Date time field in an EDI Message

An EDI message has 3 parts, i.e Interchange, group and transactionset, to which the message comply to. Each of these sections has a date time field.

Why does an EDI message has Date and time field in Interchange, group as well as the transaction set?

All the three date/time elements are having specific purpose in an EDI message and are used to intepret at various levels

1. The Interchange date is the date of envelop creation date. Ideally this would be the latest date among all.

2. Group is optional element, it is used to group various transaction sets depending on the business requirement.

3. The Transactionset date is the date in which the particular EDI message was created. In the case of batching, the messages might get created at varied intervals and the transaction set date/time will hold this value.

APERAK Vs CONTRL in EDIFACT

APERAK stands for application error and acknowledgement message. Along with acknowledging the sender about the receipt of the message, it also indicates the sender about the rejection due to errors encountered during the processing of message in an application.

CONTRL message used to indicate the syntactical correctness of the message. Along with acknowledging the sende about the receipt of the message, it also acknowledges on the acceptance or the rejection of the message based on the syntactical check done

Significance of UNA segment in EDIFACT

This segment explains the list of delimiters used to parse the various elements of EDIFACT message. The list of delimiters used in the EDIFACT message is indicated using this UNA segment. This is the first segment of the native payload and it is optional. The UNA segment is followed by the six unique delimiters used in the EDI payload and is shown below.


UNA:+.? '

In this,
: (colon)Sub-elementseparator
+ (plus sign)Element Separator
. (period)Decimal Notation
? (question mark) Release Indicator
(space)Repetition Separator
' (single quote)Segment Terminator.

These are the default delimiters. It is also possible to override the above default delimiters. In case, if the delimiters are non-default, and UNA segment is missing, the EDIFACT message becomes invalid

Example:

UNA:+.? 'UNB+UNOB:1+GlobalChips:ZZZ+Acme:ZZZ+080630:0432+5002'UNG

In this example,
1. The elements UNB and UNOB are separated by +
2. The date time element as 2 sub elements i.e date and time, which is separated by :
080630:0432
3. The UNB and UNG segments are separated by '

Significance of AK1, AK2, AK9 in X12 for the document Type 997

The document type 997 refers to the Functionall acknowledgement of the X12 business message.

The primary purpose of a Functional Acknowledgement is to acknowledge the receipt of Business Message indicating if the message received was syntactically correct or Not. The result of a Functional Acknowledgement indicated if the incoming message is

A - Accepted
E - Accepted, But Errors Were Noted.
M - Rejected, Message Authentication Code (MAC) Failed
P - Partially Accepted, At Least One Transaction Set Was Rejected
R - Rejected
W - Rejected, Assurance Failed Validity Tests
X - Rejected, Content After Decryption Could Not Be Analyzed


Negative Functional Acknowledgements are used to report X12 syntax errors. This would not
indicate implementation guide syntax errors

A FA message has various segments, indicating various inferences w.r.t to original incoming
business message, and here are few important ones:


AK1

AK1 is used to respond to the functional group header and to start the acknowledgement for a
functional group. There shall be one AK1 segment for the functional group that is being
acknowledged. In this, AK102 is the control number assigned to the group being acknowledged.

This is used to correlate the group segment of the original incoming message. This indicates
the control number assigned by the sender of the original transmission. This value corresponds
to the value sent in GS06 for the original transmission.

Since the Group segment is NOT mandatory in an EDI document, the FA correlates only if the
control number for group segment is present in the original message


AK2

AK2 is used to start the acknowledgement of a transaction set within the received functional
group. The AK2 segments shall appear in the same order as the transaction sets in the
functional group that has been received and is being acknowledged.

In this, AK202 is the control number assigned to the transaction being acknowledged, This is
the control number of the original business message, which is in ST02 for the original
transmission. AK2 loop will also contain AK5 segment indicating the acceptance and rejection of
message based on syntac of transactionset. The exact segment in AK5 is, AK501. The codes will
be the one among the mentioned above (A, E, M, P, R, W, X)

AK9

This segment would represent the Functional Group Response Trailer.

AK901 represents the code indicating accept or reject condition based on the syntax editing of
the functional group. The codes will be the one among the mentioned above (A, E, M, P, R, W, X)

Welcome to EDI Gurus

Greetings and a warm welcome to the EDI Aspirants. :)

Here is an effort to put together and share the knowledge of various Business Verticals involving EDI Document.

This blog would try to cover almost everything about EDI, interms of

1. Helping the user community to in solving the business usecases using EDI
2. Explaining significance on various document types available
3. Also, not the least the respective implementation mechanisms on Oracle AS B2B for the various usecases
4. Compitative EDI Offering from various vendors.
5. and many more .... :)

Last but not the least and most unique about this effort is even you can be part of the blogging community. Why wait, shoot a mail to edi@edigurus.com for adding your cool stuff in EDI.

Happy Blogging !!