Overview

External connectors are connectors that run in the framework of a third party and send Attivio documents into AIE's workflow. We can monitor them through the AIE Administrator connectors page if they support the External Connectors Monitor endpoint.

The externalconnector is a AIE module that uses the External Connectors Monitor endpoint to monitor External Connectors in AIE's environment.

View incoming links.

• Attivio Modules ,
• Load Data and Content

External Connectors and "Regular" Connectors

External connectors are installed, configured and managed using the third-party tools. They push documents to into an AIE workflow through the Java Content Feeder, WebServices, or the REST API. They can be monitored from the AIE Administrator connectors page if they support the External Connectors Monitor endpoint.

In the AIE Administrator, external connector monitors look like "regular" AIE connectors with the following differences:

• There is a single External Connector Monitor type. An instance of it will be configured to monitor, for example, a Raytion-SAP connector instance. Another instance will be configured to monitor a SearchTech-Exchange-2013 connector instance.
• External connector monitors instances are started automatically when AIE is started.
• External connector monitors generally provide the same information about the state of the external connector as "regular" AIE connectors. But there could be some limitations with specific third party connectors. For example, the number of outstanding documents will not be available from some External Connectors.
• In addition to the usual connector state information, external connectors will provide a link to the third party connector admin screen.
• The start, stop and pause commands for connectors do not have any effect on external connectors. 

External Connector Monitor Configuration

Create an External Connector Monitor in the AIE Administrator connectors page.

The External Connector Monitor is configured with the following required parameters:

• Required: External ConnectorURL - provided by the third party for each external connector instance.
• Required: usersname
• Required: password
• Optional: Monitor call frequency (seconds) - 2 seconds by default.

The External Connector Monitor makes periodic HTTP calls to <url>/state to retrieve state and status information.

Format of the JSON String returned from the External Connector URL

The JSON String returned from the the HTTP GET call should be consistent with the following Java object:

The class has the following fields:

private String connectorName;

private String connectorType;

private String status; //Free style descriptive status

private boolean running;

private long startTime;

private long numDocsPublished;

private long outstandingDocs;

private String adminURL; //The admin page for the connector

private String workflow; // use ContentFeeder. getIngestWorkflowName() 

Note that outstandingDocs is optional.

An example of the resulting JSON string is:

{"connectorType":"SAP Content","connectorName":"testConnector","status":"Running; Started at Wed Dec 10 14:55:25 EST 2014","running":true,"startTime":1418241325553,"numDocsPublished":1052,"outstandingDocs":5, "adminURL":"http://localhost:8080/admin","workflow":"fileIngest"}