With all due respect to Right Said Fred, I’ll take a bit of their song and use it… But, let’s face it - EDI isn’t sexy. It’s not glamorous… We’re not going to get many invites to black-tie-and-beaded-gown-red-carpet-fancy events. There are no EDI “Oscars” or “Emmys” or “Tony Awards” or anything like that. There’s just data. And details. Lots and lots of details. And they do say that “the devil is in the details”… And do I know a thing or two about details! I’ve often been told that I sometimes put in TOO much detail. When I was taking some creative writing courses in college, one teacher was always fascinated and enthralled by the amount of details I’d provide in a story and another always warned Me about too much detail - to let the reader create the image in their mind, of their experiences. If you’ve read much of My work on EDI Talk (or My latest blog over at Inovis), you’ll know I do tend to go into some details - and, yes, sometimes get a bit off track with them… Now, where were we…? OH! Yes. Details. And not the men’s fashion magazine! Truly, however, it is just those details and our attention to them that can make or break our EDI career. How well we provide ...

One of the things you may have noticed about Me when I blog, is that I tend to find a quote or a saying or a song lyric or a ... something ... that makes sense and drives My thinking.  The title of this blog comes from the 1995 film by (and starring) Mel Gibson called "BRAVEHEART".  For those that don't know, it's the story about fighting for freedom in Scotland in the ... 1500s?  One of the more "famous" quotes is when Mel Gibson yells out something about how they may kill them (the Scots) but they'll never take their freedom! Freedom, however, in something as strict and regimented as EDI may seem like a far fetched notion, but it's there.  Sure, we've got those lovely guides - those HUGE books - of standards and "rules" for the data we're sending - depending on the document - that tell us what we can send and how it should be formatted and all the rest.  Those standards tell us we should send this information in this loop in this segment in this element and it should be between 2 and 30 characters in length. But in that rigidity - in that structure - there's still some freedom.  Just look at the last sentence in the above paragraph - we're ...

I can't believe it's been almost a WHOLE MONTH since I last posted a blog and My thoughts...  geez.  But, anyway, I was reading - gee, shocker! - another website (actually, My daily mailing of questions posed on the EDI-L group over on Yahoo!) - and the following question was posed: "I'm working through a client situation where multiple internal SKUs correspond to a single customer item number. Before I get on my high horse and insist that they always ship a complete customer item in a single shipment I thought that I'd ask if it is possible to send a valid ASN or Invoice in this case. To be specific: Client offers internal item numbers P0001a, P0001b and P0001c for sale as A0001. It is murphy inevitable that the shipping department will eventually ship P0001a, P0001b and P0001c in separate shipments (on separate days). Is it even possible to: send an ASN that 1/3 of unit A0001 shipped on June 16, 2008 or send an Invoice that 1/2 of the cost of unit A0001 is now due for that 1/3 A0001" Now, here's the thing to consider - how was it ordered...?  If the trading partner sent a PO for 100 of P0001a, 100 of P0001b and 100 of P0001c, then you need to ship 100 of each item.  If the ...

"Ch-ch-changes... Turn and face the strange..." - David Bowie belted out back in 1972.  Well, 1971, actually, but the song wasn't released until 1972.  And, as usual, I digress in the details.  But still, some of the lyrics are quite appropriate today.  And especially in the world of EDI.  Good ol' Ziggy Stardust (aka Bowie) sang out:                                    "Still don't know what I was waiting for.." That's something we hear a lot in the EDI world - once somebody finds out how well EDI can help them.  They don't know what they waited for - or balked against - when given the option of EDI.  Once they've seen-the-light, it suddenly becomes a no-brainer.  But at the time, it was strange and unknown and a change.  And we all know what people can be like when it comes to change.. Don't we? Change is hard! What's wrong with the way we've always done it? Oh, great!  Now what do I have to learn? Right now, I'm working with our Accounting group in getting them to embrace and accept the 810 EDI Invoice.  And, for the most part, I'm lucky that they're open and willing to "face the strange" and go with it..  However, where it's making My life a living hell is that they expect everything to be done.  Now.  2 Minutes ago.  ...

Transitioning from Gentran to GIS... From what I hear this is going to be quite a big task migrating from Gentran, partly because its a whole different beast. I am in Lowell, MA this week to attend the GIS Fundamentals class, its a 5 day class that covers quite a bit of the main functions of the software. Today was day 1, and it was filled with a solid introduction of the basics and benefits of the Gentran Integration Suite. In addition to the introduction we covered the Graphical Process Modeler (GPM) and dove into BPML (Business Process Modeling Language) concepts and functions. After the introduction was finished I felt I had a strong understanding to what GIS can do. It made me really start to think of all of the logic and business processes that we currently have in place on our AS/400 that are "hard coded" which take place after the translation process. It seems GIS will be able to handle all of the various checks and balances we have in place before dumping an order into our system. For example, on a 850 purchase order we check to see if a customer's store exists in our customer master file or if that customer ...