Noobie Questions

[Dennis Shirk]

Hello everyone,

I am new to Cloverleaf and HL7 in general. I just setup a test Cloverleaf server at my facility. I am going to the first training class in May. Please be patient with me if my questions are basic. I am trying to setup a test receive port so that I can receive messages from our current biztalk server.  I know little about biztalk as well. I am attaching a word doc with screenshots of what I have done so far. Can you guys take a look and let me know if I missed anything. I am not receiving messages from biztalk. I am just trying to get these messages in so I can start learning before class. This connection will be my first thing I have to learn. Any help is greatly appreciated. 🙂

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Dennis,

The first thing I do when trying to conect to a new TCP/IP interface is to use hcitcptest a command line utility for testing TCP/IP connections.

Ther are switches for hcitcptest that let you define if you wnat to act as a client or host, the port, the eencoding scheme.

If you just enter hcitcptest it will tell you the switches.

If you want to act like a server (sounds like you do) then don’t enter the host ID.

You can see if you get connected; see a message if it is sent; and optionally enter a reply to the message.

If you cannot connect with hcitcptest, you will just chase your tail in Cloverleaf(R).

Some observations:

The ‘Opening’ means Cloverfleaf(R) is listening. Apparently TrashTalk er BizTalk is trying to connect.

We have minimal expericence with TrashTalk (oops there I go again – I mean BizTalk) and it does not appear to play well with other children. In our case we discovered it attempted to open a new connection with each message. It appears to me BizTalk is written assuming a Web environment. So good luck being satisfied with BizTalk.

I also notice on your protocol setting you have localhost specified. Try removing that – after assuring you can connect via hcitcptest. It may be you are restricting connections from localhost which is Cloverleaf(R) so that will never happen with the BizTalk client.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Dennis Shirk]

Thanks for the infor Jim. We currently use biztalk but an outside company manages it for us. This is one of the reasons we are trying to switch to Cloverleaf and get rid of Biztalk altogether. Thanks for the reply and I will give your suggestions a try.

[Dennis Shirk]

Jim,

I tried your suggestion. This is the output of the hcitcptest…

So it looks like the connection is established and I am receiving data. After the last row it just hangs up. I have to press Ctrl-c to get back to a prompt. Where do I look in Cloverleaf to see if the message came through?  Thanks

[Jim Kosloskey]

Dennis,

The messagr hcitcptest received did not get to Cloverleaf(R) it was consumed by hcitcptest.

Did you remove the localhost entry from your protocol configuration for the thread?

If so stop and start the thread. You should come to an ‘Up’ state in the NetMonitor.

Then if there are any messages still ready to be delivered they will be received and you should see the Messages In count in the Cloverleaf(R) thread status display will show the number received, the last date time received.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Dennis Shirk]

Jim,

Thanks for all the help. I got it working today.

I have a new question now for anyone that is willing to help. If I have a text file that contains Hl7 messages can I import them into cloverleaf somehow and route them to a destination hl7 system at another location? I am really not sure what type of system they use at this point but I am just trying to find out if it is possible to import from a text file. If it is possible what would I need to do in order to make it work?

[Jim Levy]

Hi Dennis,

You can do this.  Assuming all you need to do is pass the data straight through to the receiving system, in network monitor do the following:

1)  Right click on the outbound thread, choose control>full.

2)  Choose the “resend” button.

3)  In the “Resend Datafile” window make the following selections:

      A) Under “Direction” choose “Outbound pre-TPS”.

      B) Under “Msg Type” “Data” will already be selected.  Leave it as is.

      C) Leave priority alone.

      D) For “Filename” browse to your file using the “List” button.

      E)  For “File Format”, you will have to figure out what type of file you

            have and choose the appropriate radio button.

If you take a look under Help>Contents you will find a number of reference guides that are pretty well written.  I’ve had to do a lot of “seat-of-the-pants” learning and have found these guides to be invaluable.  Most useful to me have been the User’s Guides (both volumes) and the Reference Guide, which is a programmers reference.

Good Luck!

Jim

[Author]

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