Managing EDI Guidelines

You can edit, customize, and export EDI guidelines using the EDISIM utility, and store the guideline and schema files in the Configuration Store. You can use TIBCO BusinessConnect™ Container Edition - EDI Protocol powered by Instream® to exchange messages with your trading partners and to validate the contents of those messages. When you consider validation, you must remember that even though EDI is a standard, not all trading partners choose to exchange messages strictly according to this standard.

Each trading partner slightly modifies the contents of the messages to satisfy their business requirements. One possibility is that your trading partners belong to an industry that develops its own set of messages, which are derived from another protocol component. For example, the health care industry in the USA used X12 transaction sets as the basis for HIPAA transaction and code sets.

TIBCO BusinessConnect™ Container Edition - EDI Protocol powered by Instream® is designed to be flexible and can work with any standard. This is accomplished through the use of guideline files, which contain a description of the EDI data structures like segments, loops, elements, and code sets that must be contained in the EDI data. They are created by using the TIBCO Foresight® EDISIM® tool.

Separate guideline files must be created for the transactions expected in the EDI data and these guidelines contain the interchange, group and transaction segments as part of the Standards Exchange Format also called SEF format. These transaction guidelines can be used as is, or they can be customized to match the deviations from the EDI standards used by your trading partners.

You have to import guideline files into the Configuration Store before configuring the interchange, groups, and transactions used in your system. Any guidelines that are edited or customized and then saved by using EDISIM Standards Editor are available and listed in the Standards Editor either under User Guidelines, Both Published & User, or under Recently Used. For more information on how to edit guidelines by using this tool, see Customizing a Guideline.

However, if you intend to use custom guidelines that are coming from another source, you first need to import them.