What is inbound EDI Process

The inbound process simply reverses the steps of the outbound process. The inbound process receives an EDI document (such as a purchase order response, sales order, or payment information) from a business partner (such as a vendor, a customer, or a bank) and creates SAP documents from it. Figure at the bottom of the post shows the inbound process at a very high level.

The inbound process consists of five steps.

1.The EDI transmission is received : EDI documents are received from a business partner via the VAN. These documents are in one of the EDI standard formats. The documents are deposited in a common repository for the subsystem. This part of the process is not part of the SAP EDI architecture.

2 .The EDI document is converted into an IDoc:The EDI−specific headers and trailers are stripped off, and the document is converted into an IDoc format suitable for SAP applications. The process is carried out at the EDI subsystem level.

3. The IDoc is transferred to the SAP layer : The IDoc created in Step 2 is stored in a text file at the operating system layer. The subsystem starts an inbound program in the SAP layer. This program reads the IDoc file and creates an IDoc in the SAP repository for further processing.

4. The application document is created : The IDoc received from the subsystem is passed to a posting program. This program creates an application document such as a sales order, purchase order acknowledgment, invoice, or shipment notice.

5. The application document can be viewed: The application document created via EDI is the same as any document created manually in the system: The document can be viewed using standard application transactions. For example, if an incoming sales order was created via EDI, you could view the sales order document via transaction VA03.

Exception Handling via Work flow :

Exceptions can occur at any point during either the outbound or inbound process. They are caused by technical problems (such as network connectivity failures or file system problems), data−related problems (such as data that is formatted incorrectly or missing), or a combination of both.

Workflow provides a very sophisticated method for managing the exception−handling process. Based on the type of error, workflow can be configured to identify the persons responsible for handling the problem, notify them in a timely manner, and provide a mechanism for making the necessary correction. After the problem is fixed, the process can be restarted from the point of failure.(27.2)