Integrate Mailboxes with Services

You can integrate Mailbox with any service or adapter by designing business process models using the Graphical Process Modeler.

In addition, Mailbox provides ready-to-use integration with the EDIINT AS2 protocol. This support is provided through special pre-built business process models and an AS2 Setup Wizard.

The FTP Server adapter is tightly integrated with the mailbox subsystem. The Sterling Connect:Direct Server adapter can be used to copy files to and from the Mailbox.

Integrate Mailboxes into Business Processes

You can integrate Mailbox with business processes by:

Invoking the Mailbox services from a business process
Specifying a business process using a routing rule

Integration Examples

Following are examples of how you can integrate the mailbox into business processes:

Integration Type	Example
Event-Driven Integration	You can use the mailbox for event-driven near real-time integration. Set up an automatic routing rule that searches a specific mailbox for a message name pattern. When the routing rule is evaluated, the message in the designated mailbox is matched, and a designated business process is triggered. The business process can access the contents of the message and perform automation functions like back-end systems processing or notification to an interested party. Event-driven processing is useful when your business requirements dictate that documents arriving in a mailbox should be processed as soon as possible after arrival.
Time-Driven Integration	You can use the mailbox for time-driven integration with your business processes. To do this, set up a business process that runs on a time schedule and uses the Mailbox Query service to search the mailbox for specific message criteria. When matching messages are found, the next step in the business process is started. The business process can do anything with the matched message, such as extract it and pass it to another system or notify a person that the message is available for them. This system of the mailbox is useful where scheduled processing is important such as end of month payments. Messages received in the mailbox are processed at the next scheduled run of the business process.
Document Publishing	You can use the mailbox to publish documents for a specified period of time. Create a business process to add a document to a mailbox and set the extract policy ExtractableUntil, specifying the date you want the document to expire. Give permissions to this mailbox to anyone that will view the document. Users can extract the document until the date you specified has passed. A common system of this is making a catalog available to customers, until the catalog expires.

Integration Type

Example

Event-Driven Integration

You can use the mailbox for event-driven near real-time integration. Set up an automatic routing rule that searches a specific mailbox for a message name pattern. When the routing rule is evaluated, the message in the designated mailbox is matched, and a designated business process is triggered. The business process can access the contents of the message and perform automation functions like back-end systems processing or notification to an interested party. Event-driven processing is useful when your business requirements dictate that documents arriving in a mailbox should be processed as soon as possible after arrival.

Time-Driven Integration

You can use the mailbox for time-driven integration with your business processes. To do this, set up a business process that runs on a time schedule and uses the Mailbox Query service to search the mailbox for specific message criteria. When matching messages are found, the next step in the business process is started. The business process can do anything with the matched message, such as extract it and pass it to another system or notify a person that the message is available for them.

This system of the mailbox is useful where scheduled processing is important such as end of month payments. Messages received in the mailbox are processed at the next scheduled run of the business process.

Document Publishing

You can use the mailbox to publish documents for a specified period of time. Create a business process to add a document to a mailbox and set the extract policy ExtractableUntil, specifying the date you want the document to expire. Give permissions to this mailbox to anyone that will view the document. Users can extract the document until the date you specified has passed. A common system of this is making a catalog available to customers, until the catalog expires.