When to not use "Outbound Only"

[Rich Durkee]

If I have threads that send HL7 messages to servers via an IP connection, when would I not check the “Outbound Only” box on the Inbound Tab? I guess I would like an example of when a outdound thread would want to receive something other than replies. I don’t think any of our systems send messages back to the engine after they receive a message, they just send replies. Just another of those little things that I don’t quite understand about this product but probably would if the documentation were better.

Thanks.

Rich Durkee

Topic

[David Caragay]

Rich,

If the “outbound only” checkbox is checked, Cloverleaf will still expect to receive a reply if you have set up the thread to do so.  By setting up for replies, your outbound thread will set an “awaiting reply” switch each time it sends a message out.  This tells Cloverleaf to expect a reply.  “outbound only” will ignore any unexpected inbound messages that arrive when the “awaiting reply” switch is not set.

You would not check this box if you are using your outbound thread to receive “data” messages from the foreign system.    An example would be a request for an lab order number.  A system could be set up to respond back to the outbound thread with this lab order number.  This is not very common since most interfaces will use a different pair of threads to communicate data back to the source system.

If you are having problems with losing replies from the destination system, you may also want to temporarily turn off this check box so you can track replies that may have been received after the reply timeout period.  After the timeout is met, the “awaiting reply” flag is turned off and the “outbound only” option would end up throwing away your late arriving replies.

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