Building your first iFlow – Part 4: Configuring your credentials

In the previous instalments (Building your first iFlow: Part 3: Building the iFlow) the iFlow was created and partially configured. The outbound message now needs to be delivered but this requires a username and password to be supplied to Gmail in order that the email can be created on Google’s servers.

The message destination required a user name and password. Normally this process requires creating and deploying your email address and google password as a credential artifact, however in the case of Gmail this may require additional steps in the case the Google account has two factor authentication enabled.

To enable a password to be used with the EMail adapter will require creating and deploying a Credential Artifact to protect the credentials from being read by anyone except the HCI server. To begin creating artifact goto the Integration Operations perspective.

The perspective can be changed either by clicking on the choose perspective button to the right of the toolbar or by selecting Other… command on the Open Perspective submenu on the Window menu.

This will present a dialog allowing the choice of Integration Designer or Integration Operations”

Choose Integration Operations and this will open the Node Explorer if it is not visible. Now right click over the tenant node and select the Deploy Artifacts command.

This will give a choice of artefacts to deploy. In this case the “User Credentials” artifact will be created and deployed to the Tenant. These will be the credentials will be used to authenticate with the Google Email servers. By using an artifact like this the username and password can be protected on the server since they will not be made visible to developers and also the credentials may be independently updated.

Click the “Next” button and fill in the values.

For the credentials the Google username and password are used. If however the Google account has two factor authentication then an application specific password will need to be created. If errors are being reported delivering email then follow the steps below to setup an applications specific password. Application specific passwords are important since they will restrict what the application is allowed to do with your account. In this case the password will be restricted to the email application only, so your other Google properties are not affected.

Log into your Google account and choose “My Account”

Select the “Signing in to Google” link and in the “Password and sign-in method” panel, choose “App passwords”

From the list of app passwords, choose the “Select app” and “Select device” selects at the bottom.

For the “Select App” choose “Mail and in the “Select Device” choose “Other” then use a descriptive name such as “HCI WeatherReport”

and click the “Generate” button

The will show a 16 character password in groups of four. This is the password that will need to be used for the password in the password field. Memorize this password or at least leave it on the screen then swap back to Eclipse and enter it in the password and password repeat fields.

Once the password is entered in the fields of the Password artifact, click “Finish” and this will deploy the credentials to the tenant.

Verify the credentials have been deployed by clicking  on the  “Deployed Artifacts” tab and verify the “HCI WeatherReport Credentials” have been successfully deployed.

You can close the password window on your Google account and logout of Google now. The new application specific password would have been saved.

A tip to remember is to click over the deployed artifact and choose the “Copy Artifact Name” command to copy the artifact to the clipboard. This will ensure the correct name is preserved.

Go back to the channel configuration and enter or paste the name of the newly deployed credential name in the “Credential Name” field.

This completes the configuration of the email channel.

The start, transformation and end of the integration have been defined, now join them together with the sequence connector, noting that the “Content Modifier” transformation is showing an error since there is nothing yet configured for the transformation.

The Integration process is now starting to look completed. In the next installment the content modifier will be configured as well as the email channel and the final iFlow deployed and run.