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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. Submit a new Trade Request to your Leader, or accept one your Leader already sent you.
  2. (Only if your Leader is Unclaimed) 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, either by sending a new Trade Request or by accepting one your Leader already sent you.

Submit a Trade Request

If your Leader hasn't already sent you a Trade Request, you can start one yourself.

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. Sign in to your Orderful account:

  2. From the left navigation menu, click on Trade Requests.

  3. Click Create Trade Request.

  4. Complete the Create a Trade Request wizard:

    1. Select your Trading Partners: Search for your Leader's EDI Account.
      1. If they're found: This means we have this Leader in our network and have some or all of their requirements already configured. Some or all of the information required in the following steps will be pre-populated for you, and you won't need to get it from your Trading Partner.
      2. If they're not found: Add them as a new partner request, providing their Name, ISA ID (or EDIFACT ID) and Qualifier.
    2. Partnership Options: Choose your EDI Account, the file type you'll be trading (EDI, Any File, or both), and whether this is a new or migrating partnership. You'll also indicate who will define the EDI Guidelines and testing Scenarios for this partnership — select the option indicating your Trading Partner will own this, which is what makes you the Follower.
    3. Partnership Contacts: Enter a contact email for your Trading Partner (used to reach them for onboarding) and any additional contacts.

  5. Click Create Trade Request.

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If your Leader already has defaults configured in the Orderful network, indicating their Company Name as "In our network" during Select your Trading Partners means you'll be able to skip some or all of the following steps.

Once your Trade Request is submitted, you'll be redirected to our onboarding form to enter your Leader's requirements if you know them, and you'll also receive an email from Orderful containing a link to this same form. If you don't know your Leader's requirements yet, see 2.2 Gather Your Leader's Requirements below.



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If you need to create a partnership with Any File (non EDI) relationships, you'll need to select the File type "Any File", and "EDI and Any File" on the trade request.

More details here: Set up a Trading Partnership to trade Any File over MFT

Accept a Trade Request

If your Leader has already sent you a Trade Request, accept it to create your Trading Partnership:

  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 side panel on the right with further information about the Trade Request.
  4. If your Leader left Scenario selection to you, you'll need to select at least one published Scenario before you can accept — the Accept button stays disabled until you do.
  5. Click Accept, or Reject if you don't want to proceed with this partnership.
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For a full breakdown of what each Trade Request status means, see Trade Request statuses. Later changes to an already-accepted partnership are sent as Change Requests, which use this same Accept / Reject flow.

2.2 Gather Your Leader's Requirements

If you sent a Trade Request to an Unclaimed Leader, you'll need to gather their document trading requirements so Orderful can configure their side of the partnership. You can gather these requirements from your Leader in any way you like — for convenience, we send you both an email template you can fill out and send to your Leader, as well as a form to enter their requirements once you have them.

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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 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.

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If you create a trade request to trade Any File over MFT, the onboarding form will slightly differ:

  • You won't need to provide and upload guidelines
  • You'll be required to provide additional routing information if your partner uses AS2 or FTP/SFTP

More details here: Set up a Trading Partnership to trade Any File over MFT

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.
    • JSON, X12 or EDIFACT for EDI transactions
    • XML, CSV, JSON, PDF, JPEG for Any File transactions
  • 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).
    For JSON and Any File formats, you can only select version 1.
  • Guideline:
    Not applicable or Optional as you are the follower.
    Not applicable for Any File relationships.
  • [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 acknowledgment.
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If you chose to send acknowledgments, Orderful will expect different acknowledgement formats based on your relationship 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.
You can't receive acknowledgments for Any File relationships.

  • [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).