Before you start partner testing, integration testing validates that your system can correctly send and receive EDI transactions across a set of common business scenarios. It's an initial checkpoint between integration and partner testing — and completing it gives you confidence that real orders, shipments, and invoices will flow without issues.
What integration testing does
Integration testing in Orderful runs your system through structured scenarios that mirror real business workflows. Rather than testing with generic messages in isolation, each scenario drives a complete end-to-end exchange — from the first inbound transaction through to your final outbound response — and validates every step against both business logic rules and your partners' specific EDI guideline requirements.
There are two workflow types:
- Retail — tests your order-to-cash EDI integration (850, 855, 856, 810, 860)
- Transportation — tests your load tender and carrier response integration (204, 990, 214, 210)
Each workflow type has a set of scenarios covering the common variations you'll encounter in production.
Why it matters
Multi-partner testing in a single session
Instead of testing one partner at a time, you can test across all your linked partners simultaneously with a single run. Your progress with each partner is tracked independently, so you can see exactly where you stand across your full trading partner coverage list at once.
Catches partner-specific field requirements
Partner guidelines vary. One retailer may require an expected delivery date that another doesn't. Integration testing surfaces these differences before you go live — running your transactions through each partner's actual validation rules, not just a generic check. You'd never catch these discrepancies testing against the Demo Leader alone.
Transformation validation
Proves that a complete, valid outbound payload from your system can be successfully transformed into a technically valid transaction for all of your trading partners. Each partner's linked test run validates the transformed output independently.
Message validation on returns
Confirms that the transactions your integration sends will pass each partner's message validation — not just structural formatting, but field-level requirements, code set compliance, and segment constraints specific to that partner.
Skip redundant partner testing with confidence
Once your integration passes Orderful's testing, you have documented evidence that your system produces valid transactions for each partner. This lets you skip repetitive direct testing with individual partners — you've already proven it works.
Faster, more automated onboarding
Integration testing gets you much further through the onboarding process in a more automated and faster way than manual partner-by-partner testing. Scenarios are pre-built, 850s are injected automatically, and validation runs without manual intervention.
How to get started
Navigate to Integration Testing in the left sidebar. You'll see your available scenarios organized by workflow type — retail and transportation. Each scenario represents a distinct business flow to test.
If you're connected to multiple retail partners, you'll also see a Trading Partner Coverage section showing which partners have linked test runs. See Leader linked testing for how that works.