How does ActiveTransfer work with Trading Networks?

When you define virtual folders used for file transfers, you can organize the virtual folders by partner name. You can also associate ActiveTransfer users with partners. If webMethods Trading Networks is installed, ActiveTransfer Server retrieves the list of partners from Trading Networks. If Trading Networks is not installed, you can define your own partners when you edit virtual folders or user profiles. The partners created while defining users and the virtual file system are internal to ActiveTransfer and are not available to other B2B products.

In the Software AG business-to-business (B2B) platform that includes webMethods Trading Networks, ActiveTransfer provides the managed file transfer facility while Trading Networks provides you the B2B capabilities of file (referred to as documents in Trading Networks) management and partner management, transaction monitoring, and so on.

Whether you have installed the ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks instances on the same machine (local installation) or separate machines (remote installation), you can control B2B transactions end to end by using ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks as follows:

You can configure partners only once—either in ActiveTransfer or Trading Networks. If Trading Networks is not installed, you can define your own partners when you edit virtual folders or user profiles. If Trading Networks is installed, ActiveTransfer Server retrieves the list of partners from Trading Networks. However, you must define the partner-user and partner-virtual folder associations separately in the two products.

In ActiveTransfer, synchronizing partner information between the two products depends on a parameter to enable retrieval of Trading Networks partners and, when connecting to remote Trading Networks instances, a parameter that lists all the aliases of the remote Trading Networks Server instances. Local installations of ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks do not require any configurations to share partner information. Although ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks synchronize automatically at periodic intervals, if you require a partner configured in ActiveTransfer to be available in Trading Networks immediately or the other way round, manually run the Integration Server service wm.mft.assets.partner.syncPartnerProfiles and then refresh the My webMethods Server user interface.

If you have ActiveTransfer groups, the partner information is shared across allActiveTransfer Server instances in the group.

For details on the Trading Networks configurations required for Trading Networks to receive

Use ActiveTransfer for Trading Networks document delivery. In Trading Networks, ActiveTransfer is available as a delivery method for file transfer (or document delivery in Trading Networks). For the ActiveTransfer delivery method, the Trading Networks partner must have a virtual folder assigned. Then, when Trading Networks triggers a file transfer, ActiveTransfer sends the file to the target location in the virtual folder without creating a local copy.

For each file sent, Trading Networks and ActiveTransfer maintain different IDs by which to identify the file transfer. To help you identify Trading Networks file transactions, ActiveTransfer logs include the Trading Networks document ID as well as the ActiveTransfer transaction ID. However, the My webMethods Server user interface only displays the ActiveTransfer transaction ID. Also, in the My webMethods Server user interface, you can identify file transactions triggered in Trading Networks by using Trading Networks (TN) as the trigger source or the Trading Networks file name.