Process steps used in B2B/EDI processes
Boomi B2B/EDI Management uses a set of process steps to exchange documents with trading partners. These steps handle document standards, communication protocols, acknowledgments, and errors. This topic describes the steps and paths that are specific to EDI processes, and the general steps that EDI processes commonly use.
The Trading Partner step, EDI, and B2B solutions are in their own Integration edition. To enable these capabilities in your account, contact your Boomi account representative.
EDI-specific steps
Trading Partner step
Use the Trading Partner step to configure document standards and communication methods, and to identify your company and trading partners. You can add the step in two ways:
- Inbound: Select Trading Partner as the option in the Start step.
- Outbound: From the Connect tab, select the Trading Partner step in the General group, and drag it onto the canvas. The step supports these document standards: X12, EDIFACT, HL7, ODETTE, RosettaNet, TRADACOMS, and custom.
The step supports these communication methods: AS2, Disk, FTP, MLLP (when HL7 is the standard), OFTP2, SFTP, and HTTP. For inbound processing, you can configure only one communication method per process.
Paths
The paths that attach to the Trading Partner step run in a fixed order.
| Step | Path | Purpose | Run order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trading Partner (Start step, inbound) | Documents | Processes valid documents. | 1 |
| Acknowledgments | Routes generated acknowledgments. | 2 | |
| Errors | Processes invalid documents. | 3 | |
| Archive | Archives raw document data, if the Archiving option is selected. | 4 | |
| Trading Partner (outbound) | Errors | Processes invalid documents, if outbound validation is configured. | 1 |
| Archive | Archives raw document data, if the Archiving option is selected. | 2 |
If outbound validation is not configured, attach a Stop step to the Errors path.
General steps used in EDI processes
The following steps are not EDI-specific, but EDI processes commonly use them.
- Map: Transforms documents between profiles. You can add a document cache as a lookup source to enrich destination fields.
- Document Cache: Temporarily holds and indexes documents so that later steps can look them up. Available in Professional and Enterprise editions.
- Process Route: Runs a subprocess based on runtime values, such as document properties. Available in Professional and Enterprise editions.
- Set Properties: Sets dynamic process properties, such as a trading partner identifier, for use later in the process.
- Connector steps: Send and receive documents over B2B protocols, such as AS2 Client, MLLP Client and Server, and OFTP2 Client and Server.
