To provide a little more detail, your clients currently have two options, with a third likely on the way soon.
1. V-Technologies has designed an integration using the Business Object Interface. I believe you can begin using this at 4.2 or 4.3 MAS (but I'm not sure on that) and you must be using version 10 or 11 of Starship. The impact to our clients is that they will have to change their workflow to be the reverse of what it currently is if they use this method. The new Starship version reads the SO information from MAS and stores the item level information in their database. In Starship, you tell it how many of each line item you shipped and backordered. When you save the shipment and print the shipping labels, it writes back to MAS to create the invoice and will automatically generate the MAS shipping documents (packing list, invoice) as well. This interface is much more robust than the Starship Link. It will also allow you to map fields from MAS, including UDF's. The down side is the workflow change. That may be huge, but it may not be for many businesses. The going back and forth between the two applications is one of the complaints I see most often with shippers. So if we could give them a single point of entry for everything, that might actually improve their satsifaction with the software.
2. Continue to use the Starship Link up through 4.40.X.X.
3. V-Technologies is reviewing the current Starship Link and getting feedback from customers to determine if it would be best to have a link written to MAS as an MD enhancement so the software could continue to allow the workflow clients are used to. When I last spoke with my V-Technologies rep about this, there wasn't a time frame on it yet, but it was in the works and they said it was an important project for them. They know that soon when 4.5 is released, they are THE source for a MAS integration, and plan to make the most of it.
Long term I think this will be a really good thing. Sage had done very, very little to the Starship Link since it first came out several years ago. Anyone using it for a while knows there are several changes needed in the link for it to be as robust as a typical medium to high volume distribution business needs. So it looks promising that V-Technologies will provide those additional features to improve the user's experience with using MAS and Starship together.
