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

Thu Jul 18 11:10:47 EDT 2019

Thank you for the reply, Tiffany.

In my testing, the UPC was still attached to the PIA+5 segment in the old
version, so perhaps the new one is smarter and doesn't append it unless
it's present. In any case, it doesn't seem to be something to worry about
because my Midwest Tape setup is similar to yours.

At least at first I think we will continue sending the GIR segments to B&T.
I don't want to rock the boat too much with some of our vendors, so I'll
plan to make changes only if needed.

Querying our edi_message table, I find when this segment is included in our
ORDERS messages, only FTX+LIN+1 is sent. Although I did not verify 100%,
this seems to only be for B&T orders. It is not present for other vendors.

I do see more interesting segments in our responses, though, (ORDRSP
message type):
FTX+LIN++05:8B:28
FTX+LIN++400:1B:28
etc.

We get these back from multiple vendors, not just B&T

For reference, here is a comparison of the line item portion of an ORDERS
message to B&T before and after moving to attributes:

*Before:*
'LIN+752234++9781524702946:EN
'PIA+5+9781524702946:EN
'IMD+F+BTI+:::Odessa Sea
'IMD+F+BPU+:::Penguin Audiobooks
'IMD+F+BPD+:::20161115
'IMD+F+BPH
'QTY+21:1
*[GIR Segment]*
'FTX+LIN+1
'PRI+AAB:45
'RFF+LI:28047/752234

*After:*
'LIN+752249++9781524702946:EN
'PIA+5+9781524702946:EN
'IMD+F+BTI+:::Odessa Sea
'IMD+F+BPU+:::Penguin Audiobooks
'IMD+F+BPD+:::20161115
'IMD+F+BPH
'QTY+21:1
*[GIR Segment]*
'PRI+AAB:45.00
'RFF+LI:28052/752249

If you were sending order successfully prior to and after the change
without this segment, perhaps the segment is not needed.

And finally, *we do have several B&T accounts that do not have a suffix
listed*. Are you saying that prior to the change to attributes, the
responses were landing on the correct account but not after? We haven't had
issues with this happening on the old system.

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

On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 1:49 PM Tiffany Little <tlittle at georgialibraries.org>
wrote:

> 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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>
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>
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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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