How connectors work
IntelieKonnect is how documents get in and out of Elie. An import connector pulls documents from a system you already use — a mailbox, an SFTP server, a cloud drive, a database, an API. An export connector pushes finished results back out.
Everything else in this module follows from four ideas. They are worth five minutes, because they explain the two things people find surprising: why a connector has two status badges, and why nothing happens until you bind it to something.
One connector, one direction
A connector is either an import connector or an export connector, and that never changes. They live on separate lists — Import Connectors and Export Connectors — reachable from the rail on the left of the module.
A connector describes one system and one way of signing in to it. If you pull from two mailboxes, that is two connectors. If the same mailbox feeds two different document types, that is still one connector — what happens to a document afterwards is decided by the workflow it is bound to, not by the connector.
Two status badges, and they are independent
This is the one that catches people out. Every connector carries two statuses, and they answer different questions:
| Badge | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Status | Where is this connector in its life? Is it configured? Turned on? |
| Engagement Status | Do the credentials currently work? |
They move independently. A connector can be Active and Not Connected — turned on, but its password has since expired. It can be Initialised and Connected — credentials verified, but not switched on yet, so nothing is being fetched.
Read them as a pair: "is it on?" and "can it still get in?" The full list of values is in Connector statuses.
Nothing runs until you enable it — and nothing arrives until you bind it
A new connector is a Draft: inert. The scheduler skips it entirely. That is deliberate, so you can create one now and finish it later without anything happening in the meantime.
Turning it on takes two separate things, in this order:
- Enable the connector — this needs Engagement Status to be Connected first, so you have to verify the credentials before you can switch it on.
- Bind it to something that wants the documents.
That second step is the one that surprises people. An Active, Connected import connector on its own still delivers nothing, because a connector has no opinion about what its documents are for. The binding is made in the destination, not here — you open the orchestrator that should receive the documents (a Smart Extract builder, a Smart Class, a Smart Queue) and add this connector on its Import Channels tab. IntelieKonnect owns the connection and the schedule; the product owns what the documents mean. See Binding a connector to an orchestrator.
Export happens after processing, not during
When a document finishes processing, the result does not go straight out. IntelieKonnect delivers it afterwards — either immediately, or in a batch on the export connector's own schedule.
The practical consequence: a document can be fully processed and correct while its result has not been delivered yet. If a colleague says "the file never arrived", check the export connector's schedule before assuming processing failed.
Next
- Connector statuses — what each badge value means and what to do about it.
- Choosing a connector type — picking the right one, and why it cannot be changed later.
- Creating an import connector — the first thing to actually do.