Reading EDI X12 With Trading Partner Connector

Boomi Integration manages B2B requirements through Trading Partners. Trading Partners is a way to conduct direct EDI or point-to-point e-business transactions by designating a host partner and a remote partner who connect through an agreed-upon communication protocol. Trading Partner assists in the automation of business processes and communication between two or more organizations. It allows them to work and trade more effectively with their customers, suppliers, and business partners by automating key business processes. The Trading Partner Connector lets you read or write EDI documents of different standards. This blog will cover how Trading Partner can be used to read ED1 X12 documents.

Prerequisites:

Familiarity with X12, Boomi, Boomi Connectors, Profile Elements, and Trading Partner Licensing.

1. EDI Read:

Input Data to read:

In brief, here we try to read an EDI file. This is what the flow looks like:

1. Configure EDI Trading Partner Connector:

To read EDI files in Boomi, the Start shape should be the Trading partner connector.

If the star icon for a My Company trading partner is selected, that trading partner’s settings are applied as default for the selected Communication Method.

Create one Trading Partner component for your company, and another for each company with which you will conduct an EDI interchange. To help distinguish between the two components, Component Explorer contains My Company Settings and Trading Partner Settings under the Trading Partners grouping.

Communication Method Tab:

Select a communication method, which will serve as the source of your EDI document.

Various communication methods are used to send and receive trading partner document data. The following communication methods are supported:

o AS2 — provides digitally-signed electronic receipts through MDNs (Message Disposition Notifications).

o Disk — identifies the connection directory to get and send files.

o FTP — relies on SSL/TLS encryption, however, SSL version 3.0 is disabled in supported browsers.

o HTTP — enables an exchange of data with HTTP-enabled servers.

o SFTP — relies on the SSH protocol for secure remote logins.

o MLLP — provides a minimalist transport protocol. When security is an issue, additional technologies are often layered on top.

Archiving Tab: If this option is selected, the Archive path defines the processing performed to archive the raw document data.

My Standards Tab: Click on Add a Standard for My Company to configure my company. Choose a standard and your company’s Trading Partner component that is used to support that standard.

Standard tab: Select one of the following options for your standard:

Configure My Company in trading partner
- Configure my company in trading partner.
- Create a component

- Type: type should be trading partner
- Folder: Specify the path where my company trading partner should be created.
- Standard: Specify the standard of the EDI document
- Options:
  - If “this is a partner that I trade with” is selected, then that trading partner will be your My company trading partner
  - If “this is my company” is selected, then that component will be your My company trading partner
  - After configuring all the parameters, My company trading partner is created, and internal values for all the parameters need to be configured.

Overview tab:
- Classification: This value will be my company, which was configured while creating the component
- Standard: This will be the configuration value for the standard used while creating the component
- Identifier(not mandatory): This will be your organization’s code
- Organization(not mandatory): Organization details should be specified here
X12 Standard Tab :

ISA Identification Options:
- Authorization information: Take note of ISA line details in your document, whose values will be used to configure these options.
- Qualifier: ISA01 value from the EDI document should be entered here. ID: ISA02 values from the EDI document should be entered here.
- Security Information: ISA03 and ISA04 values should be given in the qualifier and ID tab.
- Interchange ID (ISA05/07,ISA06/08): Specify ISA05 value in qualifier tab and ISA06 values in ID tab
- ISA Version: Respective ISA values should be given in specified tabs
- GS Version: Respective GS values should be given in specified tabs
Contact Information Tab: The contact information of your trading partner should be entered here.

Communication Method: The Communication tab is where you define the communication method used to send and receive documents with trading partners.

- The available communication methods for B2B integration are:
  - AS2
  - Disk
  - FTP
  - HTTP
  - MLLP
  - SFTP
  To set up a new method, click Add a Communication Method, then select a method in the panel.
  You can define each communication method once. When you add a communication method, the Edit Configuration panel opens. For Trading Partner components that are set to my company, you must configure the communication method settings manually. For Trading Partner components that are set to partners that I trade with, you can accept the default settings specified in my company trading partner, specify unique settings for this partner, or use a shared Communication Channel component.
  The table on the Communication tab identifies the communication methods that you have and, for partners that I trade with, the settings used.
Archiving Tab: Automatically archive documents that pass through a Trading Partner to a specified local directory on the machine where the Atom is running. The archiving options are similar to connector operation archiving settings. Because trading partner components can handle both inbound and outbound documents, there are separate directory setting options for each.

Where Used Tab: The Trading Partner Where Used tab shows the processes that reference the selected trading partner.

You can open the process to view or edit it by clicking the process name. Additionally, you can view the process deployment that contains the trading partner by clicking the link in the Deployments column to open the Deploy Processes page. If the link text reads View Deployment, the latest version of the process is deployed. If the link text reads No Deployment, the process is not deployed.

The My company trading partner configuration is now complete.

2. Configure trading partner:

If Add an individual trading partner to the list is selected, the trading partner should be specified in the trading partner list tab.

If Use a Processing Group component is selected then the processing group component should be selected in Processing Group Tab.

Trading partner list Tab : Click on Add a Trading Partner.

Configuring Trading partner Company:

Create a component by configuring all the below details.

- Type: Type should be trading partner
- Folder Specify the path where partner trading partner
- Standard: specify the standard of EDI document
- Options:
  - If This is a partner that I trade with is selected then that trading partner will be your trading partner company
  - If This is my company is selected, then that component will be your company trading partner

Select This is a partner I trade with.

After configuring all the parameters, the trading partner is created. Now configure internal values for all the parameters.

Overview tab:
- Classification: This value will be my company, which was configured while creating the component
- Standard: This will be the value of the standard, which was configured while creating the component
- Identifier(not mandatory): This will be your organization’s code
- Organization(not mandatory): Your organization details should be specified here
X12 Standard:

Basic X12 Options: These options are applicable only to partners that you trade with — not This is my company.
- ISA Identification Options: specify the parameters with respective ISA values
- ISA Version: specify the parameters with respective ISA values
- GS Version: specify the parameters with respective ISA values according to the payload, and configure the following parameters.

Contact Information Tab: The contact information of your trading partner should be provided here.

Communication Method: The Communication tab is where you define the communication method used to send and receive documents with trading partners.

The available communication methods for B2B integration are:

AS2
Disk
FTP
HTTP
MLLP
SFTP

To set up a new method, click Add a Communication Method, then select a method in the Add a Communication Method panel.

You can define each communication method once. When you add a communication method, the Edit Configuration panel opens. For Trading Partner components that are set to my company, you must configure the communication method settings manually. For Trading Partner components that are set to partners that I trade with, you can accept the default settings specified in my company trading partner, specify unique settings to this partner, or use a shared Communication Channel component.

The table on the Communication tab identifies the communication methods that you have and, for partners that I trade with, the settings used.

As shown below specify parameters to get the EDI documents from added communication methods.

Archiving Tab: Automatically archive documents that pass through a Trading Partner to a specified local directory on the machine where the Atom is running. The archiving options are similar to connector operation archiving settings. Because trading partner components can handle both inbound and outbound documents, there are separate directory setting options for each.

Where Used Tab: The Trading Partner Where Used tab shows the processes that reference the selected trading partner.

You can open the process to view or edit it by clicking the process name. Also, you can view the process deployment that contains the trading partner by clicking the link in the Deployments column to open the Deploy Processes page. If the link text reads View Deployment, the latest version of the process is deployed. If the link text reads No Deployment, the process is not deployed.