EDI Envelope: Digital Information Package
EDI Envelope serves to deliver electronic transactions to a receiving company’s business system. EDI Envelope can include multiple business transaction sets in the same way multiple paper purchase order documents can be physically grouped, stuffed, and mailed together to a receiver. EDI Envelope is the digital package that contains EDI documentation to be sent to trading partners. EDI Envelope is presented in three different types representing different levels of digital packaging. These include transaction set, group, and interchange envelopes, the last of which is the largest envelope comprised of the smaller groups of transaction sets.
Sometimes when we want to imaging the structure of an EDI document we can think about common paper documents that are packed in an envelope. The upper envelope (ISA/IEA Envelope) contains one or more envelopes (GS/GE Envelopes) in which documents are placed. Each document is in a separate EDI Envelope (ST/SE Envelopes).
The addresses of sender and receiver are “written” on ISA/IEA envelopes.
The type of documents “packed” are “depicted” on EDI Envelope GS/GE. This envelope contains only the documents of similar type – Purchase Orders, Invoices etc. Also it can be “written” on an envelope to which company-receiver division these documents refer. The last envelope contains the end-documents, e.g. Purchase Orders 000000123 and 000000124. Below is a sample of an EDI document structure:
ISA <<< «upper» envelope
GS <<< «inner» envelope that contains documents of one type
ST <<< envelope with a document
<document 1> <<< document itself
SE
…
ST
<document X>
SE
GE
… GS
ST
<document 1>
SE
…
ST
<document Y>
SE
GE
IEA
The example:
ISA*00* *00* *ZZ*A1STORES *ZZ*LEXINGTON *020115*0900*U*00400*000000005*0*T*>~
GS*PO*A1STORES*LEXINGTON*20020110*0900*5*X*004010~
ST*850*50001~
BEG*00*SA*ASNTESTORD**20060615~
…
CTT*6~
SE*33*50001~
GE*1*5~
IEA*1*000000005~
There are three different types of EDI envelopes representing different levels of digital packaging. These include transaction set, group, and interchange envelopes, the last of which is the largest envelope comprised of the smaller groups of transaction sets.
In an EDI document, each separate EDI envelope is notated by a pair of segments at the beginning and end of the transaction. Within one EDI document, there can be multiple transactions, and groups of transactions, each defined by their respective EDI envelopes.