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This example diagram shows a document exchange using different formats between two business partners.
In Link, one document exchange (or document flow) between two partners is called a distribution - in the diagram, two distributions are shown: One for Orders and one for Invoices.
In the following text, the most basic Link document processing terms and building blocks will be described. The chosen order below is carefully chosen, as it will build up your understanding to ultimately be able to create your own distributions.
It is worth mentioning that Link is largely built to support the integration pattern called Canonical Data Model. This will also be referred to as Common Data Model or in short, CDM. You might find this topic a bit too technical - if so, just skip to the “Essential building blocks” section.
Canonical Data Model
In short, this integration pattern means that a format-in-the-middle is introduced for each type of data that is exchanged. A CDM is an XML structure that a developer must create and make available in Link. For each of your document types (i.e. Orders, Invoices, Price catalogues etc.), you need to have one CDM format implemented. Before this is done, the document type will not be visible in Link.
Understanding how to set up new document types is described in the /wiki/spaces/L300/pages/2478806904 Link technical guide.
An input document will be mapped to the CDM XML structure, and when data has been mapped to the CDM it is used as basis for mapping to the desired output documents. Therein lies the flexibility offered by the CDM format.
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Note that all the terms mentioned in the following (except distributions) should be made ready by developers / advanced users. There is much more information about how to set them up in
the /wiki/spaces/L300/pages/2478806904 Link technical guide.
Document type
A document type is used to define a business document entity. Some B2B integrations examples are Purchase Invoice, Sales Invoice, Sales Order, Sales Order Response, Transport Instruction - but any type of data entity can be reflected as a Document type in Link.
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Setting up document configurations is for advanced users or developers and will not be covered in the User Guide - there is much more information about this in the /wiki/spaces/L300/pages/2478806904 Link technical guide.
As a regular user you should note, that the exact setup of a document configuration, could result in more options (fields, drop-downs, check-boxes) for you to consider when selecting the document configurations for your distributions.
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