Connecting to External Resources

Introduction

Mendix Cloud Private Connectivity enables your Mendix applications to securely and privately connect to internal resources, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud. This ensures that connection bypasses the public internet and instead goes through a private tunnel, improving security and compliance.

This page describes how Technical Contacts can request and manage connections to external resources using Mendix Cloud Private Connectivity.

Prerequisites

Before requesting a connection, the following conditions must be met:

• You are the Technical Contact for the Mendix application.
• A Mendix Admin has created and configured the necessary private network in the Control Center. This includes installing agents and exposing the specific external resource you want to access.

Connections

Mendix Cloud Connect Connections allow applications on Mendix Cloud to connect to Mendix Cloud Connect Resources over Mendix Cloud Connect Networks. Each connection request must be initiated by a Technical Contact and approved by a Mendix Admin before the application on Mendix Cloud can connect to the resource.

An application on Mendix Cloud can establish multiple connections to various resources. You can view and manage all connections and their statuses on the Connectivity or Change Requests tab.

Requesting a New Connection

As a Technical Contact, follow these steps to request a new connection from your application environment to an approved external resource:

1. From Apps, go to the app's Environments page.

2. Click Details ( ) on the preferred environment.

3. Go to the Connectivity tab.

4. In the Connections section, click Add to initiate a new connection request.

   Contact your Mendix Admin if the resource you want is not on the list.

5. In the Add Connection dialog, select an available network. This action displays the resources exposed on that network.

   Network Selection Behavior

   • If your application environment already has an active connection, the network associated with that connection will be automatically selected and cannot be changed unless all existing connections are deleted.
   • If only one private network is available for your application, it will be automatically selected.

6. Select the specific resource you want your application environment to connect to.

7. Click Save to submit your connection request for approval. All submitted connection requests appear in the Control Center for the Mendix Admin review.

8. Track and manage your connection requests.

   If this is the first connection approved for an application environment, you must redeploy that environment for the connection to become active and usable.

Connection Request Status

This diagram shows the progress of the request status from when the connection request is submitted to when it is completed (approved or rejected):

Once a Technical Contact submits a connection request, it enters a Pending Approval status. The request is then sent to a Mendix Admin for review:

• If the Mendix Admin rejects the request, its status becomes Rejected.
• If the Mendix Admin approves the request, the connection status will reflect as follows:
  • In the Change Requests tab of the Environments page, the private connectivity request status updates to Completed
  • In the Connections section of the Connectivity tab, the status shows as Approved.

A Mendix Admin can also revoke an already approved connection, which will change its status back to Rejected.

Managing Connections

For detailed information about your private connectivity requests, access the Change Requests tab:

Viewing Connection Request Details

1. Go to Apps.
2. Click Environments on your app.
3. Open the Change Requests tab.
4. Look for requests with Private Connectivity as the Request Type. For more information on the Change Requests tab, refer to the Change Requests section in Environments and Deployment.

Click Details on any Private Connectivity request to view the following request information:

• Requester and reviewer names
• Status of the request
• Request ID
• Date of request creation
• App name
• Environment
• Network ID and name
• Resource ID and name
• Agent ID and name

Managing Active Connections

The Connections section on the application's Connectivity tab allows Technical Contacts to view all active connections for the environment. Depending on the connection's status, you can perform the following actions:

Cancelling a Connection Request

As a Technical Contact, you can cancel a connection request if its status is Pending Approval. To cancel a pending connection request:

1. In the Connections section of the Connectivity tab, locate the connection request with the status Pending Approval.
2. Click Cancel Request next to that connection.

Deleting an Established Connection

After a connection request is approved, you can delete the connection at any time by following these steps:

1. In the Connections section of the Connectivity tab, locate the approved connection you want to remove.
2. Click Delete next to that connection.