The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

ACK is an Acknowledgment segment. It is commonly found on response transactions to Purchase Orders or 855. It is one of the lines found in the PO1 loop or group.  As this line modifies the PO1 line data from the Purchase Order, what it can contain and how that data is handled is important for the stability of the supply chain integration.  For clarity, we are going to use the 4010 x12 standard.

(more…)

Like the PO1 segment, IT1 is another line item segment used in the supply chain.  This is the line item segment found in invoices.  And since invoices make up an important part of a supply chain, I wanted to spend another article on this segment.  (IT1 is a group or loop so it is more than just a segment.)  In this article we will discuss what data is found on the IT1 segment, and how it should be handled on both inbound and outbound document.  For clarity, we are going to use the 4010 x12 standard.

(more…)

When we are dealing with supply chain or e-commerce related EDI, we probably will deal with line item data.  On a Purchase Order, (PO) or 850, the line item data is contained on the PO1 segment or the PO1 group.  (PO1 is a group or loop so it is more than just a segment.)  In this article we will discuss what data is found on the PO1 segment, and how it should be handled on both inbound and outbound document.  For clarity, we are going to use the 4010 x12 standard.  The PO1 hasn’t changed in content for a while, but it has gotten longer, (you will see how this works when we talk about the PO1 elements). (more…)

As someone that has been involved in the supply chain industry, this questions has come up more than once, and at more than one place of business. For both vendors and retailers, having access to better, broader and more accurate information is worth money.  And is sometimes the difference between life and death of a business in a competitive market.

When businesses realize that the catalog data that they have may be worth as much as the products or services that they sell, they may be tempted to sell that instead.  Before they do, they need to think about who owns the data.

(more…)

After you have created your usage specification, it can be useful to use a validation tool to check to verify that new trading partners comply during your boarding process. I have used Foresight’s EDI Analyzer for this many times, and it lets be quickly see where the EDI file departs from the specification.

There is a temptation to use this same validation in the production integration. But this would be a mistake. I’m not saying, “Don’t validate.” I highly encourage validation on both standard compliance and required data validation in mapping and integration. But to use the usage specification has a side effect that I witnessed once. (Only once.) (more…)