| Preliminary Fact-gathering |
Gather as much information about the new interface as possible: the source and destination systems being connected, communication protocols supported by each system (file transfer, socket connection, web service, etc.), file format being exchanged (CSV, HL7, XML, etc.), sample messages from the source system, interface specification from the destination system, and any known data mappings needed. |
| Create & Configure Channel |
Create a new channel in QIE and configure it with the known facts. QIE requires at least the source and destination communication protocol and at least one mapping by default. If the source communication protocol is not known, configure a temporary "data in" folder on the QIE server. If the destination communication protocol is not known, configure QIE to drop the mapped file to a temporary "data out" folder or to discard the file. If no mapping is known, highlight and delete the blue mapping node and connect the source node directly to the destination node. |
| Configuring Mappings |
Create as many mappings from both the known mapping issues and the destination interface specification document as possible. |
| Testing |
Start testing the configuration by creating a message from the source system and/or using the QIE testing functionality with sample messages to test the configuration implemented so far. |
| Evaluating Error(s) & Configuring Additional Changes |
Analyze any errors and devise a plan to resolve them. Implement the fixes and/or add any new logic now available (source or destination communication protocols, new mapping requests, etc.) and retest. Continue this process until the configuration is ready for go-live. |
| Promote to Production |
After completing testing and setup, update any settings on the test channel that may be different from production (source and destination communication protocols, database connectivity settings, web service URLs, and associated usernames and passwords). If the production install of QIE is on a separate server, use the Export and Import functionality on the Application menu to move the channel and its dependencies to the production system. |