Do You Need to Transmit a Functional Acknowledgmen...

piyush_chougaonkar · ‎09-16-2015

This blog provides you with a gist of information on an electronic acknowledgements that are known as Functional Acknowledgements (FA) and it also shares a necessary piece of information on how to configure the EDI Separator receiver channel to transmit an FA.

Functional Acknowledgement in B2B Add-On’s

A Functional Acknowledgement (FA) is an electronic receipt that is transmitted electronically as a response to an EDI interchange. The EDI Separator adapter, which is an B2B solution, is configured to transmit an FA to a received bulk EDI interchange.

The EDI adapter that is configured with the sender channel splits and processes the incoming EDI interchange. After processing the interchange a different EDI adapter that is configured with the receiver channel is instructed to transmit a 997 FA to the partner. It is very important to note that the functional acknowledgement does not provide any indication that the trading partner agrees with the contents of the received EDI document or that the EDI document met all the business requirements of the trading partner.

Why is it important to transmit a Functional Acknowledgement?

In an EDI process, business documents are electronically exchanged between two remote systems that are set up by trading partners. During this interchange, the receiver serves a receipt to the sender acknowledging that the transaction has been received. In case an error has occurred on an exchange message, the trading partner can interpret the problem with the help of an FA. Usually such an issue can be resolved by re-transmitting the corrected business transaction. Consider a scenario, in which an 810 invoice is dispatched to your trading partner few weeks ago and the payment has not been made. You must be wondering, “What could have gone wrong at your partner’s side? :???: "

The above question could have been avoided if your trading partner had served you an FA receipt that notified the status of the 810 invoice (Accepted or Rejected).

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The procedures mentioned below help you to implement 997 FA and CONTRL FA acknowledging processes for EDI interchanges.

You deploy the B2B add-on solutions on Process Integration platform and configure the EDI Separator adapter to transmit 997 FA.

Prerequisites

You have assigned roles to PI developer and granted access to SAP NetWeaver Process Integration environment
You have deployed and configured the B2B Add-on SP 1 with the latest patches
You have uploaded the SP 1 adapter metadata in the ESR

Scenario 1

Use this scenario to transmit an 997 FA receipt to your trading partner as a result of validating the received ANSI ASC X12 messages

Configuring ANSI ASC X12 997 Functional Acknowledgement

You use this procedure to configure an EDI Separator Receiver channel to transmit 997 FA for received ANSI XI 12 messages.

Access the communication channel that is configured with EDI Separator receiver channel as shown in the screenshot below:
To configure the 997 FA settings, click on the ANSI X12 tab.
To edit the FA settings, click on the Edit icon found on the Communication Channel main menu
In the Acknowledgement Required field, select Required
If you have selected Allas the transaction mode, then the EDI Separator adapter treats the entire EDI interchange as a single entity.
|NOTE| In this mode if an individual message fails, then all the EDI transactions are rolled back and all the individual messages appears in receipt as Rejected (R).
Under All transaction modes, you have two options to terminate the transmission of 997 FA. Use these options explained below are as per the business scenario:
1. Negative Acknowledgement Not Required: This option instructs the adapter not to transmit a 997 FA when batch EDI transactions are Rejected (R) at receiver’s side. In such an instance log on to the Message Monitor, wherein you can attempt to analysis the message status and rectify them by editing the messages in “Red”.
2. Positive Acknowledgement Not Required: This option instructs the adapter not to transmit 997 FA when batch EDI transactions are Accepted (A) at receiver’s side. You can manually generate 997 FA and transmit it to the partner.
If you have selected Individual as the transaction mode, then the EDI Separator adapter treats the entire EDI interchange as independent individual entities.
|NOTE| In this mode if an individual message fails, then only the failed ANSI X12 transaction is rolled back. The 997 FA receipt contains information on both rejected and accepted transactions.
If you have selected Exclude “Partially Accepted” acknowledgement code option, then the status of all the message that are in partially accepted are published as Rejected (R) in the FA receipt
|NOTE| The above option can be opted when your business partner doesn't understand the status code “Partially Accepted (P)”
If you have selected Receipt Only as the execution mode, then the adapter is instructed not to validate the transaction sets. It only checks the process of message splitting and dispatching to the EDI Separator sender channel.
If the corresponding EDI separator channel, which is configured to receive splitted individual messages, is not configured or not found while the EDI transactions are being dispatched, then while generating an FA the status of the corresponding message will be marked as Rejected (R).
If you have selected Receipt and Validation as the execution mode, then the adapter is instructed to execute Receipt Only mode and as well, validates syntactically every transaction sets. It also checks the inbound message processing.
If you want to eliminate the error information reported by AK3 and AK4 segments, then select Exclude AK3 and AK4 to instruct the adapter to exclude the AK3 and AK4 segments from the 997 FA message.
To save the settings, click the Save icon

Scenario 2

Configuring EDIFACT CONTRL Functional Acknowledgement

You use this procedure to configure an EDI Separator Receiver channel to transmit CONTRL FA for received EDIFACT messages.

