Profiles and partnerships in Stedi Core

Configuring Core requires entering information about you and your trading partners, defining relationships (partnerships) between you and your trading partners, specifying which transactions you want to exchange, and defining how Core should process and deliver transactions.

Profiles

Profiles store the ISA header information specific to you and your trading partners. Stedi uses this information to determine who is sending and receiving EDI documents. Profiles that identify you and your business entities are classified as Local profiles, while ones that identify your external trading partners are Partner profiles.

To create a new profile:

1. Go to Profiles in the Core UI.
2. Click Create Local Profile for your profile or Create partners profile for an external trading partner.
3. Choose an ID Qualifier and Interchange ID. Typically, you agree on these ISA header values with your trading partner. You can usually find them in your partner’s documentation.
4. Enter an Identifier for the profile. Choose a human-readable name. You cannot edit the name after the profile has been created.
5. (Optional) Choose an Application ID. This is the GS envelope ID in an EDI file. Some trading partners use the GS ID to specify a specific department within their business. If you are unsure what to use, we recommend entering the same value as the Interchange ID.

Partnerships

Partnerships are a unique relationship between a local and a partner profile. Partnerships describe all aspects of the EDI relationship between the two participating profiles, including what transaction sets will be sent and received, along with the control numbers used for outgoing EDI documents.

To create a partnership:

1. Go to Partnerships in the Core UI.
2. Click Create Partnership.
3. Select a Local Profile profile from the list.
4. Select a Partner Profile from the list.
5. (Optional) Change the Identifier. Stedi automatically suggests an identifier that combines the two identifiers from the selected profiles. You cannot edit this field after the partnership is created.
6. Click Create. Core opens a new page where you can define one or more transaction settings fo the partnership.

Can’t find a profile: If you don’t see a Local or Partner profile you expect in either list above, make sure you selected the correct Type when you created the profile.

Connections

Connections tell Core where to retrieve and send files associated with a partnership.

To create a new connection:

1. Go to a partnership in the Core > Partnerships page.
2. Click Create Connection.
3. Select a Bucket from the list.
4. Enter a descriptive Connection name.
5. Select a root path. This is the directory where Core creates the inbound and outbound transaction directories. Core can autogenerate a default directory for the partnership. You can also specify any existing bucket directory not already attached to a connection in another partnership.

6. Choose an inbound directory name that identifies where Core should retrieve files from your partner for processing.

7. Choose an outbound directory name that identifies where Core should place generated files for your partners.

   Important: We strongly recommend placing both the inbound and outbound directories under a single parent directory name, but this is not required. For example, with a Partnership where Amazon is your receiving partner, you could use: Inbound: /amazon/inbound Outbound: /amazon/outbound.

8. Click the Create connection to save the connection.

You can now associate this connection with one or more transaction settings.

Transaction settings

After you create a partnership, you can define the EDI transaction sets that the partners can send or receive. To define transaction sets:

1. Go to the partnership and click New Transaction setting.
2. Choose a Direction.
   • Choose Inbound from if the trading partner will send the transaction set to your local profile.
   • Choose Outbound from if you will send the transaction set from your local profile to your trading partner.
3. Specify whether Stedi should Translate using the default X12 specification.
   • ON: Stedi validates the transaction set against the base X12 specification. We recommend using this when starting with Stedi to quickly get visibility into your EDI data.
     You must select the X12 Release and Transaction Set. The release is present in all envelope information of every EDI document. You can generally find it in your partner’s documentation.
   • OFF: Stedi validates the transaction set against customized EDI specifications you define in a Stedi guide. We recommend using this approach when you need to make sure incoming and outgoing data matches partner-specific requirements. Learn more about using guides for validation.
4. Specify the Connection and bucket directory for the transaction. For inbound transactions, Core will retrieve files from this directory. For outbound transactions, Core places generated EDI files into this directory. You may optionally add a subdirectory to the path that Core will use for this transaction set only. We recommend not configuring a subdirectory unless your trading partner has instructed you to do so.
5. Click Create.

Using guides

Processing EDI without a Stedi guide can be helpful for the following use cases:

• Developing and testing a new trading partner integration
• Troubleshooting EDI that doesn't meet your expectations
• Developing a guide to ensure EDI you receive meets your requirements

When you process EDI without a Stedi guide, the incoming EDI is only validated against the generic X12 release specification, skips strict validation checks (for codes, relation conditions, length constraints, and missing fields), and uses a default structure definition for the resulting JSON document.

Therefore, we do not recommend translating without a Stedi guide in production scenarios that require accurately processing partner-specific data. For example, updating an ERP system in response to incoming EDI may require specific fields for data consistency. In this case, you should use a guide to ensure these fields are present before the data is passed to the ERP system.

You can create a guide for each transaction set you exchange with partners.

Control numbers

Control numbers are a unique identifier for an Interchange, Group, and transaction set. They are often used to acknowledge receipt of EDI documents and also to detect duplicates and missing data. You may want to reset control numbers after testing your EDI flow.

Stedi uses control numbers to generate EDI documents for the Partner profile within a given Partnership. Control numbers should be unique for each pair of Local and Partner profiles (a partnership). Stedi persists these values alongside partnership records.

API and SDK support is available for all control number operations, including incrementing. In the Core UI, you can only review and reset control numbers.

To reset control numbers for outbound documents:

1. Navigate to the selected partnership where you want to adjust the control numbers.
2. Amend the Interchange or Group control numbers as needed.