› Advanced features › Import EDI files

Import EDI files

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a standard for exchanging data via electronic means. Kofax Import Connector supports two prominent international EDI standards:

  • UN/EDIFACT

  • ANSI ASC X12

You can import EDI files from a folder. Other sources, such as email import or web service import, are not supported.

Basic workflow:

  1. Copy the EDI files to a designated folder.

  2. Kofax Import Connector does the following:

    1. Ingests EDI documents via folder import.

    2. Uses Rules to determine that raw EDI document belongs to a generic EDI destination.

    3. Converts the EDI data stream to XML.

    4. Uses Rules, XML namespace, and root element on the transformed EDI document to determine the proper destination (batch class).

    5. Imports the XML into Kofax Capture. Depending on the destination setting, XML data is mapped to Kofax Capture fields and/or rendered as PDF or TIF.

Important configuration steps:

  1. Create a generic destination for EDI. See Manage destinations.

    • On the Import settings tab, in the Name field, enter a name.

    • On the Advanced Conversion and Import tab, select Enable EDI to XML conversion and routing at this destination.

    • Ignore other destination settings.

    As soon as the raw EDI is converted to an XML document, the XML is rerouted to a different destination.

  2. Create a rule to route your EDI files from a certain folder to the generic EDI destination. See Add a rule.
  3. For each EDI type to use, provide an XML schema definition file and a sample XML file. See Add EDI type.
  4. Create a destination for each EDI type. Use XML mapping and rendering functions:

    To import EDI documents as EML or MSG, configure it in the generic, routing destination. These settings are ignored for the EDI-specific destinations.

  5. Create rules that route the XML documents to their Kofax Capture destinations. These rules must be in a higher position in the list than the generic rule created in Step 2. Click Move Rule Up or Move Rule Down on the Connection Tasks menu to establish rules priority.
  6. To set rule priority, move the rule up or down by clicking Move Rule Up or Move Rule Down on the Connection Tasks menu.

Internally, you can route your EDI files to a different destination using the "ReRoutingScript" script. Refer to the Kofax Import Connector Developer's Guide. The script notifies KC Plug-In to assign the message to a different destination and modifies the message so that it can be processed by the new destination. KC Plug-In then processes the message with the new destination and uses the appropriate XSL transformation and mapping. When message rendering is enabled in the new destination, the conversion to TIFF and PDF configured for the original destination applies.

When you select to "Include original content", the EDI data stream is not available in the original format and only the converted XML is available.