Custom Transform SMT loading trouble

Kafka Connect
1

How do I package a custom transform?

I’m trying to write a custom transform SMT. I’ve coded the SMT based upon the examples already provided in GIT. The source code all makes sense. I’m building / packaging this using maven and the kafka-connect-maven plugin. The plugin seems to work and generates the output to the Target folder. Our Kafka-Connect cluster (K8s) fails to load my transformation.
There is no error information shown to indicate the problem. I’ve extracted the plugin to the correct Path. I downloaded a random ZIP from Confluent Hub to check that I had the right path and process. For some reason Kafka-Connect fails to load “My” component.

My component is composed of :
root folder
/lib
manifest.json

Inside the /lib folder are the dependent JAR files along with my components jar file.

How does Kafka-Connect know to ingest my custom smt? Is there something else I need to set so it can see my component?

Thanks in advance!!!

2

Adding a little more info…
An error when trying to use my SMT is all I can find. I removed our domain manually here.

Invalid value com.[domainremoved].kafka.connect.date2timestamp for configuration transforms.AccountEffective.type: Class com.[domainremoved].kafka.connect.date2timestamp could not be found.

3

POM Settings I am using to build.

io.confluent kafka-connect-maven-plugin 0.12.0 
            <configuration>
                <name>date2timestamp</name>
                <version>0.1</version>
                <ownerUsername>ctheis</ownerUsername>
                <description>Converts Date epoch to a Timestamp Epoch</description>
                <componentTypes>
                    <componentType>transform</componentType>
                </componentTypes>
            </configuration>

            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>kafka-connect</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}</outputDirectory>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>

        </plugin>
4

And just like that I figured it out. It was all correct except I needed an additional dependency included. There was nothing to help me find that. I just managed through trial and error. I copied the entire code for one of your transforms on git hub and just replaced the class name with mine. Then it worked. I then worked backward until I could get mine to work.