EDI Automation | Softzoll GmbH & Co. KG

Automatically generating your messages—without expensive ERP integration!

Auto Response Sender

In some EDI requirement scenarios, in particular in customer communication, users have, in practice, problems generating the confirmation or response messages to inbound EDI messages that are required by the customer. This is true especially for the CONTRL or ANSI X.12 997 message types (confirmation that an inbound message has been physically received) and the APERAK message types (confirmation that an inbound message has been successful processed). Here, most current ERP systems offer no standard interfaces to provide the required message content.

Moreover, ERP systems that are heavily geared towards the automotive sector also often have no interfaces for commercially focused business processes such as ORDRSP or ANSI X.12 855 (order confirmation).
In order to support the EDI requirements of the customers and to avoid the costs of creating proprietary interfaces, Softzoll offers a series of auto-response modules to automatically generate the required messages. At a technical level, the content of an inbound message is written into a particular internal database table for this purpose. The required fields of the confirmation message to be generated are then populated from these database fields, and the outbound EDI confirmation messages are ultimately provided with the content of these fields. Providing and sending messages also occurs in a completely automatic way in the process without an ERP integration or a manual intervention being necessary.

The most important confirmation messages are:

Auto CONTRL/ANSI X.12 997:Here usually only the message ID of the inbound message is transmitted to the sender.
Auto APERAK:To this end, additional content from the inbound message must be acquired and additional message content must be partly generated by the module.
Auto ORDRSP/ANSI X.12 855: Most of he content can be completely acquired from the ORDERS/ANSI X.12 850 (order) that came in before it. This is usually sufficient, particularly in orders for existing framework contracts. In the classic order process, it may be necessary to communicate quantities deviating from the original order quantity. This information can be delivered to Softzoll by simple interfaces (CSV etc.); the process then waits for the complementary information, consolidates the document, and transfers the order confirmation automatically only after completion.

Automatic testing and assessment of your inbound confirmation messages

Auto Response Checker

In most ERP systems there are no appropriate interfaces for receiving and processing inbound confirmation messages, and no mechanisms to analyze these confirmations and to react appropriately when there are divergences. Many affected EDI users have therefore decided to suspend these messages without analysis or archive them without a test. A procedure like this can, however, lead to direct disadvantages up to penalty claims by the EDI partner in the event of an unnoticed data loss.

The Softzoll Auto Response Checker offers a intelligent solution to this issue:

To summarize the functionality of the Auto Response Checker briefly:

The outbound data generated from the ERP systems are imported into the central consolidation table, from which the outbound messages are filled with the partner-specific contents and forwarded immediately.
Parallel to this, message-specific content of the outbound messages (e.g., message ID, document ID) is written in a dedicated monitor table.
When a confirmation message comes in (e.g. CONTRL, APERAK, ORDRSP), it is first converted and the message-specific content is compared with the entries on file in the monitor table.
When there is a data match, the appropriate entry is deleted from the monitor table, and the inbound original message is suspended or archived.
If there is no match to an outbound message after a defined period of time, an error e-mail with the message-specific information of the outbound message is automatically generated and forwarded to one or more addressees.

This post is also available in DE.