Document flows

Usually, a document flow represents a business process.

For example:

  • An invoicing process where an invoice is created for a delivery that was shipped.
  • A maintenance process where a service order is planned based on a customer repair request.

In a "simple" document flow, two connection points are involved. One connection point sends a specific type of documents, and the other connection point receives those documents. Document flows can be more complex.

In addition to connection points, document flows can contain other items:

  • Mappings are used to translate a document to another format. For example, if you retrieve custom sales order documents from your database, you must translate them to standard Infor BODs to load them into an Infor application.
  • Scripts are used for executing custom Python code on incoming documents. For example, scripts can be used to facilitate and solve common use cases such as data object format conversion, data mapping, complex calculations and transformations.
  • Parallel flows are used if a document must be sent to multiple connection points. Or if documents from multiple connection points must be sent to a single connection point.
  • Filters are used to limit the number of messages that are delivered to a connection point. For example, if only documents having a specific status are relevant for an application, you can filter out the documents having another status.
  • Content-based routings are used to send a document to a subset of available destinations based on the document contents. For example, if three warehouses exist, each having their own warehouse management system, a SalesOrder message can be routed to one of these warehouses. The warehouse code that is specified in the SalesOrder message is used. The execution of document flows is fully automatic. After a flow is defined and activated, the relevant documents are routed accordingly.