Inbound communication channels in Orderful are used to receive transactions into your system of record. This article covers how Orderful delivers any file transactions to each supported inbound channel.

Inbound Poller

For organizations using the Poller communication channel, Any file transactions are returned with a contentHref instead of inline content. This is because the Poller only supports JSON responses, and binary files such as PDFs and images cannot be safely embedded.

Step 1: Get transactions from the Poller

[
  {
    "id": "67230600",
    "sender": { 
      "isaId": "SUPPLIER_001"
		},
    "receiver": { 
      "isaId": "RETAILER_HQ" 	
		},
    "type": { 
      "name": "PROOF_OF_DELIVERY" 	
		},
    "stream": "LIVE",
    "referenceIdentifiers": [],
    "message": {},
    "contentHref": "https://api.orderful.com/v4/transactions/67230600/content",
    "createdAt": "2026-03-01T10:00:00.000Z",
    "delivery": {
      "id": "768a8c35-2dfb-4bf2-89ca-967bc016527a",
      "href": "https://api.orderful.com/v3/deliveries/768a8c35-2dfb-4bf2-89ca-967bc016527a",
      "approve": { "href": "..." },
      "fail": { "href": "..." }
    }
  }
]

Step 2: Fetching the file content

Use the contentHref to download the file in its native format:

GET https://api.orderful.com/v4/transactions/67230600/content
orderful-api-key: <your-api-key>

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="POD_67230600.pdf"

<raw file bytes>

The Content-Type header reflects the actual file type. Use it to handle the response correctly in your application.

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If you trade a custom JSON format as Any file, the JSON transaction will be inlined in the transaction message, similarly than Orderful JSON transactions.

Inbound HTTP

For HTTP communication channels, Orderful pushes each transaction individually to your endpoint as it is delivered — one request per transaction.

The request body uses the same JSON structure as the Poller response, but without the array wrapper since transactions are sent one at a time.

For binary file formats (PDF, images), the message field is empty and a contentHref is included to download the file content in its native format, same as the Poller. For text-based formats (XML, CSV, flat file), the content is sent inline.

Inbound AS2

Orderful sends encrypted and signed AS2 messages. The outer AS2 headers are unchanged from the file sent. Inside the payload, Orderful auto-detects the file format and updates:

• The inner Content-Type header to match the detected file format, or application/octet-stream as fallback
• The Content-Disposition: filename is updated to match its extension with the detected file format.

Inbound FTP/SFTP

Orderful delivers any file to the receiver using the file naming convention configured on your inbound communication channel. The file extension is determined by the naming convention you set up — not auto-detected.