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2. Set up a Trading Partnership as a Follower

A Trading Partnership is a relation between two EDI Accounts that contains at least one Relationship. If you are a Follower who wants to trade EDI documents with a Leader, you must create a new Trading Partnership by sending a Trade Request to your Leader.

To create a new Trading Partnership as a Follower, you will need to:

  1. Accept or create a Trade Request.
  2. (Only for Unclaimed Leaders) Gather your Trading Partner's requirements.
  3. Configure your Relationship

2.1 Accept or Create a Trade Request

First you will need to start a new Partnership by accepting an existing Trade Request or sending a new one.

To accept an existing Trade Request:

  1. Sign in to your Orderful account:
  2. From the left navigation menu, click on Trade Requests.
  3. Under the Inbound Requests section, click on a Pending Trade Request. This will open a sidebar on the right with further information about the Trade Request.
  4. Click Accept.

Alternatively, you may have to create a new Trade Request.

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Automated Onboarding for Leaders with Default Requirements

If your Leader already has defaults configured in the Orderful network, you can find them:

  1. From the left navigation menu, click on Trade Requests.
  2. Click on Create Trade Request.
  3. Fill out the form that pops up. Since you are the Follower, be sure to select My trading partner (I am the Follower).
  4. You can look up your Leader's Company Name. If their name comes up as "In our network" that means that they have default requirements configured in the Orderful network and you will be able to skip some or all of the following steps.

You will first need the following information from your Partner:

  • ISA or EDIFACT ID
  • ISA or EDIFACT Qualifier
  • Contact email

Orderful will use the ISA ID to look up whether we already have this company and its requirements in our system.

An example email template requesting this information can be found here: Trade Request information email template

Once you have these you can create the Trade Request:

  1. From the left navigation menu, click on Trade Requests.
  2. Click on Create Trade Request.
  3. Fill out the form that pops up. Since you are the Follower, be sure to select My trading partner (I am the Follower).
  4. You can look up your Leader's Company Name.
    1. If the Company Name is in our network: This means that we have this Leader in our network and have some or all of their requirements already configured. This means that some or all of the information required in the following steps will be pre-populated for you, which means you will not need to get this from your Trading Partner.
    2. If the Company Name is not found: This means that we do not have this Leader in our network. Proceed through the rest of these steps as normal.
  5. Once completed, you will be redirected to our onboarding form which you can follow to enter your Leader’s requirements. You will also receive an email from Orderful that will contain a link to this form.

If you know your Leader's requirements, you can enter them here. Otherwise, you will have to gather their requirements.

2.2 Gather requirements

If you are a Follower sending a Trade Request to an Unclaimed Leader, you will need to gather their document trading requirements. You can gather these requirements from your Leader in any way you like. For convenience, we will send you both an email template that you can fill out and send to your Leader as well as a form to enter their requirements:

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If you received a Trade Request from a claimed Leader who is already in our system, you can skip this step.

Once the information is submitted, the Orderful team will review your Trade Request and either:

  • Get in touch for follow-up if there are requirements that are missing, incomplete or inaccurate.
  • Accept your trade request and configure the relationships on your Trading Partner’s side. You are now ready to start configuring and testing your relationships.

Once the request is accepted its validation status will be updated to "Accepted", however it will only be visible if you check "Show hidden" on the upper right of the Trade Requests page.

2.3 Configure your Relationship

Now that your Trade Request has been accepted, you will have one or more new Relationships.

  1. From the left navigation menu, click on Relationships.
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You will have one Relationship for each Transaction Type that your Leader has defined in their scenarios.

  1. Click on a relationship with the status "Setup".
    A side panel with the relationship configuration opens on the right.
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  • You may not be able to configure your relationship if your partner - the leader - hasn't configured their side of the relationship.
  • If you'd like to see a breakdown of all the different Relationship statuses and what they mean, they are documented here: Relationship statuses
  1. You can configure the following settings on a relationship
  • Data format: The data format of the document you will send or receive.
  • EDIFACT Syntax Version (EDIFACT only)
  • EDIFACT Character Set (EDIFACT only)
  • Version: The data version of the document you will send or receive.(e.g. 004010).
  • Guideline: Not applicable or Optional as you are the follower.
  • [Inbound only] Deliver Transactions to Communication Channel: Choose one or more Communication Channels for transactions you receive in the Live and Test stream.
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  • You can add multiple Communication Channels if you need to deliver the transaction to multiple parties or backend systems. You can configure up to 5 Communication Channels for each stream.
  • For each Communication Channel, you can configure Advanced Delivery Settings to choose delivery conditions or format the transaction being sent.
  • If the type of Communication Channel you selected isn’t compatible with your Relationship data format and version, you’ll need to configure conversion options under Advanced Delivery Settings.
  • If you want to receive transactions in both Test and Live streams on the same Communication Channel, you can tick the checkbox "Use selected for Test Communication Channel".
  • [Inbound only] Choose your acknowledgment policy: You can either choose to:
    • Auto-accept: Any transaction you receive will have an Accepted acknowlegdment status.
    • Send acknowledgment: Define an acknowledgement logic outside of Orderful and send an acknowledmment.
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If you chose to send acknowledgments, Orderful will expect different acknowledgement formats based on your relatiosnhip data format: 997 for X12, CONTRL for EDIFACT or JSON Acknowledgment for JSON.

  • [Outbound only] Deliver acknowledgements: Check the checkbox if you want to receive acknowledgments (997 for X12 or CONTRL for EDIFACT) on one of your Communication Channel.
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You can't receive JSON acknowledgments on your Communication Channels.

  • [Outbound only] Deliver acknowledgments to Communication Channel: Choose one Communication Channels for acknowledgments you receive in the Live and Test stream.
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This setting only appears if you checked the Deliver acknowledgments checkbox above.

  • [Outbound only] Timeout Time: Define how long you want to wait for a Functional Acknowledgment from your partner before a transaction is set as "Overdue". The default is 120 minutes (2 hours).

Updated 17 days ago

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