Sterling File Gateway Routing Channel Template Part 1 - Communities, Groups, Partners and Mailboxes

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.

File Gateway use mailboxes as polling system to exchange messages. The partner never communicates directly with each other. Instead the partner has to access his mailbox(s) to either retrieve or send a file.

This is important for one this should be taken into account on the creation of RTCs and second mailboxes are user independent, what exists in the system is an association between the user and the mailbox, if a user is delete all of the associated mailbox will be deleted, on the other hand there might be situations where the mailbox is to be deleted from the user, check Delete a Mailbox section bellow to see the procedure.

Create new Community

1. To create a new community navigate to http://localhost:9090/filegateway/, on the dashboard select participants > Communities.

2. A new window will pop-up choose add.

3. Specify the Community name.

4. Specify the communication protocols, this are the ways the partner can interact with FileGateway as consumers and/or producers

5. Select the partner should receive email notifications.

6. Review and finish.

The following table resumes the communities insert info.

Field	Description
Community Name	A meaningful name to describe the community. Required. Cannot be a name previously used in Sterling Integration Suite. Do not use spaces, tabs, or the following special characters: ! @ # % ^ * ( ) + ? , < > [ ] { } / ' \ " | ;
Secret key for PGP signing	Select from list of keys assigned to AFTPGPProfile. Required if any of the consuming partners belonging to this community require PGP signed data from the Router. *
Secret key for PGP decryption	Select from list of keys assigned to AFTPGPProfile. Required if any of the producing partners belonging to this community send PGP encrypted data to the Router. This secret key may be the same or different from the one for PGP signing. *
Partner Initiates Protocol Connections to Mailbox	Select to make this option available when creating Partners belonging to this community. A unique mailbox is created for Partners that initiate connections. Depending on other selections, submailboxes are created for Partners to enable them to drop files off for routing, or pick up files routed to them.
Partner Listens for Protocol Connections	Select to enable protocols available to listening Partners belonging to this community. When selected, the following choices are available when creating Partners belonging to this community FTP or FTPS Connect:Direct SSH/SFTP If the System Administrator adds other protocols to the AFTExtensionsCustomer.xml file, they are also provided as choices here.
Should member partners receive notifications that they are subscribed to?	This selection has no effect in Sterling File Gateway.

Create new Partner on FileGateway

Partner created here only have access to myFileGateway, to have access to FileGateway check Create a User. Always be careful on Partner creation as the internal DB transaction might not be completed, complete the procedure as with no interruption.

1. To create a new partner navigate to http://localhost:9090/filegateway/, on the dashboard select participants > partners.

2. Choose create.

3. A new windows will pop-up choose the Community where you want to create the user.

4. In the next screen the user data is inserted.
1. Partner Name: Name displayed on the FileGateway for Groups, RTCs and Channels creation. It can have spaces and special characters it is good practice to use first and last name.
2. Partner Code: Name used by integration server internally to identify user, make sure this var is set although it is not mandatory in some situation might cause system errors if it is not set. As a good practice use the Partner Name without spaces
3. Address, City, Postal Code, Phone, Country: This fields are not very relevante as they are not used nor displayed elsewhere then in the FileGateway partners administration, the partner cannot change this field. Phone is mandatory.
4. Time Zone: The system adjust the delivery time shown on myFileGateway to the time zone set here so it’s good practice to set this correctly. The user might see time displacements for delivery and create confusion.
5. Email: The email address where myFileGateway notifications are sent to the partner.

5. Enter information relative to user account by filling the following fieds.
1. Authentication type: use local for partners that use the SFG internal database to store they’re login credentials. External for authentication servers implemented on SFG.
2. User Name: the login username the partner will use  fr authetication on myFileGateway.
3. Password: Insert a password that respects the Password Policy set.
4. Password Policy: It is can be created on the FileGateway console, chose one from the available on the drop down list.
5. Given Name, Surname: Names used to the welcome on myFileGateway partner interface.

6. For external authentication the password and password policy will be retrieved from the LDAP Authentication Server (Active Directory per say).

7. Select either if partner is producer or consumer this option doesn’t have a great impact in the system, as long as the channels are not set partner cannot produce or consume files. For option Partner will listen for a connection to consume data check the Create FTP partner section.

8. Use the next screen if partners are required to use keys to establish SFTP connections. You can leave the default value No.

9. Use the next screen if using PGP.

10. Review information and hit finish.

Delete a Partner

To delete a Partner first make sure the partner is not involved in any route. If so, the partner deletion might get error and fragments of data will persist in the database. But the deletion of partners is critical to maintain the system lean and manageable it also improves performance and releases space the users might have associated with they’re mailboxes and Business Processes that use them.

1. Check if the Partner exists in any routing channel. Both producer and consumer.

2. Delete the channels the user is associated with.

3. Navigate to Communities

4. Select the community the partner is associated with and press edit.

5. Press View.

6. Press Delete for the user you want to delete.

7. Press OK.

8. The Community will show up without the delete user.

Create new Group

Groups are a very important tool in File Gateway. A correct implementation of a group can make the whole management process a whole much easier. Each group should correspond a unique set of users in a business unit. Users can belong to multiple groups but RTC cannot change the groups for producer and consumers users once they have been instantiate with a routing channel. This way always make sure the groups used in a RTC are persistent and if more users are added in the routing channels they should be added to that group, the group definition must be as consistent as possible.

Groups are also used to broadcasting. This enable a user to upload the file just to one mailbox and that file will be delivered to all the users in the target group, it enable one to many cardinality connections.

For this part also see how to add groups in the RTCs.

To create a new group follow the steps bellow.

1. Navigate to Groups on File Gateway.

2. Hit Create.

3. Input the name of the group.

4. A success message is displayed.  The result is an empty group.

5. To add partners to a new created group hit added partners.

6. Select the Group – User pair to be integrated, multiple users can be added at the same time by pressing ctrl. Press execute to complete.

7. A report will be shown.

8. The new user can be listed in the by pressing the group name.

Delete a Mailbox

In some situation the system doesn’t automaticly removes the Mailboxes even after the channel delition. To keep an organized interface for the end user it migh be required to delete a mailbox manually.

1. In this scenerio a channel is deleted but the mailbox is still available for the user in myFileGateway upload menu and in the system. Start by deleting the route.

2. It can be checked that the mailbox is still in the system.

3. From FileGateway navigate to B2B Console.

4. Navigate Deployment > Mailboxes > Configuration. Search the mailbox you want to delete.

5. Hit delete for the mailbox.

6. The system will display a series of warnings, it is a good pratice to save a backup of the community before completing the delete. Check export resources to do that. This will normally be a problem as long as the mailbox is not in use by any channel.

7. A sucessfull message should appear.