Inbound Communications

Inbound communication business objects are based on the D1-COMMIN maintenance objects. Inbound Communication objects have a much less defined schema since they are driven by the needs of the head end system’s API and those of the business process. As with outbound communications, the schema does not represent the exact message, but is the post-processed XSL result.

Key Algorithms

This section outlines some of the important algorithms executed as part of the inbound communication’s lifecycle.

Some algorithms are directly shared by multiple business objects and multiple lifecycle states. In other cases, unique algorithms will perform the same role across business objects. The following section refers to the algorithms generically.


Lifecycle State	Algorithms
Validate	Similar to the activity, the Validate state houses algorithms that will execute as the message is created. Validate Communication Type: This algorithm ensures the communicationType field is populated on the message. Find Parent Outbound Communication for Async Inbound: This algorithm is responsible for linking the incoming message with the original outbound communication using, for example, a transaction ID. This algorithm is what causes an inbound communication to be linked with a larger process.
Validation Error	If the Validate state encounters an error, the business object transitions to this state. The algorithms are similar to those in the activity business object.
Evaluate Response	The Evaluate Response state processes the inbound communication in the context of an “asynchronous response.” The algorithms should perform any required update tasks such as setting flags on the parent outbound communication.
Completed	This successful end state for inbound communications should transition the parent outbound communication to the next state. This typically completes the outbound communication and may trigger the activity to create a subsequent outbound communication.
Discarded	The parent outbound communication should transition to a failure state. This will also place the activity into the Communication Error state where it will await corrections or a Retry attempt.