Enterprise profile
An enterprise is a special partner that represents a corporation, also known as the hub, local partner, or sponsor.
You can modify details of an enterprise profile but cannot delete it.
Partner profiles
A partner profile holds details about a corporation such as identities, connections, certificates, contacts and addresses.
Partners can send and receive documents to webMethods B2B Integration for processing. The documents are processed by using the processing rules and then delivered as defined in the processing rules.
In webMethods B2B Integration, users who are associated with the partner are the entities that authenticate a document exchange.
To create a partner profile, you must minimally define an identity for that partner. An identity primarily identifies a partner in webMethods B2B Integration. The combination of identity type and identity value must be unique for a partner.
Details in partner profile:
- Identities
- Define identities for business users and partners to identify them in a document exchange.
- Communication credential
- Create a communication credential for webMethods B2B Integration to authenticate the inbound document.
- Inbound channels
- Associate an inbound channel with a partner to send documents to the B2B enterprise.
- Outbound channels
- Associate an outbound channel with a partner to receive documents from the B2B enterprise.
- Address
- Add addresses for all your business partners to know where your business offices are located.
- Contacts
- Add contacts for your business partners to contact you.
- Certificates
- Add certificates to allow secure communication between partners
You can add as many partner profiles as you want. Keep this information up to date.
Communication credentials
webMethods B2B Integration accepts and processes the documents from a partner when a communication credential is associated with it. These credentials are used to authenticate a business document exchange in webMethods B2B Integration.
Channels
A channel forms the basis of communication in webMethods B2B Integration. It encompasses various underlying protocols such as HTTP, AS2 to facilitate document exchange. Therefore, all transactions among partners use the transport and exchange capabilities that channels provide.
Inbound channels. webMethods B2B Integration receives documents on the endpoint URLs you create.
Outbound channels. Send the document to the intended partners in webMethods B2B Integration. A partner must have a preferred outbound channel through which it prefers to receive documents.
Channels performs the following validations on receiving a document:
- Is the user valid?
- Does a communication credential association still exist for this document?
- Is the document sent to the right inbound channel endpoint?
The following table lists the channel capabilities:
| Intention | Activity |
|---|---|
| If the partner needs to receive documents only from webMethods B2B Integration | Create an outbound channel and associate it with the partner. The partner must have a preferred outbound channel. |
| If the partner needs to send documents only to webMethods B2B Integration | Create a communication credential for the partner and associate the communication credential with an inbound channel. Sending a document to webMethods B2B Integration requires the communication credential to authenticate the document exchange. |
- Barring the SFTP-IN channel, you can make all other channel types partner-specific.
- If sender information is not available in the payload, and when the document is submitted by using a partner-specific channel, then the sender information is retrieved by using the channel-partner association.
- If the receiver information is not available in the payload, and the document is submitted by using the partner-specific channel, then the enterprise is considered as the receiver. For details on how to make a channel partner-specific, see Creating channel.
Channel-partner-communication credential association
- Define channels
- As an enterprise user, define the inbound and outbound channels to receive and send documents to partners.
- Associate channels with partners
- Associate the inbound and outbound channels that you created with the newly created partners.
- Associate communication credential to partners
- Create communication credential and associate them with partners. A partner can send documents to webMethods B2B Integration when the partner has at least one communication credential associated with it. Communication credentials are used to authenticate a document submission to webMethods B2B Integration.