Overview
The most basic functionality in Link is that it can receive, transform and send documents / data.
In Link, there is a very big conceptual difference between receiving and sending documents. We will handle document receival and sending in separate chapters.
Note that it is easy (for developers) to create new transport types, so don’t panic if you have a special scenario that is not covered by this chapter. To learn about creating custom transport types, you can check the OLD Link Technical Guide.
Receiving documents
Link offers several ways of receiving documents. As you can see in the diagram, there are different types of receive sites and also the possibility to set up so-called Polling locations. We will explain the different types in the chapters below.
Resolving document type, sender and receiver
A key topic to understand is, that in order to process a document correctly, Link needs to know the document type, who sent the document and who should receive it - i.e. who the sending partner is and who the receiving partner is. With these key pieces of information.
In many cases, Link will be able to learn all three things simply by analyzing the document content. E.g. Link has built-in functionality for understanding the global standards like EDIFACT, X12 and PEPPOL, but it is also easily achievable using custom formats like CSV or a home-made XML format. In any case, your developers just need to have set up the relevant document types and format/variant/versions.
It is also possible to configure one or several of this information directly on a Polling location by setting up an Init configuration.
There are many roads leading to Rome, but regardless how the document type, sender and receiver are resolved, Link will be able to route the document through the appropriate distribution (assuming a matching distribution has been set up)