Partners

A ‘Partner’ in Link , is a company or an internal system that sends and/or receives messages through the Link solution. However, a partner can also be an internal system that needs to be identified individually.

There is a clear distinction between internal and external partners. An internal partner is the company that owns the Link installation or a subdivision of it. External partners are the companies that are exchanging documents with the internal partner(s).

In Link, there are two different types of partners: internal and external. An internal partner is an endpoint (typically of an application) within your organization. External partners are the business partners you exchange data with.

You can also label a partner as a "Proxy partner", which is relevant when you are communicating with external partners through a broker or a VANS partner. Read more about this topic in the Proxy partners article.

In this part of the user guide you will learn how to create, manage and search for partners. Partner management is an important part of using Link since many of the vital functionalities that help you achieve a high level of reusability with your integrations are rooted in having an optimized configuration at the partner level. Therefore, we strongly recommend all users read the Partner detail page. 

One of the most crucial tasks when creating a new partner is to get the identification mechanism right. In many cases, you will have an endpoint that receives documents from many different partners. In this case, Link will determine the sender partner via the content of the document.

There are many different standards used to identify business partners (i, e ., GLN, DUNS, VAT etc.). In Link, these are called "Identification types". It is important to configure your partner identification correctly. Otherwise, Link will be unable to determine who the senders of these documents are. Read more about how to manage this in the Identification types chapter.

Let's get started. Hover your mouse cursor over the Partners menu item in on the left hand side menu , to get a list of options, or press it to see a list of partners.

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Search [1]

Click this to see the available options.

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Search

Click on it to open the 'Partner Search' page. From here there you can search among the different partners in your Link solution. 

New partner [2]

Press this find and edit existing partners, as well as add Partner tags to them.

New Partner

Click on "New Partner" to start creating a new partner. You will be redirected then directed to the 'New Partner' page. From here you can input partner information such as name and identification numbers.

Import Partners

Click here to import a list of partners from another Link solution. A pop-up will be displayed, allowing you to select the a file on your local hard drive and then import it. Read more information about this in the Import and export of configuration article.