What are 'Extracts' in FSM and how do they impact the sync rules?

Extracts send the outputs of fsm / custom metadata to external systems, services. For the customers who are using fsm mobile, you would find a lot of extract records as these baseline extract records are associated directly with the sync rules in fsm mobile service. When you set up a sync rule for mobile, an extract is automatically created. Therefore, mobile is relying on the extracts. 

We can also setup extracts for other outbound integration purposes as well. (But this is not as sophisticated as fsm connect where we have a lot options like logging) For an example, we can send an outbound message to an external system as a confirmation when a task is created or updated. We can also send messages to smtp services as well. This is applicable for both baseline and custom tables.

There are three main sections in the extract screen,

Addresses section : this is basically the endpoint setup for the extract message (the destination where we want to send out the message). Under the extract address field, we can either setup our endpoint using http or file based (to local drive) methods. Also, you can select the extract format as xml or json.

Columns to Extract section :  We can specify which columns that we can extract when sending the message. “*” indicates all the columns. 

Constraints section : We can add additional constraints before we send the message out

If we make a change to an extract, we need to refresh the server cache as they are stored in the server cache memory. Also, do not directly make direct changes to the mobile extracts unless you are aware of the consequences but you can make modifications using the sync rules.