer partners who use our APIs and data to make incredible tools that solve real world problems

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Updated API key errors

Hi there folks!

We’re updating the errors that our API will return based on your API key status and usage. The changes will apply to the following errors:

The new API responses will no longer be HTML responses but will instead be a JSON object (similar to the existing AccountRight Live errors). You’ll also see a LearnMore link has been included too.

Here’s an example of the new developer_inactive error.

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The updated API errors will be returned from all API hostnames including:

We’re on schedule to make this update on May 8th, after which you’ll receive the new API errors.

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AccountRight Live 2018.2 release summary

G'day everybody!

We’re excited to share that AccountRight Live 2018.2 is now available for developer partners from my.myob.com.au. We’ll be upgrading the shared sandbox files over the next day or so.

You’ll find the 2018.2 release notes on the developer site and we’ve included a summary here on the blog.

Introducing Multi-currency
2018.2 introduces a closed-beta for multi-currency in AccountRight Live and that means we’ve added new endpoints, fields and errors being added to the V2 API. In summary, you’ll see:

The most important thing to know is that resources for foreign currency transactions (such as bills and orders) will be read-only via the API and will not allow PUT or POST API calls in this release.

Learn more about multi-currency:

“LearnMore” about API errors!
We’re adding a new field to errors returned from the AccountRight Live API. The “LearnMore” field is null by default and will include customised links directly to our documentation to help you resolve errors.

LearnMore links are included for errors relating to multi-currency (see below) and we’ll be adding more documentation references over time.

Here’s an example of the LearnMore link that we’ve added for a new ValidationError.

{
  "Name": "ValidationError",
  "Message": "Cannot update a local bill with a foreign currency",
  "AdditionalDetails": "ForeignCurrency",
  "ErrorCode": 70003,
  "Severity": "Error",
  "LearnMore": "http://developer.myob.com/api/accountright/api-overview/error-messages/?code=70003&context=400"
}

Single Touch Payroll
2018.2 introduces a number of workflow improvements for your clients including an updated Single Touch Payroll readiness check. You can learn more about AccountRight Live and STP here.

We’ve also removed the employee state validation rule that was added in 2018.1; the state field is still required for STP, but your clients will be prompted to supply this information via the STP readiness check instead.

New Sale/Invoice “OnlinePaymentMethod” field

The “OnlinePaymentMethod” field can be set to “All” to enable online payments for a given invoice. This only applies if clients have set up online payments. The field will default to “None” in 2018.2 and “All” in 2018.3.

We’re on schedule to commence our staggered release AccountRight Live 2018.2 to partners and clients in the first week of May.

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