Skip to content

Adapters

An Adapter is an instance of the associated Adapter Type definition. The Adapter Types page provides information about the third party system properties, incoming events, and outgoing commands defined in the Adapter. Each Adapter Type can be instantiated multiple times with a unique Adapter name.

The Adapter Types and Adapters pages are used to allow workflows to communicate with external subsystems for services such as email, facial recognition, and messaging.

Adapter Types

Note

See the Adapter Type Documentation for a detailed description of each Adapter Type.

Adapter Types contain the information and software code that define how to communicate with an external system (e.g., Twitter) and they are managed using the Adapter Types page.

The system provides access to a variety of useful adapter types from an external Adapter Type Store. In the initial state the system does not contain any pre-defined adapter types. There are two categories of adapter types that can be added to the system:

  • adapter types already existing in the Adapter Type Store that can be imported individually in system and also updated when a new version is available.

  • custom adapter types that can be imported in an unlimited number.

Both add functionalities are available on the Adapter Types page. The adapter types that are not used by any adapters can be deleted also from the Adapter Types page. The adapter types from the system can be imported and exported using the Import Configuration or Export Configuration pages.

More information on the available adapter types in the Adapter Store can be found here.

Warning

Deleting an adapter type that is referenced by one of the adapters may result in non functional adapter(s) and/or workflows.

Adapters

Adapters are instances of an Adapter Type and define how to connect to a specific instance of a system (e.g., @TwitterUsername1, @TwitterUsername2) and they are managed using the Adapters page. Multiple Adapters can be created using a single Adapter Type as long as a unique Adapter name is used.

If the system contains adapters imported or restored without a corresponding adapter type, the Adapters page will display a warning message containing instruction to add the necessary adapter types from the Adapter Type Store.

External adapters can be supported in 2 ways:

  • Adapter Hubs
    • Managed using the Adapter Hubs page in UIP (see the Adapter Hubs button on the Adapters page)
    • Easy to deploy and configure
    • Supported on NEC provided hardware, a VM or customer provided server hardware
    • Supports listening on custom ports and mapping on custom mounts for adapters
  • Adapter Proxies
    • Only supported by engaging with NEC Professional Services team

Warning

Deleting an adapter that is referenced in one of the workflows may result in a non functional workflow.

Unless otherwise documented, when an adapter command result returns an array, it is implied that there is a count property available.

For example, the Amazon Rekognition adapter detectObjects command will return the below detectedObjects array.

There are 2 objects detected and the detectedObjects.count property contains the count (detectedObjects.count).

detectedObjects.count is not listed in the adapter commands result section of the document but it is implied and can be used in workflows. The count property is implied because detectedObjects is defined as an "array" in the Adapter Types file.

example detectedObjects result object:

[detectedObjects[0].name]: [Human]
[detectedObjects[0].confidence]: [99.1072]
[detectedObjects[1].name]: [People]
[detectedObjects[1].confidence]: [99.1071854]
[detectedObjects.count]: [2]
[status]: [success]