Overview & connection

The SOAP Custom Link is the most extensive integration surface of the MendriX TMS — a mature, battle-tested API that reaches every corner of the system. The REST API is the clean, JSON-native surface for day-to-day integration and is where new development happens; for the widest reach and the most demanding integrations, Custom Link is the way in.

When to use SOAP

Use SOAP for	Use REST for
Order intake & update (StoreOrdersNormal)	Clients, contacts, address books
Order retrieval (RequestOrdersNormal)	Invoices & payments
Rides & planning, traces, employees, hours	Order & task updates (PATCH), copies
Packaging transactions, measurements, memos, questionnaires, jobs

Custom Link goes deeper than REST does today — most of its commands have no REST equivalent yet; see the command reference for the full list. REST order creation is coming soon; until it ships, new orders go through Custom Link.

Read this first

Before building against any command below, read Custom Link: rules of engagement — it covers retrieve-before-update, one-order-per-store, sequence-based polling, not hammering the server, and the security model in one place.

Endpoint & WSDL

SOAP requests are POSTed to the service endpoint:

https://<your-client-name>.mendrix.cloud:5564/soap/ICustomLinkSoap

The service contract (WSDL) is published separately at:

https://<your-client-name>.mendrix.cloud:5564/wsdl/ICustomLinkSoap

• Port 5564, HTTPS.
• The service interface is ICustomLinkSoap; fetch the WSDL from the URL above to generate a client, or craft SOAP requests by hand and POST them to the service endpoint.
• Replace <your-client-name> with your client name (environments).

How calls work: the ExecuteRequest wrapper

The service exposes a single SOAP operation, ExecuteRequest (rpc/encoded). Every Custom Link call uses the same envelope; the Eo payload you put inside it — entity-escaped, as a string — determines the actual operation (TEoCustomLinkRequestDateTime, TEoCustomLinkStoreOrdersNormal, …):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
    xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
  <SOAP-ENV:Header>
    <h:TAuthenticationHeader xmlns:h="urn:UCoSoapDispatcherBase">
      <UserName>YOUR_SOAP_NAME</UserName>
      <Password>YOUR_SOAP_PASSWORD</Password>
    </h:TAuthenticationHeader>
  </SOAP-ENV:Header>
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <m:ExecuteRequest xmlns:m="urn:UCoSoapDispatcherCustomLink-ICustomLinkSoap">
      <ARequest xsi:type="xsd:string">&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?&gt;&lt;EoCustomLinkRequestDateTime Type="TEoCustomLinkRequestDateTime"/&gt;</ARequest>
    </m:ExecuteRequest>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

• The Eo payload goes into ARequest entity-escaped (& → &, < → <, > → >).
• The response is wrapped the same way: ExecuteRequestResponse contains a return string holding the escaped EoCustomLink…Response XML — unescape and parse it as a second step.
• Business and authentication errors come back as a successful (HTTP 200) SOAP response whose return payload is a TEoCustomLinkException (ExceptionClassName, ExceptionMessage) — always check for it before parsing the result.
• POSTing a bare Eo payload without this envelope yields the SOAP fault Invalid SOAP request.

Start with the server time example — the smallest possible round trip.

Data structures

All payloads are described by the XML schema GdxEoStructures.xsd. Key types for order intake:

• TEoCustomLinkStoreOrdersNormal — the store-orders request wrapper.
• TEoOrderMxList / TEoOrderMx — the order(s) to store.
• TEoTaskMxList / TEoTaskMx — the tasks (pickup, delivery, …) on an order.
• TEoAddress, TEoDateTimeWindow — addresses and time windows.

New vs existing records

An Id inside a key element (schema type TEoKeyIntInfraMx_NoData, written on the wire as Type="TEoKeyIntInfraMx") uses a negative value to request insertion of a new record and a positive value to update an existing one. ClientNumber is resolved to a ClientId automatically when ClientId is not supplied.

Authentication

Credentials travel inside the envelope, in the TAuthenticationHeader SOAP header (UserName / Password) shown above. These are the Custom Link SOAP name and password for your tenant, validated server-side against the MendriX account service; depending on your tenant’s configuration the password may be empty. You receive them during onboarding — ask your MendriX contact if you don’t have them.

HTTP-level authentication (e.g. Basic Auth) is not accepted: without the SOAP header the service answers SOAP header for authentication required.

Placeholders only

All examples use obvious placeholders such as YOUR_SOAP_NAME and <your-client-name>. Never commit real credentials.

Client-scoped tokens

An API token scoped to a single client (rather than a master token) can only call a fixed set of commands. Calling anything else returns the SOAP-layer error Security: no permission for request <RequestClassName> (for example, Security: no permission for request TEoCustomLinkStoreEmployees):

• RequestOrdersNormal / RequestOrdersNormalIds
• StoreOrdersNormal (create and update orders)
• RequestTracesGoods / StoreTracesGoods
• StoreMemos
• RequestDateTime
• RequestTaskQuestionnaire / RequestQuestionnaireAnswers
• StoreMeasurements
• RequestPackagingTransactions
• ActivateOrderTemplate

See the Command reference for the full command list and which of these are client-scoped-safe.

Conventions

• Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8.
• SOAPAction: always "urn:UCoSoapDispatcherCustomLink-ICustomLinkSoap#ExecuteRequest" — the operation is selected by the payload’s Type, not by the SOAPAction.
• Batching: While TEoOrderMxList accepts multiple orders per call, the operational convention is to send one order per StoreOrdersNormal call.
• Validation: validate the outgoing payload XML against GdxEoStructures.xsd before sending.

Next

• Make your first call with the server time example.
• Building in n8n? See Using n8n with Custom Link for the general workflow pattern, worked through with that same first call.
• Walk a complete request/response in the order intake example.
• See the workflow-oriented Order intake guide for the manual and n8n paths.