Welcome to Maps & Profiles

Most Supply Lens integrations were built in code. A newer kind, the config-driven integration, does the same work with configuration instead: a set of maps and profiles that Supply Lens reads when a message arrives. That means you can add a new connection, or change how one organisation's data is shaped, without waiting for a code release.

This course teaches you to do that work safely in Prism, the Supply Lens administration app. By the end you will be able to:

• explain which map or profile Supply Lens will use for a message, and why;
• set up a new config-driven integration type for all organisations;
• create, check, publish and version maps and profiles for one organisation;
• change a shared base for one customer with an overlay, without forking it;
• go back to an earlier version, and find out why a map or profile does not run.

Who can use these screens

You must have the admin role. Without it the Maps & Profiles screens do not show at all. At the moment organisation users cannot see them, so this is implementer work, not something you hand to a customer.

There are two groups of screens, and it matters which one you are in:

What this course does not cover

Each map or profile has a body: configuration text in a special format (JSON, with its own expression language). This course does not teach you how to write a body. It teaches everything around the body: where it lives, how it is checked, how it goes live, how it layers and how you prove what runs. Ask a developer for help with the body itself.

Maps here are not Mappings

The help centre talks about Mappings. A Mapping is a rule in an organisation's settings that joins two Integrations: it says which document type flows from which source Integration to which target Integration. Each arrow in a data-flow diagram is one Mapping.

The maps in this course are different. A create map or parse map describes how a Document is turned into a partner's payload, or a partner's payload into a Document. A Mapping decides where a Document goes; a map decides what it looks like when it gets there.

The running example

The source guide uses a fictional integration type, Acme API, with the id acme-api. This course uses it too, along with two fictional businesses you will meet in the scenarios: Hilltop Coffee, a coffee roaster on Unleashed and Shopify, and Northbank Fulfilment, a 3PL.