Access the communication channel that is configured with EDI Separator receiver channel as shown in the screenshot below:
To configure CONTRL FA settings, click on the EDIFACT tab
To edit the FA settings, click on the Edit icon found on the Communication Channel main menu
In the Acknowledgement Required field, select Required
Select the EDIFACT CONTRL version that is required to be transmitted to the trading partner.
If you have selected All as the transaction mode, then the EDI Separator adapter treats the entire EDIFACT transaction sets as a single entity
|NOTE| In this mode if an individual message fails, then all the EDI transactions are rolled back and all the individual messages appears in receipt as Rejected (4).
Under All transaction modes, you have two options to terminate the transmission of CONTRL FA. Use these options explained below are as per the business scenario:
1. Negative Acknowledgement Not Required: This option instructs the adapter not to transmit a CONTRL FA when batch EDI interchange is Rejected (R) at receiver’s side. In such an instance log on to the Message Monitor, where you can attempt to analysis the message status and rectify them by editing the messages in “Red”.
2. Positive Acknowledgement Not Required: This option instructs the adapter not to transmit a CONTRL FA when batch EDI transactions are Accepted (A) at receiver’s side. You can manually generate a CONTRL FA and transmit it to the partner.
If you have selected Individual as the transaction mode, then the EDI Separator adapter treats the entire EDIFACT segments as independent individual entities.
|NOTE| In this mode if an individual message fails, then only the failed EDIFACT segment is rolled back. The CONTRL receipt contains information on both rejected and accepted segments.
If you have selected Receipt Only as the execution mode, then the adapter is instructed not to validate the message. It only checks the process of message splitting and dispatching to the EDI Separator sender channel.If the corresponding EDI separator channel, which is configured to receive splitted individual messages, is not configured or not found while the EDI transactions are being dispatched, then while generating an FA the status of the corresponding message will be marked as Rejected (R).
If you have selected Receipt and Validation as the execution mode, then the adapter is instructed to execute Receipt Only mode and as well, validates syntactically every segments. It also checks the inbound message processing.
The UNA segment used in the CONTRL message defines special characters, such as separators and indicators. You select the UNA Segment Required to include the special character defined by the trading partner. If deselected, then UNA segment is eliminated from the CONTRL message.
To save the settings, click the Save icon

Scenario 3

Monitoring of the Functional Acknowledgement using Message Monitoring

You can view the FA’s and XI messages over a specific period with the help if Message Monitor. You can also track the error occurred during transmission of FA’s.

You use this procedure to monitor, identify the status and analyze B2B Functional Acknowledgements.

Log on to SAP NetWeaver Process Integration 7.31 portal
To enter the monitoring application, click on the Configuration and Monitoring Home link as high lightened in the screen shot below:
In the Monitoring Home page, click on Go To > Message Monitoring
In the Message Monitor: Monitor Messages page, click on the Message Status Overview tab
To display the messages and their statuses, you have to specify a time interval.
To specify a time interval you have to select a Time Range from the drop down menu
Click the Go button and the messages are displayed in the table
Click on a message number from the Success column in the table and you are navigated to the Database page.

In the Database page, you can view multiple details such as Message header data, Technical Attributes, Message details, and so on. The table below gives you a brief explanation on some important parameters specific to functional acknowledgements and these are highlighted in the screen shot shown below:

Parameters	Descriptions
Related Messages	Displays messages, which are coupled to the parent message. The messages displayed are either referred messages or correlated messages that have the same correlation ID. For example, you can view all the XI messages together for the incoming bulk interchange or for individually splitted messages.You need not search for related individual messages or all the related messages.
Functional Acknowledgments	This column in the Message List table displays the status of functional acknowledgements
Technical Acknowledgments	This column in the Message List table displays the status of technical acknowledgements
B2B Acknowledgments	This tab found in the Message Details section gives you the details on different steps involved in B2B acknowledgment processing such as acknowledgements required or not required, are they generated or not, and so on.