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Nappai Documentation

EDI Reader

EDI Reader opens an EDIFACT file, the standard format many companies use to exchange orders, despatch advices and invoices, and turns it into organised data: who sends it and who receives it, the product lines, dates, references, amounts and taxes.

Use it when your customers or suppliers send you EDIFACT documents and you want to process them automatically instead of reading them by hand.

When to use it

  • Receive a retailer’s orders in EDIFACT format (ORDERS) and enter them in your system.
  • Check that a supplier’s despatch advice (DESADV) matches what you ordered.
  • Read electronic invoices (INVOIC) and pass their amounts to accounting.
  • Give an agent the ability to read an EDIFACT file when a user sends it one.

Configuration

FieldWhat it does
EDI File (required)The EDIFACT document. It can be an .edi file coming from another component or its content as text. The component detects the document type on its own: ORDERS, DESADV, INVOIC, ORDRSP or any other EDIFACT message.

Advanced options

FieldWhat it does
Include Raw SegmentsAdds every line of the document, exactly as it came, to the result, in case you need a value that is not in the organised fields. On by default.

In the Batch Mode tab you can connect a list of files to Batch Input to read them all at once. See Batch Mode.

Output

The Messages output returns one result per document in the file (one file can carry several orders, for example). Each result includes:

  • message_type: the document type, for example ORDERS.
  • header: the document’s header details.
  • parties: the companies involved, such as buyer, seller or delivery point.
  • lines: the product lines.
  • dates, references, monetary, quantities, tax and free_text: dates, references, amounts, quantities, taxes and free text.
  • interchange: the details of the file transfer, such as sender and recipient.
  • raw_segments: the original lines, when Include Raw Segments is on.

If the file is empty, the result has status error. If it contains no recognisable document, it has status warning and the beginning of the text received, so you can check it.

The component can also be used as an agent tool with Tool Mode.

Example

A manufacturer receives its distributors’ orders every morning as EDIFACT files.

  1. Connect the .edi file the flow receives to EDI File on EDI Reader.
  2. Connect the Messages output to a component that goes through each order’s lines and enters them in the ERP.
  3. If a result arrives with a status other than success, send an alert to the orders team.
  • EDI Writer: to create EDIFACT documents from your data.