Appendix E. Connections to External Identifier Systems
This appendix lists details for connecting Global Trace to external identifier systems.
At the time of writing this document, Open Supply is the only external identifier system that provides a programmatic interface, enabling facilities to be looked up, or registered via REST API.
Configuring an Account
To configure Global Trace to use the Open Supply Hub API, complete the following steps:
- Go to the Open Supply Hub website and create an account or log in to an existing account.
- Navigate to API settings. Note: you may need to purchase a subscription to access the API features.
- Generate an API key.
- Copy the key into your clipboard.
On the Global Trace server, input the base URL and API key into your environment variables file (.env)
Flow Chart
Below is a flow chart demonstrating how users can retrieve an OS ID for each facility in a supply chain or register a new facility on OS Hub to generate an ID number.
When searching for a facility in OS Hub, a user will receive one of the four following results:
- “MATCHED” indicates that a facility has a preexisting record in OS Hhub and an OS ID. The user should select this OS ID.
- “NEW_FACILITY” indicates that there is no record of a facility in OS Hub. Therefore, the user needs to create a record for the facility in OS Hub to generate an OS ID, which should be shared with the facility.
- “POTENTIAL_MATCH” indicates that there are one or more OS IDs that are similar to some part of the facility information the user searched for. The user may select the correct facility from the list of OS IDs shown. If the correct facility is not among those listed, a “NEW_FACILITY” can be created per item 2.
- “ERROR_-MATCHING” indicates that there is an error preventing the user from registering a new facility.
API Reference: Open Supply Hub API