Whats the need of creating party for EDI in BizTalk

Hi,

Whats the need of creating parties in BizTalk for EDI ?

Can we work with EDI without creating parties ?

September 8th, 2015 10:34am

The idea of parties is to work with multiple partners in a B2B scenario where the partners can be on-boarded at runtime without having to alter the processing. Say for example in your B2B scenario you wish to automate/integrate the order management process. You typically start with a internal order schema around which you build the complete process. This internal schema becomes the "canonical schema". Then you start building the various means through which you can receive/accept orders. So you may have a website from where you'd accept an order or you may have retailers who place bulk orders or large corporate who may wish to integrate your order into their supply-chain process, etc, etc. Each of these entities is a partner with different means of identification, different modes of ordering/notifications, etc. The most common issue being that partners insist on providing data in their format and not how you want it.

BizTalk through Role Links and Parties permits you to build a process where these variations in data formats, protocols and communication modes can be uniformly addressed while keeping ONE copy of the process.

So if you look at EDI, it is additionally a single channel for all partner communication. So if you have tied with a VAS provider then over that ONE channel you would receive various types of EDI messages from various partners. In BizTalk Parties permits you manage the EDI/AS2 agreements (Certificates/Encryption/Encoding) pertaining to different partners or divisions (profiles) within a large organization.

The EDI pipelines by default parse the EDI message types and can supplement various properties (promote) which can then allow you to use context based routing to handle messages or partner specific processing and such.

However you may choose NOT to directly integrate through a VAS but still use EDI message format for communication, in which case while you will benefit from the Party setup.. you may not actually utilize it. But if you use the supplied EDI pipeline components then you would require the party setup. If you write your OWN custom pipeline component to handle EDI (as has been the case when dealing with custom types not available in the EDI definition database) then the party setup leverage if your design choice.

Regards.

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
September 8th, 2015 11:09am

Hi,

EDI message format is basically used to send information in a specific encoded format so that the business partners can understand the information and decode it. So basically parties are nothing but is a trading partner agreement between the partners exchanging the information.

In precise, it is an understanding between two business profiles to use a specific message encoding protocol or a specific transport protocol while exchanging B2B messages with each other.

Whenever you receive EDI's or send EDI's in BizTalk, it wraps the EDI message with an envelope containing the information defined in the party configuration. When the other business partner receives the information, it first decodes the information and validates if it is sent by correct and agreed business partner and then processes it.

Some of the links where you can see how we can configure Parties and what all properties we have:

Parties in BizTalk

Configuring BizTalk EDI parties

You can work on the EDI message processing with the global party defined in your development environment but for the actual interaction your business partner will have encoding standard for which you need to define.

Please indicate "Mark as Answer" or "Mark as Helpful" if this post has answered the question

Rahul

September 8th, 2015 11:30am

Whats the need of creating parties in BizTalk for EDI ?

EDI documents are like Flat files and EDI deals with header information not found in the actual message (Schema), but which must be configured using parties. 

Refer MSDN article to understand the EDI processing in BizTalk,

EDI Processing in BizTalk Server

EDI Support in BizTalk Server

So when sending/Receiving EDI documents, we need to set up Parties so that the EdiReceive and EdiSend Pipelines know which trading partners the message came from or is being sent to. So what we need to do now is set up two Parties, that is, sender and the receiver.

Refer MSDN article for configure the parties and Agreement,

Configure a Party and Business Profile for Your Organization

The Role of Agreements in EDI Processing

Can we work with EDI without creating parties ?

No, for transmit the EDI documents you need at-least two parties configured and one agreement between both of them. 

Party resolution in BizTalk Server EDI

Develop your First BizTalk EDI project

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
September 8th, 2015 11:41am

Hi,

You really need Parties configured when you work with EDI messages.

+ Links

Building Blocks of a Trading Partner Management Solution

Agreement Resolution and Schema Determination for Outgoing EDI Messages

How BizTalk Server Receives EDI Messages

How BizTalk Server Sends EDI Messages

Thanks, SMSVikasK

September 8th, 2015 2:37pm

Hi All,

Thanks for your reply.

But I still have a doubt:

Let I am getting  a EDI message Purchase Order from SFTP  and after applying mapping on this message I converted it into a Orders05 IDOC message and send to SAP.

So in this scenario,Do I need to configure a party ?

I think there is no need to use party for this scenario because I just want to submit that EDI message  to SAP in IDOC format.

Am I wrong ?

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
September 8th, 2015 5:45pm

Hi PKS,

How we can think that your scenario like this, we were in a context that you are asking these questions with respect to EDI Send, EDI Receive - Normal case.

