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MessagePlus/Open and Box for SWIFTNet Web Services

Within the scope of Web development and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) Web Services have become an increasingly popular means of application integration. Basically Web Services provide a standard facility for interoperating between different software applications, running on a variety of platforms and/or frameworks. As a communication layer they use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to receive XML structured messages and to reply to these requests. Typically there is a machine-readable description of the operations offered by the service written in the Web Services Description Language (WSDL).

Intercope uses this technology to provide services to applications in both the generic business communication solution “MessagePlus/Open” and in the SWIFT Message Processing System “BOX for SWIFTNet”.

MessagePlus/Open provides a Web Service to create messages and to send them to various destinations. This “SubmitMessageRequest” contains one or more content items in different formats such as text or graphics and of course a recipient in form of a fax, email or SMS address.

The MessagePlus/Open Web Service replies with an “Order ID”. This Order ID can be used later by the client application to retrieve the actual status of the message. In response to this request the MessagePlus/Open Web Service replies with status information indicating if the message was sent successfully together with transmission time stamps and additional reference information.

BOXfor SWIFTNet currently provides two Web Services:

  • The FIN MessageValidation Service allows an application to send a message to the service and to receive a reply indicating whether or not the message passed validation, or if not, which syntactical or semantic errors were detected.
  • The RMA Fast Permission Check verifies if an RMA authorization exists for a specific correspondent and specific message type and returns the result to the calling application.

With these Web Services BOX for SWIFTNet provides the same functions as the former MERVA BKE lookup and the MERVA validation API call, but through a modern, future-oriented interface fitting into the strategy of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). One of the environments in which these services have been deployed and tested is the IBM Enterprise Payment Platform (EPP) where INTERCOPE achieved the then highest status of SOA certified partners with IBM.

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MessagePlus/Open V4 Release 3 general available

MessagePlus/Open V4 Release 3 is now general available with several new features and significant enhancements including the following:

64 bit version
MessagePlus/Open is available as 64 bit application for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, AIX and Solaris. A Linux version is planned. Distributed installations with components running on 64 and 32 bit servers are possible.

Web Service for message creation
A new message creation web service is provided in order to expand the possibilities to send faxes and receive status information in SOA oriented environments including a broad set of optional parameters. The results of such a transmission order can be obtained by a ”GetStatus” operation.

Database Gateway supports transmission orders and MSSQL
The MessagePlus/Open database gateway has always been able to retrieve the results of transmissions (transmission reports) generated by other integration modules. Now in addition it is possible to generate transmission orders through this gateway.  Microsoft SQL Server is now supported as well as DB2 and Oracle for the database gateway.

LDAP UPM Synchronization
The LDAP UPM Synchronizer is a tool to synchronize the MessagePlus/Open User Profile Management with external directories via the LDAP protocol. Attributes of the external directory can be flexibly mapped to properties of MessagePlus/Open users. The tool can be scheduled to run at predefined times to automatically update the MessagePlus/Open UPM e.g. once a day.

Single Sign On with Windows credentials
With the single sign-on feature it is possible for a user to only log in once at his Windows domain and gain access to the MessagePlus/Open Web-Client automatically without a separate login procedure.

Scheduled message processing
Application queues may now have a status “Started” or “Stopped” which can be controlled manually or by an automatic schedule. For a “Stopped” queue processing will be halted until the queue is started again either manually or automatically.

MPO Transfer enhancements
The migration of data from one MessagePlus/Open instance to a second system (e.g. from a test to a production system) has been enhanced by an additional migration option of the “MPO transfer” tool.

GUI performance enhancements
Database optimizations have been implemented to accelerate access to message journals and application queues under various filter criteria.

If you need  more information about MessagePlus/Open V4R3 please contact support@intercope.com.

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SWIFT Printing

SWIFT printing – an obsolete technique?
When, as a system architect, you design a SWIFT solution you will think about many aspects of the solution like application integration, XML capabilities, routing facilities, performance and availability, but SWIFT printing functions will probably not even enter your mind. Financial messaging is a typical example of highly automated computer based handling of business information but it is also an area where human intervention is still required and specialized graphical user interfaces are provided as an integral component of these digital information systems. Given all of the above SWIFT printing might look like an obsolete technique from former ages without any relevance for state of the art processing of highly structured data.

