Audience: Suppliers

As a supplier, you will want to pull orders from the Rithum platform and push inventory, order cancel, shipment, and invoice information to the platform. The platform offers per message automated jobs to enable EDIFACT exchange. The first set of jobs are the EDIFACT Import jobs that handles the import of your inventory (INVRPT), order cancel (ORDCHG), return complete (RETANN), shipment (DESADV), and invoice (INVOIC) data. The second set of jobs handles the export of your orders (ORDERS) and returns (RETANN). The instructions below provide you with the details you need to ensure proper setup and configuration of your EDIFACT exchange.

For additional support with your EDIFACT exchange, please email the Software Support team.

EDIFACT Specification

The platform currently supports directory D01B of the EDIFACT standard for all the messages except of returns (RETANN) where the version implemented is EANCOM 2002 S4 (D01B UN EAN003) and the message acknowledgement (CONTRL), that uses D96A UN EAN008.

Rithum Dsco EDIFACT guide

Interchange ID

The platform uses "DSCO" as the interchange ID with a qualifier of "ZZZ".

Note: Both the interchange ID and qualifier can be customized to whatever values the supplier would like to see. This can be done by editing the job settings of an EDIFACT Export job on the Automation page.

Data Exchange Protocols

SFTP

The platform supports EDIFACT using SFTP. We recommend using SFTP as it is more secure. 

Every Rithum account includes an SFTP account that is specific to that account and is not shared with any other. EDIFACT exchange can use the sftp.dsco.io server or you can use your own SFTP server. 

For those utilizing the standard Rithum SFTP servers, please be aware of the following:

  1. Transactions coming from the supplier to the platform need to be placed in the */in* directory.
  2. When the platform processes incoming files, we move the files to the */in/processing* directory temporarily, while we process those files, and then we move them to the */in/archive* directory once the import has completed.
  3. Transactions being generated by the platform will be deposited in the */out* directory.
  4. Our servers monitor the */out* directory. Upon successful download of any file in that directory, we moves the file(s) to the */out/archive* folder where you can access them again if necessary. 

Please do not delete the files from the */out* directory once you have downloaded them. It is helpful to both parties to have those files available in archive if need be.


AS2

For those requiring a higher level of security, the platform provides access to an AS2 server. The setup and configuration of the AS2 connection is currently manual so please email the Software Support team to make a request to utilize AS2. 

Supported Transactions

The platform supports the following transaction types:

  • INVRPT Inventory Advice
  • ORDERS Purchase Order
  • RETANN Return Notification
  • DESADV Advanced Ship Notice (ASN)
  • ORDCHG Order Change (used for order cancels)
  • INVOIC Invoice

If you wish to download rich product information, such as product descriptions and images, you can utilize our flat-file exchange using CSV, TAB or Excel formatted files. However, please check with your trading partner as it is possible that they may not be adding that information to the platform.

UNB Control Numbers

For incoming EDIFACT transactions, the platform does not require that each transaction have a unique UNB Control Number, but it is best practice, especially in the event that two parties need to research a specific transaction. The platform does not reject UNB Control Numbers that are not unique.

For outgoing EDIFACT transactions, the platform provides an UNB Control Number that is a sequentially incremented number, starting at 000000001.

Delimiters

Although the platform allows you to configure the following parameters for each individual job, we do utilize the following default settings:

  • Segment Terminator:              ’       (apostrophe, HEX 27)
  • Element Separator:                 +      (plus, HEX 2B)
  • Sub-element Separator:          :      (colon HEX 3A)
  • Release Character:                   ?      (question mark HEX 3F)
  • Decimal Separator:                  .       (period HEX 2E)

You can also choose your own own terminators and separators if you wish. From the table on this website, the platform supports characters 1-126: https://www.ascii-code.com/.

For incoming EDIFACT transactions, the platform automatically detects the characters above as they are defined in the UNA segment.

CONTRL (FA) Acknowledgements

The platform does not require that you return a CONTRL for each transaction that we send you, but it is considered best practice to do so and we encourage you to follow best practice.

The CONTRL message will be generated based on the value of the element 0031 of the segment UNB. Having the value ¨1¨ will trigger the message generation.

When processing the incoming EDIFACT transactions, the platform records the "Sender" and "Receiver" IDs and qualifiers that were provided and switches them in order to generate the CONTRL. Because the platform also automatically detects the segment terminator, element separator, sub-element separator and standard version, we use those same characters within the CONTRL.

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