How Integrations Work in CIC Cloud Edition

Cleo Integration Cloud moves data between your trading partners, your business applications, and your backend systems, transforming and routing it along the way. A complete integration combines connectivity objects that move data between systems with processing logic that inspects, transforms, and routes it.

Integration Building Blocks

CIC uses four object types to move data between systems.

Endpoints: An Endpoint represents a source or destination for data. Create an Endpoint for each trading partner, business application, and backend system you integrate with. The Endpoint type determines the protocol used to send or receive data:

• AS2 
• API 
• OFTP 
• SFTP (client and server)
• FTP(S) (client and server)
• S3 
• Email 
• Database 
• Application 
• Azure Blob 
• File System 
• Partner Mailbox 

Access Points: An Access Point allows a server in a private data center to communicate securely with CIC. Create an Access Point for any Endpoint that resides behind your firewall, such as a backend ERP. Access Points let CIC reach private Endpoints without requiring you to open inbound ports. You create an Access Point by installing a CIC Agent on the private server.

Data Flows: A Data Flow connects a source Endpoint to a destination Endpoint and moves data in one direction. Moving data from a trading partner, through CIC for processing, and on to a backend system requires two Data Flows. When neither inspection nor transformation is needed, you can build a single Data Flow directly from the partner Endpoint to the backend Endpoint.

Transformation Endpoints: A Transformation Endpoint is a built-in Endpoint that represents CIC's processing engine. Unlike the Endpoint types above, you don't create a Transformation Endpoint. CIC provides one, and you select it when you build a Data Flow. Use it as the destination of your inbound Data Flow and the source of your outbound Data Flow to route data through CIC for inspection and transformation.

How CIC Processes Data

When data reaches the Integration Engine, it passes through six stages:

Receive: A user-defined Event manages incoming data and passes the payload to the Inspect stage.

Inspect: CIC validates the payload against a Schema that defines the structure of the expected data. This confirms the payload is well-formed — a valid EDI document, for example — and parses it for the stages that follow.

Transform: CIC converts the parsed data into the format the destination expects, such as converting an EDI X12 file into a flat file an ERP can ingest.

Route: CIC determines which Business Processes handle the payload.

Process: Business Processes execute, thereby applying the logic the integration requires.

Send: A Cloud Adapter sends the payload to the destination Endpoint.

Building an Integration End-to-End

The following example builds an inbound integration in which a trading partner, Acme, sends purchase orders over SFTP to a Microsoft Dynamics ERP running in a private data center.

1. Create the source Endpoint. Create an SFTP Endpoint for Acme.
2. Create the destination Endpoint. CIC connects to on-premises applications through file-based or database integration. For file-based integration, create a file system Endpoint pointing to a folder on a server in the private data center — CIC places files there for the ERP to collect, and collects files the ERP places there.
3. Create an Access Point. Install a CIC Agent on the private server so CIC can reach the file system Endpoint through the firewall.
4. Build the inbound Data Flow. Connect the Acme SFTP Endpoint to the Transformation Endpoint.
5. Build the outbound Data Flow. Connect the Transformation Endpoint to the ERP Endpoint.
6. Build the processing logic. Create the data schemas, maps, routes, and business processes that inspect and transform the data. Configure the source and destination Endpoints (and related interface objects). This basically tells CIC which integration components to run when data arrives on the inbound Data Flow, and which Data Flow to call once processing completes.
7. Deploy the integration to your CIC production instance.

Where You Build and Manage Integrations

Monitoring Integrations

The Cockpit provides dashboards and transaction monitoring for your integrations. Under the Activity tab, the Jobs section lists Jobs — each Job represents a single run of an integration.

Open a Job to see a step-by-step diagram showing the status of every stage, and select any step to view its content and detailed logs. When a partner's purchase order fails to reach your ERP, this shows you which stage failed and why — for example, an inbound document that did not match its Schema — so you can correct the problem without contacting the partner for a resend.

Related Topics

• Overview of CIC Cloud Edition
• Building your First Integration