One of the most common issues reported to the eBridge Help Desk, with respect to the web-based ePortal transaction engine, is the receipt of the Unacknowledged Documents Report.  ePortal clients want to know why they are receiving this report and how they can turn it off.

The first step is to understand the purpose of a Functional Acknowledgement (997) document.  The Functional Acknowledgement (997) is an EDI document that is typically auto generated by an EDI Translator upon receipt of an EDI Document.  The Functional Acknowledgement (997) is then transmitted back to the sender of the originating EDI Document, reconciled against the original document and provides confirmation to the sender that receipt of the original EDI Document has taken place.

The intention of the Unacknowledged Document Report is to advise ePortal clients that documents they have transmitted to their trading partners via ePortal have not been acknowledged via the receipt on ePortal of a Functional Acknowledgment (997).  The recommend steps to investigate this are:

• The ePortal client should contact their trading partner to verify if the documents were received by them.

• If the trading partner confirms receipt of the documents, ask if a Functional Acknowledgement (997) has been transmitted. If a Functional Acknowledgment (997) has been sent ask the trading partner and provide date and time of transmission which should be sent to the eBridge Help Desk in an email to support@ebridgesoft.com

• If the trading partner confirms receipt of the documents and advises that Functional Acknowledgements (997) have not been sent, ask if this will be the norm so that you can develop your business process for ePortal around this or request that they be sent

The next step to work on is stopping the report from being sent.  The easiest way to stop the transmission of the report is to Archive the documents that have not received a Functional Acknowledgment (997) as the report is generated from documents residing in your ePortal Outbox that do not have a status of Acknowledged.

If you are confident that your trading partner has received the documents and you do not require a Functional Acknowledgment as part of your business process, simply move the documents to the ePortal Archive.

If your business process requires the receipt of a Functional Acknowledgment (997) please follow the steps mentioned above to determine how and why the documents were not received on ePortal.

The most important element in all of this is to develop a business process that offers your organization the peace of mind to know that the transmission of your EDI Documents to your trading partners has been successful.  The Unacknowledged Document Report is one of the tools to be used in the development of this process.

If you have any comments regarding the Unacknowledged Documents report feel free to leave a comment on this post.
Thank you,

Natalie Beauchamp

Article by Natalie Beauchamp

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