EDIFACT

The information below will provide a brief introduction to the EDIFACT EDI standard.

EDIFACT stands for Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport. EDIFACT is accepted as the international EDI standard that has been adopted by organisations wishing to trade in a global context. A standard set of syntax rules have been ratified by the United Nations. The EDIFACT standards cover transaction sets (the business documents that you wish to transmit), data element directories and syntax rules which cover delimiter characters etc.

An EDIFACT electronic transmission consists of one or more Interchanges. Each Interchange may consist of one or more Messages. These Messages contain segments of data relating to the business transaction. At each level, a series of enveloping data pairs keep track of the exchange structure.

UNB+UNOA:1+US::US+50138::THEM+140531:0305+001934++ORDERS'
UNH+1+ORDERS:91:2:UN'
BGM+220+A761902+4:20140530:102+9'
RFF+CT:EUA01349'
RFF+AAV::C'
TXT+THIS IS WHAT AN EDI MESSAGE WOULD LOOK LIKE... '
NAD+BY++OUR NAME PLC::::+++++EW4 34J'
CTA+PD'
COM+01752 253939:TE+01752 253939:FX+0:TL'
CTA+OC+:A.SURNAME'
COM+2407:EX'
CTA+TI+:B.BROWN'
COM+0:EX'
CTA+SU'
COM+0161 4297476:TE+01752 670633:FX'
UNT+15+1'
UNZ+1+001934'

Example Message - Segment tags are shown in bold e.g. UNB

Note: Data elements that could identify the participants have been changed, although the text is based on a live transmission.