OpenERP & EDI

[John Bradshaw]

Hi all,

We're currently implementing X12 using OpenERP and Bots.
There's little information on this combination online so we contracted EbbersConsult for bots and Tactix4 for OpenERP.

I'll add more information on the implementation later, posting now so anyone requiring EDI with OpenERP can find this...

1. The standard OpenERP EDI module is not what we know as EDI.
  It's for communication between 2 instances of OpenERP only, it's not X12, EDIFACT, etc.
  People new to OpenERP please be aware (we asked if it supported EDI during ERP selection and were told yes only to discover it wasn't what we understood as EDI).

2. If you're new to EDI:
* You need a trading partner who knows EDI.  If you're both new to EDI find a good consultant to design everything.
* You need someone locally who understands bots and EDI (or get a good consultant)
* You need someone who understands OpenERP (you will need to customise it to get the benefit of bots)
* Prepare to change how your business operates - processes and roles will change.

We hope to publish our EDI module for OpenERP soon (it'll be a starting point for others to build their solution on) along with a write up on how to connect OpenERP.
In the meantime if there are any questions or comments please post them here.

[BikeMike]

Hi John,
I am not surprised by your findings. Most ERP systems that "support EDI" in fact do this through some form of file interface (flat file, csv, xml etc). Often, you will need to purchase an additional module to enable that functionality.

IMO this is actually the right way to do it. There is no point re-inventing the EDI wheel when there are many solutions to that (of which, Bots is the best of course!)

I will be interested in hearing more about your implementation. I've had a quick look at OpenERP a while back. I also have helped customers with Lentune, Momentum Pro, Pronto, Movex... all of them use a file interface and "bolt on" an EDI translation/communication package to support it. Even SAP uses the same approach, although more complex, with IDocs. They can't really be considered true EDI outside of the SAP ecosystem.

Kind Regards,
Mike

[Lorenzo Battistini]

Hi John,

we have to integrate odoo and bots too. We are odoo integrators and need to send and receive EDIFACT messages.
We would like to build and publish a generic connector for the 2 systems.

Did you develop anything yet?

Thanks


Lorenzo Battistini
https://github.com/eLBati

[henk-jan ebbers]

hi Lorenza,

I cooperate with John on this.
John want to publish this, but it is not ready yet.

We have a good general setup for this.
But keep in mind that edi/edifact can be very specifi (it is different per country, and per sector).

ASN and invoices is working now.


kind regards,
henk-jan ebbers

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[John Bradshaw]

Hi Lorenzo,

I can give you the bots_connector module.

We have direct support with Odoo but aren't a partner so the module will go on the bots wiki site, not the Odoo apps store.

You need to edit the module to suit your site/process/partners but it's a good start.

It has a boolean flags to control state, we've added some custom fields required by our partner - I'll remove those before publishing it.

When sending:

1. Search for models in a certain state and that haven't already been sent via EDI (use the boolean flag to check if it's been sent or not)

   e.g. for ASN:

   Search model stock.picking

   With:

      type = 'out'

      && state='done'

      && carrier_name present (this is Fedex, TNT, or similar)

      && carrier_awb present (AWB is Airway Bill Number - Carrier's tracking number)

      && bots_asn_sent = False (we set this after sending the ASN so next search won't try to resend the ASN).

      && list of partner_id to match (you can specify these in bots web GUI)

2. Read each model in turn - each picking is an ASN/856.

3. Read related models (for stock.picking you need stock.move linked to the stock.picking via the picking_id field).

    You also need to read res.partner for addresses and sale.order for the customer Purchase Order Number.

4. This is all pulled into a data structure which bots can use to generate the map.

5. Mark each stock.picking as processed (write back into the model settings bots_asn_sent to True)

6. Do the EDI mapping and generate the output file.

I can give you framework code for steps 1-5 - it should work as-is.

Step 6 differs per partner as Henk-Jan explained earlier.

So we have working code that can pull data from Odoo/OpenERP and send as EDI - for our company that's 810 (invoice), 855 (promise dates) and 856 (ASN/shipment).

Invoicing (EDI X12 810) and is nearly the same - change the model to account.invoice (instead of stock.picking) and change the outbound mapping.

Order promising (EDI X12 855) is linked from sale.order and sale.order.line (we've put additional date fields into our Odoo to support this... or you could use sale_order_dates module from the Odoo app site).

I'm currently working on the reverse direction - reading X12 and creating the Odoo objects in sequence.  We're putting a lot of sanity checks (for example, is the PO# unique, are the products already in Odoo, are the prices correct, ...) to ensure that when a PO arrives we can determine if it can go direct to approval or needs some human input first.   I can get you code that when it's ready too.

If you're not an EDI specialist I recommend Ebbers Consult, Henk-Jan has been great to work with.

