About partners

Sterling File Gateway enables the exchange of files between partners through routing channels that are set up to connect specific partners. Partners that send files into Sterling File Gateway are referred to as producers, and those that retrieve files are referred to as consumers. A partner can be a producer, a consumer, or both from an operational standpoint.

Route Provisioners create, edit, and delete partners. Before partners can be created, though, it is important that the System Administrator configure any communications adapters the partners may need to use so that permissions are set correctly.

Each partner is associated with exactly one community.

If consumer partners will use SFTP, create the remote SSH Profile before creating the partners.

If partners will use PGP, perform the following before creating the partners:
  • Install PGP server.
  • Start CLA2Client.jar process.
  • Modify PGPCmdlineService in B2B Console.
  • Create a PGP Profile named AFTPGPProfile in the B2B Console.
When a partner is created in Sterling File Gateway, the following objects are created to support the partner:
  • An Sterling B2B Integrator user account
  • A Sterling B2B Integrator mailbox using the partner name
  • A Sterling B2B Integrator virtual root for the user and mailbox

The user account is automatically assigned to the File Gateway Partners Users group, or the custom group which is set as default group in filegateway_ui.properties file. The user group users are assigned to has specific permissions that are granted to the users. See About Permissions.

If the partners will be authenticated outside of Sterling File GatewaySterling File Gateway, the System Administrator must establish your authentication server and Authentication Management System before you create the partners. Do not remove or reorder the authentication servers in the customer_overrides.properties file after creating partners associated with them.

To apply a password policy other than the default password policy provided in Sterling B2B Integrator, the System Administrator must create the new policy in Sterling B2B Integrator before you create the partners. Select the new policy from the list when creating the partners.