You will be able to disassemble the EDI Messages without parties, by default it uses BTSGuestParty, when no parties configured with sender id / receiver id.

When an EDI file is disassembled with EDI Pipeline, then you can send to SAP with map applied EDI to IDOC in your case - You will be able to process End to End , Optionally / No parties required in your case if you know to whom you are sending the files.

When you want to send EDI Output then you need Parties.

You can utilize the parties features with parties configured for dynamic flow to receive, send.

Thanks, SMSVikasK

September 8th, 2015 8:57pm

Hi All,

Thanks for your reply.

But I still have a doubt:

Let I am getting  a EDI message Purchase Order from SFTP  and after applying mapping on this message I converted it into a Orders05 IDOC message and send to SAP.

So in this scenario,Do I need to configure a party ?

I think there is no need to use party for this scenario because I just want to submit that EDI message  to SAP in IDOC format.

Am I wrong ?

Yes, in this scenario also you need parties. because without knowing whom to send the Purchase Order how will you receive the order from SFTP, and how will you identify from which client you received the Order.

Let me give you real time example; suppose there are one parcel and you want to send it to your friend but you haven't provided the receiver information a well as sender(your) information on that parcel. Then how your parcel will be deliver to your friends address or revert it back to your address. So In EDI documents we have something ISA 05 & ISA 06 (Sender Id and Qualifier) and ISA 07 & ISA08 (Receiver Id and Qualifier).

All trading partners that will be exchanging EDI messages using BizTalk Server must agree upon communication parameters. After they have done this, the organization hosting BizTalk Server must create the trading partners in TPM (including a trading partner for itself), create the business profiles, and the trading partner agreement between the business profiles. As part of the trading partner agreement, you set the properties for how BizTalk Server receives an EDI message from, and send an EDI message to, the trading partners business profile. On their end, the other trading partners must do the same, and to exchange messages, the configurations must be compatible.

Refer : The Role of Agreements in EDI Processing

For example, consider two organizations Fabrikam and Contoso. Let us assume that Fabrikam has implemented BizTalk Server 2013 R2. To use BizTalk Server for managing all business data interchanges with Contoso, Fabrikam must create two trading partners, one for itself and one for Contoso. While creating a party, you must provide certain details like partner name, etc.

Refer: Trading Partners

Transmission of documents:

Trading partners are free to use any method for the transmission of documents. Furthermore, they can either interact directly, or through a third party.

Peer-to-Peer

Value-added networks

Internet

Refer: Electronic data interchange

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
September 8th, 2015 9:02pm

Hi PKS,

How we can think that your scenario like this, we were in a context that you are asking these questions with respect to EDI Send, EDI Receive - Normal case.

You will be able to disassemble the EDI Messages without parties, by default it uses BTSGuestParty, when no parties configured with sender id / receiver id.

When an EDI file is disassembled with EDI Pipeline, then you can send to SAP with map applied EDI to IDOC in your case - You will be able to process End to End , Optionally / No parties required in your case if you know to whom you are sending the files.

When you want to send EDI Output then you need Parties.

You can utilize the parties features with parties configured for dynamic flow to receive, send.

Thanks, SMSVikasK

  • Edited by SMSVikasK Wednesday, September 09, 2015 1:39 AM
September 9th, 2015 12:55am

Hi PKS,

How we can think that your scenario like this, we were in a context that you are asking these questions with respect to EDI Send, EDI Receive - Normal case.

You will be able to disassemble the EDI Messages without parties, by default it uses BTSGuestParty, when no parties configured with sender id / receiver id.

When an EDI file is disassembled with EDI Pipeline, then you can send to SAP with map applied EDI to IDOC in your case - You will be able to process End to End , Optionally / No parties required in your case if you know to whom you are sending the files.

When you want to send EDI Output then you need Parties.

You can utilize the parties features with parties configured for dynamic flow to receive, send.

Thanks, SMSVikasK

  • Edited by SMSVikasK Wednesday, September 09, 2015 1:39 AM
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
September 9th, 2015 12:55am

Hi,

You are receiving the EDI Purchase Order from SFTP but still it is always recommended to mutually agree on an agreement to process the EDI messages. That is the whole point of EDI processing. the agreement acts as communication parameters. You must define the following properties for EDI processing:

  • Trading partner properties that define general aspects of the trading partner, such as name, send ports, and the signing certificate.
  • Business Profile Properties
  • EDI properties, as part of the trading partner agreement, that defines how BizTalk Server will process an incoming message from a trading partner.

If you do not define any agreement still the Global EDI properties are used to decode and process the message.

Rahul

September 9th, 2015 5:32am

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics