EXTOL Business Integration Blog

EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI):

Question: How can I set a fixed length for wrapping Outbound EDI document contents?

Answer: Does your trading partner require the lines of data inside of the Outbound EDI documents you are sending to them to have fixed wrapping at a specific length?  In EDI, the term “Fixed Wrapped” refers to EDI data formatted so that there is a new line repeatedly at a fixed number of characters throughout the document.

The procedure to do this inside of EBI is actually very simple. All you need to do is go to the Target EDI Endpoint responsible for wrapping the EDI data for this particular trading partner. Select the ‘Target’ tab and find the “Enable Fixed Wrapping” checkbox. Checking this will enable the “Fixed Wrap Length” setting next to it. This is where you can enter what the length of the lines inside of your Outbound EDI document will be according to your trading partner’s request. Saving the EDI Endpoint after this will immediately enable the software to wrap the data accordingly.”

EXTOL EDI Integrator for i (EEI)

Question:  How can I use data areas to set defaults for default mailroom dates, sorting, and job logging?

Answer:

• EXWRKCNNDY – Sets the default date for Connections listing when you go to Mailroom, Work with Connections

If you enter a 0.00000000 in the data area, the starting date when you go into the Mailroom, Work with Connections will be the current date. If you enter 1.000000000, the starting date in the Mailroom, Work with Connections will be yesterday, if you enter 2.0000000 the starting date will be the day before yesterday, etc….

• EXCONNDFT – EXTOL default Ascending/Descending view for Work with Connections
  • An ‘A’ will sort the mailroom so that the Newest Connections are at the bottom and the oldest at the Top.
  • A ‘D’ will sort the mailroom so that the Newest Connections are at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

• EXDBG – Changing the second position to a ‘Y’ will generate additional job logs for debugging purposes.

**Note – remember to turn this data area off after debugging problems, as keeping this on will result in excess job logs being created on your system.

EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI)

Question: If I’ve forgotten the name of an Application or EDI Endpoint for a specific Trading Partner, is there a way to find it?

Answer: You can use the ‘Endpoint Search’ feature to find them using values specific to a Trading Partner. Follow these steps:

- At the bottom of the ‘Endpoints’ tab inside of the EBI Workbench, click the first button on the left to bring up the search window.

- Select the endpoint type from the dropdown menu at the top of the window. This will display all of the fields available within that endpoint category.

- From there, you can enter the specific criteria for a Trading Partner, such as Sender/Receiver ID.

- To turn off your search filter, simply click the second button from the left at the bottom of the ‘Endpoint’ tab.

EXTOL Secure Exchange (ESX)

Question: How do I republish an outbound document from ESX?

Answer: To republish an outbound document from ESX, you first right click on the specified session and choose publish to, outgoing channel. Next, select the outgoing channel that is attached to the partnership that you want this document republished to, and click ok.

* Note: Make sure this outgoing channel is not selected on multiple partnerships. Otherwise, this document will go to all the partnerships the outgoing channel is selected on.

I was recently driving while listening intently to a radio program as a woman described her inability to survive each day without her Blackberry.  I recalled how years earlier I was able to enjoy my twenty-seventh consecutive year of attending the first round of NCAA’s “March Madness” because I had implemented similar survival techniques and had email available at my fingertips.

This year I returned to the phone outlet and found my Blackberry to be far outdated.  There were phones with a “bling” for this…and a “jingle” for that.  These were electronic office assistants that also doubled as high quality cameras.  Storage capacities were available that rivaled hardware ten times their size, perfect for catching that otherwise useless video moment.  As if my favorite 250 songs weren’t enough, I had an option to carry them all.  I was certain at some point I would be approached by a stranger asking if I might just have Tiny Tim’s, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” available for immediate play. Read more…

Some of the most difficult challenges that integration projects face are what I like to refer to as “artifacts of black-box implementations.”  These artifacts include incomplete specifications (both from external sources such as vendor specification or internal sources due to a lack of understanding of the interrelationships between systems), opaque processes from lack of visibility and undocumented integrations.  Opaque processes and undocumented integrations present the greatest challenge because necessary information is not available due to ineffective communication, absence of the original source (often a single person) or integrations with legacy systems where there is no more vendor support.  Most processes enabled by commercial applications are opaque. If you can’t determine (because it’s undocumented) (a) the identities and locations of all data that is added or updated by the process; (b) the rules under which data changes and additions occur; and (c) the identities and locations of all downstream applications, modules, and services that are invoked, then the process can be considered, to some degree, opaque. Read more…

Last week, I was interviewed by Alex Woodie of IT Jungle, for his Four Hundred Stuff column.  The primary focus of Alex’s column was on the trajectory of Cloud computing adoption and the challenges that companies face as they add Cloud integration to existing EDI, application, and data integration practices.  I encourage you to click through and read Alex’s article, but in this post, I want to focus on the evolutionary path that is taking us from traditional EDI to Cloud integration.

For most companies, EDI remains the single most important B2B integration requirement.  And new characteristics that reflect the way “EDI” is practiced today make it more relevant and important than ever. Fifteen years ago, EDI was almost exclusively batch-oriented, enabled by VANs, and focused on translation between flat files and X12 or EDIFACT standard EDI documents.  Since then, EDI has changed in several important ways: Read more…