Receive/TransmitΒΆ
PURPOSE.
The Receive/Transmit Interchange submenu selection both receives and transmits documents with the EDI Provider during a single connection session.
You must make one of the following three selections:
Receive, then Transmit - Select Receive, then Transmit to receive waiting EDI Documents and transmit pending documents during a single connect session with the EDI Provider or Value Added Network.
Receive Only - The Receive Only selection connects to the EDI Provider or Value Added Network (VAN) and downloads all documents waiting in the mailbox. Documents are validated and imported to the application during the receive process.
Transmit Only - The Transmit Only selection connects to the EDI Provider or VAN and sends any pending EDI documents.
Next, select the Connections, Partners, and transactions Sets to be used for receiving or transmitting. Documents can be sent or received in any desired subset. For example, you can receive for multiple partners over one connection, then transmit only 997 acknowledgements.
PROCESS FLOW.
When this option is chosen all records in the TRANSMITS file with status 3 or above are selected and sorted for transmission. An operating system file is opened and the documents are written to the file in an EDI transmission stream. Records for documents which require acknowledgment are changed to status 5; other documents are changed to status 6. Status 6 records are transferred from the TRANSMITS file to TRANSMIT_HISTORY. Status 5 records are transferred from TRANSMITS to APP_TRANSMITS pending acknowledgment.
Then a connection is established with the EDI Provider. First any available mail to be received is downloaded from the VAN and saved in an operating system file. Then the operating system file of mail to be transmitted is uploaded to the EDI Provider. Statistics for the connect session are downloaded for appending to the statistics log. Then the connection is terminated.
After disconnecting from the EDI Provider, the file of received mail is read and separated into EDI documents which are written to the RECEIVES file. Production documents are written with a status of 4, test documents are written with status 3. Documents which duplicate identifiers in the RECEIVE_HISTORY archive file are written with status 0. (Status values are listed in Table 2.)
If the trading partner has requested acknowledgments, the acknowledgment is prepared while saving the received documents. An Acknowledgment for each group of documents is written to file TRANSMITS. If the received document is an acknowledgment, each transaction referenced in the acknowledgment is updated in the TRANSMITS file. TRANSMITS records are archived in file TRANSMIT_HISTORY once they have been acknowledged.
When the process is complete a message lists the number and type of documents which were received.
RECEIVES FILE PROCESSING.
Select Receive from the Interchange submenu to receive waiting documents from the EDI Provider.
This process connects with the EDI Provider and downloads all available mail from the mailbox to an operating system file. Connection statistics are saved to be appended to the statistics log. The call terminates once the download is complete, and the operating system file is archived.
Then the file is read and separated into EDI documents which are written to the RECEIVES file. Production documents are written with a status of 4, test documents are written with status 3. Documents which duplicate identifiers in the RECEIVE_HISTORY archive file are written with status 0. (Status values are listed in Table 2.)
If the trading partner has requested acknowledgments, the acknowledgment is prepared while saving the received documents. An Acknowledgment for each group of documents is written to file TRANSMITS. If the received document is an acknowledgment, each transaction referenced in the acknowledgment is updated in the TRANSMITS file. TRANSMITS records are archived in file TRANSMIT_HISTORY once they have been acknowledged.
When the process is complete a message lists the number and type of documents which were received.
RECEIVES FILE PROCESSING.
The processes which occur when a record is written to the RECEIVES file are listed in Table 1. (This listing is based on the customary file processing configuration for the program.)
Table 1. RECEIVES file status values and processes.
| Status | Processing |
|---|---|
| < 3 | the document is written to the file without processing |
| = 3 | the document is checked against EDI Standards for errors |
| =>4 | the document is imported (if an active Map is available) |
| = 6 | the document is written to RECEIVE_HISTORY, deleted from RECEIVES. |
Documents with status 3 or above are validated against EDI Standards. This validation process changes the status according to the following rules:
Test documents (status 3) will remain at status 3 if no standards errors are found. Production documents (status 4) will change to test documents if an active map does not exist. Any standards errors will change the status to 1.
Production documents with status 4 will change to status 1 if document or segment errors are found, to status 5 if element errors exist, or to status 2 if a map import error occurs. Otherwise the documents will change to status 6 as they are imported to the database. Therefore no record will ever remain in file RECEIVES with status 4.
DOCUMENT STATUS.
The above explanations show that the status has everything to do with how a document has been processed or will be processed. Table 2, following, describes all the possible status values for RECEIVES records.
Table 2. RECEIVES file record status values and explanations.
| Status | Explanation |
|---|---|
| 0 | document identifier is duplicated in RECEIVES_HISTORY |
| 1 | document rejected due to standards errors |
| 2 | document rejected due to mapping errors during import |
| 3 | test document which has passed standards validation |
| 4 | production document in process of being written to RECEIVES |
| 5 | production document accepted with errors and imported |
| 6 | production document accepted and written to RECEIVES_HISTORY |
ERROR CORRECTION AND MANUAL PROCESSING.
Documents which remain in the RECEIVES file after processing need to be handled in one of the following ways.
| Status | What to do |
|---|---|
| 0 | Duplicated documents should be deleted using the Delete Duplicates process. Alternatively, the duplicated document could be imported by changing its status to 4 and saving the record. |
| 1 | Standards errors should be reviewed manually. If the text of the document is corrected by hand, then change the status to 3 or 4 to reprocess the record. |
| 2 | Import map errors may require changes to the map. Then change the record status to 4 to import the document. |
| 3 | Do one of the following with test records: either change the status 0 and run the Delete Duplicates process, or change the status to 4 and import the document to the database. |
| 5 | Status 5 errors should be reviewed. Then move the documents to RECEIVE_HISTORY by running the Archive Accepted process. |
PURPOSE.
Selecting Transmit from the Interchange submenu sends all pending documents to the EDI Provider, and from there to your trading partners.
TRANSMITTING PROCESS.
When this option is chosen all records in the TRANSMITS file with status 3 or above are selected and sorted for transmission. An operating system file is opened and the documents are written to the file in an EDI transmission stream. Records for documents which require acknowledgment are changed to status 5; other documents are changed to status 6. Then status 6 records in the TRANSMITS file are copied to TRANSMIT_HISTORY and deleted from TRANSMITS. Status 5 records are archived in APP_TRANSMITS pending acknowledgment and deleted from TRANSMITS.
After all pending records are processed, a call is placed to the EDI Provider or Value Added Network. The operating system file is uploaded, and session statistics are downloaded to be appended to the statistics log. The call is disconnected when the transfer is complete.