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Configuring the Sending and Receiving of EDI Acknowledgments

  • Article

To configure the sending of an EDI acknowledgment in response to a received interchange, you need to do the following:

  • Enable the acknowledgment in the agreement that the received interchange resolved to. By doing this, you declare that the party that sent the interchange expects an acknowledgement.

  • If the acknowledgement needs to be send back with specific properties set, such as CR LF enabled, separator characters to be different, etc., set those properties in the other one-way agreement tab. By doing this, you configure how the party sends back the acknowledgement.

    Note

    If an interchange resolved to an agreement defined in the PartyA->PartyB tab, the properties related to how the acknowledgement should be generated are configured in the PartyB->PartyA tab. This is required because the acknowledgement context properties for the sender and receiver qualifiers are set to the opposite of the values you specified in the PartyA->PartyB tab. For example, if sender and receiver identifiers are set to THEM and US in the agreement to which the interchange message resolved to, the sender and receiver context properties will be set to US and THEM in the acknowledgement. Typically, the other one-way agreement tab would also have the sender and receiver identifiers set to US and THEM respectively. Hence, the acknowledgement message would resolve to that agreement and the properties setting will be picked. So, if you want to have the acknowledgement to use different element separators or if you want to have the acknowledgement to use CR LF, specify the properties in the PartyB->PartyA tab.

    Conceptually, the properties for the acknowledgement will be picked from any one-way agreement tab that has the same sender and receiver qualifiers as set in the acknowledgement’s context properties. However, for ease of practical use, you would typically set this in the other one-way agreement tab of the agreement that you created to which the interchange would have resolved.

  • If you are a party that is sending an EDI acknowledgement back to the party that sent the original interchange, set up a one-way send port to pick up the acknowledgment and send or a two-way receive port to send the acknowledgment. For more information, see Configuring a Static Send Port to Send EDI Interchanges and Acknowledgments.

  • If you are a party that is expecting an EDI acknowledgement, set up a two-way send port or a one-way receive port to receive the acknowledgment. For more information, see Configuring a Port to Receive EDI Messages and Acknowledgments.

  • The BizTalk EDI Application contains the control schemas. As a result, the application containing your EDI solution must contain a reference to BizTalk EDI Application. For more information, see Add a Reference to the BizTalk Server EDI Application.

Prerequisites

You must be logged on as a member of the BizTalk Server Administrators or BizTalk Server B2B Operators group.

To request an acknowledgment for the party that sent the original interchange

  1. Note

    By performing the steps in this procedure, you configure that the party that sends the interchange expects an acknowledgement back.

    In the BizTalk Server Administration Console, click the Parties node. In the Parties and Business Profiles page, click the party that has the agreement for which you need to enable acknowledgement. In the Agreement section of the page, right-click the agreement and click Properties. In the Agreement Properties dialog box, in the one-way agreement tab (to which the inbound interchange will resolve), do the following:

    1. In the Identifiers page, enter the values for the sender and receiver qualifiers.

      For an X12-encoded acknowledgment, enter values for ISA5, ISA6, ISA7, and ISA8. For ISA5 and ISA6, enter the values for the party that will send the interchange. For ISA7 and ISA8, enter the values for the party that will receive the interchange.

      For an EDIFACT-encoded acknowledgment, enter values for UNB2.1, UNB2.2, UNB3.1, and UNB3.2. For UNB2.1 and UNB2.2, enter the values for the party that will send the interchange. For UNB3.1 and UNB3.2, enter the values for the party that will receive the interchange.

    2. In the Acknowledgements page, select properties defining the kind of acknowledgement that the sender party expects:

      For X12 acknowledgements, select TA1 Expected and/or 997 Expected depending on which acknowledgements are expected. For each acknowledgement type, select Do not batch <ACK type> if you want each instance of an acknowledgment to be sent as a separate interchange.

      For EDIFACT acknowledgements, select Receipt of message (CONTRL) expected and/or Acknowledgement (CONTRL) expected depending on which acknowledgements are expected. For each acknowledgement type, select Do not batch <ACK type> if you want each instance of an acknowledgment to be sent as a separate interchange.

    3. In the Local Host Settings page under the Interchange Settings section, clear the Route ACK to send pipeline on request-response receive port to return the acknowledgment asynchronously over a one-way send port. Keep this property as selected to return the acknowledgment synchronously over a two-way receive port.

    4. In the Send Ports page, in the Name column of the Send ports grid, select the send port that you have set up to send the acknowledgment.

      Note

      BizTalk Server uses this send port setting to determine the party to use when processing the message. For more information, see Agreement Resolution and Schema Determination for Outgoing EDI Messages.

      Note

      If you have not set up the send port, you may have to perform this step later.

To configure how the party sends the acknowledgement back

  1. Note

    By performing the steps in this procedure, you configure how the party that received the interchange sends an acknowledgement back.

    In the same Agreement Properties dialog box, in the other one-way agreement tab, do the following:

    1. In the Identifiers page, enter the values for the sender and receiver qualifiers.

      Note

      While sending the acknowledgement, the party that received the original interchange becomes the sender and the party that sent the original interchange becomes the receiver. Hence, the values that you enter in the Identifiers page now are opposite of the values that you entered in the one-way agreement tab in the previous step. This serves two purposes:

      • The acknowledgement being sent back will resolve to this one-way agreement that you are creating because the sender and receiver context properties on the acknowledgement will match the sender and receiver values you enter on the Identifiers page now.
        • Any customization you want to include in the acknowledgement can be configured on this agreement tab. For example, you can use other separators, you can choose to have CR LF enabled, etc.

      For an X12-encoded acknowledgment, enter values for ISA5, ISA6, ISA7, and ISA8. For ISA5 and ISA6, enter the values for the party that will send the acknowledgement (this will be same as the party that received the original interchange). For ISA7 and ISA8, enter the values for the party that will receive the acknowledgement (this will be same as the party that sent the original interchange).

      For an EDIFACT-encoded acknowledgment, enter values for UNB2.1, UNB2.2, UNB3.1, and UNB3.2. For UNB2.1 and UNB2.2, enter the values for the party that will send the acknowledgement (this will be same as the party that received the original interchange). For UNB3.1 and UNB3.2, enter the values for the party that will receive the acknowledgement (this will be same as the party that sent the original interchange).

    2. For an X12 or EDIFACT acknowledgment, if required, on the Charset and Separators page, specify separators that you want to use in the acknowledgement. You can also specify if the acknowledgement must use a CR LF suffix.

    3. For an EDIFACT acknowledgment, if required, on the Envelopes page under the Interchange Settings section, specify whether the acknowledgement would include a UNA or a UNG segment by selecting the appropriate options.

See Also

Configuring EDI Acknowledgments
EDI Service and Control Schemas
Sending an EDI Acknowledgment
How to Create a Receive Port
How to Create a Send Port