Using PilotFish Interface Exchange (PIE) Templates (Demo)

Welcome to the XCS eiConsole PilotFish Interface Exchange (PIE) template’s demonstration. In this demo we’ll show how templates can be downloaded from the PilotFish Interface Exchange, or the PIE, and used within the XCS eiConsole. We begin with an empty project in the Route File Management window. The first thing we’ll do is open up the PilotFish Interface Exchange Web Center, or PIE Web Center, by clicking this icon.

Visiting the PIE from the eiConsole will automatically log you in. You’ll notice that you’re logged in by the presence of a LOGOUT button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Next, we’ll search for the template that we want to download. In this case, we’ll be looking for an HL7 Immunization template. Type the search term in the search box, and then hit SEARCH and you’ll be presented with a list of products available on the PIE.

Click the Details button on the product that you’re most interested in.

Here on the right hand side of the screen you can see various documentation. For an HL7 template this will include a sample HL7 message, a sample XML representation of the message after it’s been processed through the HL7 Transformation Module, and a link to the appropriate Implementation Guide on the HL7 or other HL7 Health related site.

Assuming that this is the template that you’re interested in downloading, proceed to click the Free Download button.

No download will occur in the browser. Instead, you’ll be greeted with a message that says, “This version is marked as downloaded for you.”

Returning to the eiConsole, you’re immediately presented with a dialogue that allows you to download this resource. Click the Download Now button.

If prompted, make sure to accept any agreements that are presented. After download, links to the implementation guide, the sample XML, and sample HL7 message will appear in your PIE inbox.

Most importantly, there will also be an icon indicating the product or template itself.

To move this template into your project, select it from the PIE Inbox and drag it into your Project View. When you release the mouse, the Package Import dialogue will appear.

It will list all of the components in the template, in this case an interface. You can choose what you want to include or exclude. In this case we’ll include the single root interface that was included in the template bundle.

Now, click the Import Selected button.

Next, you’ll be prompted to merge Environment Settings. If this project had existing interfaces, it may have existing environment settings properties. In that case you would be able to merge additional environment settings from this template with your existing environment properties. Since this is a brand new project, it will merge it with a blank environment settings. Click the Yes button to continue.

Next you’ll be presented with the Environment Properties Dialog. This gives you a list of all of the specific environment settings used by this interface template. In this case it includes an inbound and outbound directory for consuming and producing files. You can change the value here to match your system.

After you’ve changed these values to match your system, click the Save button and then Close.

Having completed the import you can see that the Root interface now appears within the project.

You can double click this interface to see the two routes that are included in the template. HL7 interface templates on the PIE each include two routes, one that consumes the HL7 message with the expectation that it will be converted to another format, and another capable of producing the HL7 compliant format from your proprietary format. In order to work with either of these you can double click it, open it in the main route screen and tweak it to meet your needs.

Let’s take a quick look at how each one of these is configured. First, the Consume route. The Consume route is configured with a Directory Listener expected to pick up an HL7 file from the specified inbound directory.

Then, a Source Transformation is configured that converts the sample file into an XML representation, and then has a shell based mapping to convert this into the format of choice. Typically, you would leave the Transformation Module “As Is”.

You might want to open the Data Mapper in order to build a transformation to your specified proprietary format.

You’ll see that the included transformation does nothing. It has the selected HL7 message loaded on the left hand side of the screen, but the mapping panel and Targets are empty. It is up to you to load your Target format and to complete the mapping.

The rest of the Route is quite simple, there are no Routing Rules configured, no Target Transformation, and the Results are simply placed in a Directory. Again, the Listener and Transport configuration should be updated to meet your specific needs.

Once complete, as always, you can test the interface in the eiConsole’s Testing Mode.

The interface is functional right out-of-the-box, for example, if you wish to test the Source Transformation through the Target Transformation you can configure the test like this and click the Execute button…

And navigate to the data directory inside the downloaded template. You’ll see that a sample HL7 file is included, typically with a .rpt extension.

You can then see the input HL7 message, the short form vaccination.

The rendering of that HL7 message as XML, using the XCS eiConsole’s HL7 transformation module.

And then the output of the transformation, in this case it’s an empty document, but again, you would typically replace this with a transformation that generates the output format you require.

Now we’ll return to the File Management window and take a quick look at the production interface.

The Produce interface allows you to create the HL7 message from your own proprietary format. It looks very similar to what you saw on the consumption side, however, this time the Target Transform is populated. Here we have a pre-built XLST configuration with a bit more in place.

This time you can see the left hand side, the Source Format, is empty – waiting to be replaced with your proprietary data format. The HL7 dictionary is loaded to the right, but the middle contains a set of templates, a skeleton for the message that you need to create based on the specification. Simply load your format in the left hand side and map the values onto the pre-built skeleton in the middle.

Finally, the HL7 v2.X Transformation Module will take that XML and convert it into the appropriate HL7 format.

This concludes our demonstration of using the HL7 templates from the PilotFish Interface Exchange within the XCS eiConsole.