Users see SWIFT printing different
Take care! Users of your system will often see things very differently. Obviously people tend to have a persistent affinity towards paper based information processing, and you may feel deeply disappointed if your highly sophisticated solution design is not accepted simply because you forgot to provide SWIFT printing functions. nicely formatted printouts of SWIFT messages with the header in the right place, neatly formatted columns and detailed explanations of fieldnames.

Routing criteria for SWIFT printing
Of course the users also want to be able to use such SWIFT printing functions whenever they think they are required. But that’s not all of it by far. You also should provide facilities for automatic SWIFT printing options depending on routing criteria and on devices in configurable locations. And don’t forget about the two departments sharing the same printer but hating to mix up their printouts. So if you don’t want to start an argument with them, provide options to start automatic SWIFT printing for department A at 10.00 am and for department B after their lunchtime.

Meeting all requirements for SWIFT printing
Intercope has outstanding long-term experience in understanding and implementing both technical and user requirements of SWIFT solutions starting with telex and testkey systems some 25 years ago, followed by MERVA deployment and consultancy over many years and more recently the development of the latest generation of SWIFTNet interfaces. For more details check out how your requirements for a SWIFT solution are met with Box for SWIFTNet including sophisticated SWIFT printing functions.

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Why manual handling of SWIFT messages?

In recent years international financial message handling has been successfully automated to a high degree. The vast majority of the 3.8 billion FIN messages and the 7.5 billion files transferred via SWIFT in 2009 were handled by Straight Through Processing. Typically most back office applications generate messages in structured formats and transfer them via the SWIFT network to the receiving institution where they are handled in a similar way by automated software applications.  SWIFT interface solutions such as BOX for SWIFTNet provide the required communication, security and routing functions in a transparent way without requiring any manual intervention.

In the light of this scenario you may wonder why Intercope invests so much effort in providing functionality and user interfaces for manual message entry, correction and authorization in addition to the automated processing capability. The reason is simple: Even if comparably low message volumes are created or corrected manually the corresponding functionality is an indispensable component of any complete SWIFT solution because:

  • Some messages – like, for example, exception handling and investigations – are difficult to handle automatically or this would involve disproportionate effort and cost
  • There are always exceptional circumstance requiring the manual creation of messages on the fly
  • Erroneous messages require manual intervention
  • Smaller institutions with low message volumes may only generate SWIFT messages manually
  • An emergency solution is required in cases of contingency for high value payments and other highly critical messages

Read more about Box for SWIFTNet functions for manual message entry and repair here.

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CBT Development Progress Board Report 03

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Routing of SWIFT messages

SWIFT routing is one of the more complex issues in the handling of SWIFT FIN, InterAct and FileAct messages.

SWIFT routing criteria
Most likely administrators will have to route different SWIFT document types to different destinations such as payments and financial institutions transfers, treasury, securities or cash management to name just a few. For this type of SWIFT routing the BIC code and the logical terminal ID of the sender have to be considered as well as the destination address. SWIFT routing  may depend on currency and amount and special algorithms may be required for ACKs and NAKS as well as for FIN message types 010, 011, 015 and 019.

SWIFT routing facilities included in BOX for SWIFTNet
Generally speaking, facilities are needed to analyze the content of all header and payload fields in MT messages, and the corresponding information in XML structured MX messages and then to implement complex algorithms to determine a SWIFT routing destination. Some providers of SWIFT interface solutions recommend the use of middleware products for this purpose like the IBM WebSphere Message Broker. Other solutions like Intercope’s Box for SWIFTNet include SWIFT routing facilities as part of the product. The first approach sounds more generic however the second does not require specialized knowledge of additional products and allows the SWIFT system administrator to directly implement SWIFT routing rules in his system.

SWIFT routing for 24 banks in one logical system
In BOX for SWIFTNet the graphical user interface used for system configuration includes a module allowing you to analyze all the elements of a message including substrings and supporting regular expressions in arbitrary logical operations to determine any number of SWIFT routing destinations for any message type or acknowledgement. This gives you a very high degree of flexibility to implement  even the most complex routing algorithms and in practice Box for SWIFTNet administrators have successfully defined even the most strange sounding SWIFT routing requirements for a variety of 24 differently organized financial institutions in 9 countries in one Box for SWIFTNet instance.

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