Value Mappings

When working with any given message part, you will always need to define it's path. Again, this defines the location within the message packet where this specific data element is located. However, once the system has obtained the data element from the message packet, it might contain a value that the recipient system (either Dr. Know or ‘Product X’) does not understand. This is where value mappings to the rescue.

Sometimes the same value is understood by both systems. For example, a patient’s last name can hardly be debated by either system – it just is what it is. However, a message part that represents whether an order for a test is NEW might come in different formats. For example, ‘Product X’ might use the letter ‘N’ to represent a new order, while Dr. Know might use the number 1. There are any number of possibilities here.

To tackle this issue, click in the value mappings tab.

Here, you can Add a new value mapping. All the possible values within the Dr. Know system are accessible via the drop-down list that has the '(Dr. Know)' label above it, which indicates whether the Dr. Know product is the source or target system (again, based on the direction of this message type – inbound or outbound).

Simply choose the desired Dr. Know value and then type in ‘Product X’s’ equivalent value. Again, this can be obtained from the vendor of ‘Product X.’

In this example, ‘Product X’ will specify a value of 'F' to indicate the patient is a female, while Dr. Know will map that to the value of 'Female,' which it will be understand and be able to process.

The combination of ‘Path Expressions’ and ‘Value Mappings’ is powerful and can be used to accommodate unusual scenarios. By defining a Path Expression and then the possibilities of that expression using Value Mappings, even the most complex scenarios can be configured.

Finally, Value Mappings also support another syntax that can make configuration easier when there is a long list of possible values that all map to the same Dr. Know value. For example, say ‘Product X’ had 20 different values that all map to the same Dr. Know value. Rather than defining 20 different values and the same mapping, you can simply define a single value mapping, where the source values are defined with the following syntax:

• Source: {AA|BB|CC|DD|..}
• Target: Value1

By placing all 20 source values within curly braces ({ }), separated by pipes (|), we only need a single value mapping in our configuration.