You can use Connections to exchange EDI files with trading partners via SFTP, FTPS, FTP, or AS2.

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Prerequisites

Before adding a connection, you need to set up a partnership.

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Create a connection

To create a connection:

  1. Go to the Trading partners page.
  2. Click the partnership where you want to add the connection.
  3. Click Create connection.
  4. Select the desired Connection type.

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Connection types

The available connection types are Stedi SFTP/FTPS, Remote SFTP/FTPS, and AS2.

The connection type you choose depends on your and your trading partner’s requirements. Visit Choosing a connection type for our recommendations and details about the pros and cons of each type.

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Inbound file encoding

By default, Stedi generates EDI files with UTF-8 encoding and assumes UTF-8 encoding for inbound files.

However, some trading partners may send files containing extended Latin characters, such as ä, é or ñ. Files with Latin characters may be encoded in an extended ASCII encoding, such as Windows-1252. In these cases, you should specify the appropriate file encoding to ensure Stedi interprets the data correctly.

To set the file encoding for inbound EDI files, click a connection to go to its details page. In Inbound settings choose a File encoding format. Stedi supports UTF-8 and Windows-1252.

UTF-8 is backward compatible with ASCII-encoded files and suitable for most cases. We recommend leaving this setting as the default unless your trading partner tells you otherwise.

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ISA validation options

The ISA validation option determines how Stedi will validate ISA qualifiers and IDs in inbound EDI files received over the connection.

The Default option is the right choice for most use cases, and we strongly recommend speaking with customer support before changing it. The other options make troubleshooting more difficult in your account, but can enable some specific use cases.

  • Default: Stedi attempts to match the ISA qualifiers and IDs in the inbound file with the local and partner profiles in any partnership within your account. Stedi uses the transaction settings in the matching partnership to validate and process the transactions in the file. Files that don’t match any existing partnership will error.
  • Connection fallback: When an inbound file’s ISA values don’t match any partnership in your account, Stedi uses this connection’s partnership for processing. Files with multiple different ISA qualifiers and IDs will error.
  • Ignore ISA validation: Stedi always assigns inbound files to this connection and processes them using the transaction settings on this connection’s partnership, regardless of the ISA values. This option is useful when you need to ingest files containing an ever-growing list of unpredictable ISA qualifiers and IDs over the same connection. Note that you shouldn’t use this option instead of creating a bounded number of predictable partnerships. For example, you shouldn’t use this instead of creating partnerships for 100 known trading partners. Only choose this option if you’re ingesting EDI files from external systems that constantly generate new ISA IDs, and those ISA IDs don’t represent discrete trading partners.

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Next steps

After you create a connection, we recommend creating transaction settings that define the EDI transactions you plan to exchange with your trading partner.