Adeptia Connect provides a client-facing access to business users to configure and automate data exchange with Partners and Customers. By using Adeptia Connect’s out-of-the-box, self-service interface, business users can set up data exchange and automate the transfer of data between Customers (spokes) and a Carrier (hub).
For example, a Retirement Benefits Company (Carrier) provides its Plan Sponsors (Customers) a published list of data exchange Templates that makes it easy for Customers to configure and send data to the Carrier. By providing an easy-to-use self-service capability to Plan Sponsors, Adeptia Connect makes it easy for Customers to do business with the Carrier.
So how does this work. As an example, let’s say a Retirement Benefits Company publishes a Retirement Contributions Template. The template has a pre-defined set of rules on how the data exchange between the Plan Sponsors and the Carrier would happen. First set of rules are related to the data pickup or how the data will be sent by the Customer to the Carrier. Here the Carrier’s IT User, when configuring the data pick-up or “Source” rule, selects SFTP as a standard protocol for receiving all incoming data files from Customers. The details of the SFTP properties are left to the Customer to configure when they subscribe to this Template as part of their Transaction configuration activity. As a side note, Adeptia Connect supports multiple protocols and application connectors to receive data from Customers. These can range from AS2, SFTP, Email, SOAP/REST APIs to databases, SAP IDOCs, Dropbox, Salesforce, MS Dynamics, BambooHR and many others.
IT User view of Adeptia Connect
Second set of the rules when defining a Template relates to the Destination. When the file is received from the Customer, where does the Carrier want to move it. Adeptia Connect provides a variety of different protocols and application connectors to integrate the data with any system. Destinations can be APIs, Databases, ERP, mounted shared drive on a server, another SFTP location or orchestrations running in the backend Adeptia Integration Suite. For the purpose of this example, we will choose a standard XML output format and store the output in a LAN folder. IT User also selects the Customer Network in terms of which category of Customer would be using this Template. Business Users in Adeptia Connect can create multiple Partner/Csutomer Networks and categorize each Partner or Customer into these Networks.
After configuring the rules on how Customers are going to send their Member’s Retirement data to the Carrier and also by defining the target location of where the output would be routed to once converted, the third step in defining the Template is to specify the data conversion rules. The Data conversion or Mapping rule depends on two options. One option is to have Customer map the data to the standard format published by the Hub company. Second option is to have the IT user in the Hub company configure the mapping. The latter approach is typically used if the Hub or the Carrier already knows the Source format of the files that Partners are going to send. For this example, we will choose the first option and have the Customer map the source data to the XML output format.
IT User defines the rules on how Customers would exchange data with the Hub
Final step in defining the template is to publish it. IT User simply clicks on the Activate button on the Template and now this Template is available for the Partners to consume. An additional step after activation is to grant access to the Customers so that they would have permission to consume this Template when they login to Adeptia Connect.
Below is a snapshot of a published Template created by the Hub’s IT User that has pre-defined rules about how the data is going to be transferred from Customer to the Carrier. Also showing the screen that allows the IT user to grant access to the list of Customers who would be using the Template to send Retirement Contributions data.
Hub’s IT User publishes a Template and grants access to Customers
Suppose we have granted access to a Benefits Partner which is one of the customer that sends data to the Carrier. Customers can be TPAs or third-party agencies or service providers that are aggregating their Member retirement data from multiple systems and sending this aggregated data to the Carrier.
In the following steps, we will show how the Benefits Partner uses the Retirement Contributions data to the Carrier. Benefits Partner user logs into the Adeptia Connect and sees a series of Templates that are made available by the Carrier, as shown below.
Customer User view of Adeptia Connect
Customer User clicks on Retirement Contributions “Use This” button and uses the Template to define a Transaction. Transaction setup interface opens up a self-service wizard that prompts the Customer to define the SFTP location where the files will be picked up by a Carrier. As part of this Source configuration, Customer can either schedule or define a polling event that would trigger the transaction when a new file is placed into the SFTP folder.
Here are some of the important self-service user interface screens for Partner Users when they are configuring a Transaction. One of the step in configuring the Transaction relates to the type of data formats that the Partner can select and define. This is important because as part of this Template we are allowing Partner to define their data format and map their data to the format needed by the Carrier. We also provide a Mapping interface that allows them to map their data fields to the target data format.
Customer User configures a Transaction by using a Template
Here’s the Mapping interface for the Customer’s Business User to map their source data to the target format. Mapping is an optional step and is only shown in the wizard if the Carrier wants the Partner to map their source data to their standard target format. Reusable Templates and Maps provide a greater ease of onboarding new Customers. With a single Template, a company can onboard data from multiple Customers.
Mapping interface for the Customer Business User
Mapper provides all the functions to the Partner user to convert or transform the source data to the target format. Expression builder has a complete list of data functions to format the data, perform calculations and to allow If/Else conditions to further filter or cleanse data before it gets sent to the Carrier. Functions such as Value Maps and Invoking APIs from within the mapper are some of the advanced data conversion functions that Adeptia provides out of the box.
View of the Dashboard
After completing and activating the Transaction, the Adeptia Connect will automatically pull files from the Customer’s Source location and processes the data. Both the Customer and the Carrier has full visibility of the transaction status. Adeptia providesabilityto re-run a failed transaction and provides detailed meta-data of the runtime execution such asnumberof records processed,timeit took to execute the transaction, number of records in the source file etc. Dashboards provide full data analytics capability to search for a particular data point based on a search key or to further drill-down into a report and look at overall transaction’s run-trend, historical successanderrors and other details.