[Evergreen-acq] Moving to EDI Attributes - Question/Concern

Wed Jul 17 13:49:05 EDT 2019

Hi John,

We've completely moved over to EDI Attributes, so I'll add my $0.02.

Your testing method is pretty much exactly what I did, by the way. If you
can run scripts or have someone willing to do it for you, you can also run
edi_order_pusher.pl in testmode and it will just print what the EDI output
would be without sending it anywhere.

For Midwest Tape, I've attached a screenshot of how I have our EDI
Attribute set up. With this setup, the UPC is being sent in the PIA+5
segment which is for Product ID. I never heard a peep from Midwest when we
did the changeover and they've kept sending everything accurately, so I'm
guessing this is fine. My libraries don't get cataloging done from them,
though, so YMMV.

For Baker & Taylor, they're slightly different. I went off script and set
up my own EDI Attribute for Baker & Taylor. I don't have any libraries
getting vendor cataloging done from B&T so I labeled it as non-enriched
accounts, since that's what B&T calls it. So for this profile we're not
sending them funds, barcodes, etc. in the GIR segments.

Now I did have a problem with this one, and I found a workaround because I
didn't feel like delving that deep in at the time to figure out why it was
happening. If you have multiple B&T accounts where some have a suffix and
one doesn't (this is B&T's common practice, that your main account doesn't
have one but subsequent accounts do) then when the order
acknowledgements/invoices would come in they would attach to the wrong B&T
EDI account. My hack was basically just to ask B&T's EDI specialists to
give that main account a suffix, which apparently has no effect at all on
them and they were happy to do. So if all B&T accounts for that library
have a suffix, I haven't had any other issues with that at all.

I've also started attempting to map EDI segments to the specific settings
in EDI Attributes here:
https://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=acq:edi_fields

With our B&T setup, we do send LIN with every title; that corresponds to
Acq's line item ID. We don't personally send FTX values; I *think* that
might just be for line item notes? Please don't quote me on that, though. I
looked both here:
https://service.unece.org/trade/untdid/d01b/trmd/orders_c.htm#0070_X and
through EDIWriter.pm for what FTX values are, and the EDIWriter references
FTX when talking about line item notes. If you look through your old ORDERS
messages and have FTX values, I'd be interested in what they are.

Tiffany Little, PINES Services Specialist: Acquisitions

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On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 12:57 PM John Amundson <jamundson at cwmars.org> wrote:

> Hello, Acquisitions community!
>
> I know there's a brave soul or two out there who has switched to using the
> new EDI attributes.
>
> I'm currently testing the attributes for our network, and I've run into
> two issues that may be of concern. My questions are *bolded *below.
>
> Before I get into that, some background. I'll share my testing process,
> (maybe it will help others thinking about moving over - but be warned, we
> haven't added attributes to our production environment, yet, so I cannot
> vouch for how successful this method is).
>
> Using the Action Trigger PO JEDI template for reference, I updated the EDI
> Attribute sets for the vendors we use to resemble the data included in the
> template as closely as possible.
>
> Our libraries use three vendors: Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and Midwest Tape.
>
> To test I created dummy accounts that will create EDI messages but not
> send them, (nonexistent host). I then compared the output with the EDI
> output from another PO that used the same vendor and line items but wasn't
> using attributes. I would then adjust the attribute set again and activate
> another PO until I got messages that resembled each other.
>
>
> Ingram's conversion was visually identical.
>
> Midwest Tape was almost identical. For MW Tape, the old template included
> UPC, but this is not an option with the new attributes. In looking at old
> messages, it seems this usually resulted in a hanging UP at the end of the
> ISBN anyway, so I don't know how much this is needed. *Anyone using
> Midwest Tape with EDI Attributes have any trouble by not sending the UPC?*
>
> Baker & Taylor's discrepancy may be a bigger issue. The old template added
> the following information to each line item:
> FTX+LIN+1
> This is not present when using the Attribute set, nor is it an available
> choice to add.
> There is a comment in the PO JEDI template that says
> "BT & ULS want FTX+LIN for every LI, even if empty".
> *Anyone using Baker & Taylor with EDI Attributes run into any issues with
> B&T not accepting orders without the FTX+LIN+1 affixed to each line item?*
>
> Thank you!
>
> John
> <http://www.cwmars.org>
>
> John Amundson | Library Applications Supervisor | CW MARS
>
> jamundson at cwmars.org | 508-755-3323 x322 <%28508%29%20755-3323>
>
> https://www.cwmars.org
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