Our company are EDI beginners and in the middle of our first implementation with an experienced customer... there's a huge benefit to have experienced people in both customer and supplier companies (they talk, I learn) to keep things correct.  Henk-Jan quickly cut the scary mapping specs down to size as he knows what's generally needed and what isn't. 

We're actually working with 2 different versions of SAP within the same customer, the Odoo code is the same for both (so it will work for our 3rd, 4th, ... customer too) but the mappings have changed for each (step 6 of the list above).  I'm confident Bots will do what you need.

Think that's about it!

If you want to put something up on the Wiki (I'm trying to do that as I go but it's lower priority) tI'd be happy to work with you on that too.

[John Bradshaw]

Wiki... a work in progress.

I'm trying to cover both generic EDI basics (terminology and docs on EDI are a bit sparse as it's pre-web and business specific) and the Odoo/OpenERP process/module.

https://code.google.com/p/bots/wiki/TutorialHome

 

J.

[Lorenzo Battistini]

Il giorno giovedì 6 novembre 2014 19:01:42 UTC+1, John Bradshaw ha scritto:

Hi Lorenzo,

Dear John,

many thanks for your answer

 

I can give you the bots_connector module.

We have direct support with Odoo but aren't a partner so the module will go on the bots wiki site, not the Odoo apps store.

Correction: you don't need to be a partner to publish the module. You just have to register at https://apps.openerp.com/admin (despite it still supports launchpad only: they are working on the new version of apps, supporting github too)

 

You need to edit the module to suit your site/process/partners but it's a good start.

I will be happy to see your code, even though I don't know if my project will start. We are evaluating the solutions for the customer.

Thanks!

[Lucky Lud]

Hi John,

I'm very interested by your work too.

I'm working with odoo 8.
As I read, your module seam to be designed for openERP 6.1 / 7, because there are no more "type" field in stock.picking model in odoo 8 WMS addon.

This field is replaced by "picking_type_id" related to the new table stock.picking.type

That's mean there are no more stock.picking class like stock.picking..in and stock.picking.out

Regards,

Ludovic

[John Bradshaw]

Hi Ludovic.

Yes, we're using 7.0. It should be easy enough to change for 8.0 though.

Today I sent Henk-Jan some notes on how to create sale orders and lines from a X12 850 purchase order (we're working together commercially but I'm happy to post the code and some generic examples) so hopefully we'll get X12-to-Odoo example code available too.

Long term I'll try to write new examples using XML or CSV format so EDI is more accessible to people who don't know X12.

Regards,

John.

[John Bradshaw]

Hi all,

Just an update to say our X12 850 Purchase Order to OpenERP/Odoo 7.0 code is in production and working well.

We'll work on 860 (PO change) and 855 (PO ack) next, when that's done I'll package everything up and put it online.

There are some good business/process logic checks in there which should be useful - clean orders ask for approval, problem orders (wrong price, product state, ...) go on hold for human checking.

Regards,

John.

[Prabhagaran M]

Hi John,

I could not find bots_connector module for OpenERP 6.1. Can you help me?

Thanks in advance.

[John Bradshaw]

On Tuesday, 26 May 2015 08:22:07 UTC+1, Prabhagaran M wrote:

Hi John,

I could not find bots_connector module for OpenERP 6.1. Can you help me?

Hi, we haven't released it publicly yet for any version.

We hope to provide both the server module and the bots communication scripts when our commercial project is finished.  That'll give me time to document everything.

It should work for 6.1 (we're on 7.0) but you will need to change the scripts to work with 6.1 - for example addresses have changed between 6.1 and 7.0 (the res.partner.address model is gone in 7.0, a child res.partner is used instead).

Regards,

John.

[Jim Burns]

HI John,

I see the wiki is now 404'ing

is there any update on this module or a new wiki link?

[henk-jan ebbers]

use https://github.com/skilchen/bots/wiki

kind regards,
henk-jan

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[Tom Westrick]

This is even more user friendly - http://skilchen.github.io/bots/readme/

-Tom

[BikeMike]

On Saturday, 8 April 2017 03:40:26 UTC+9:30, Tom Westrick wrote:

This is even more user friendly - http://skilchen.github.io/bots/readme/

-Tom

On Friday, April 7, 2017 at 10:34:47 AM UTC-4, eppye wrote:

use https://github.com/skilchen/bots/wiki

kind regards,
henk-jan

Again this highlights the fact that there are now multiple wikis "out there".
Which one is current? Is anyone maintaining?

I personally have not updated the wiki since google code shut down.
And if course all the links in Bots still point to it and so are broken.

Kind Regards,
Mike

[Akhilesh Kumar]

Hi John,

I see your email above from 06/2015. I am also searching for the same solution with OpenERP. 

Hope you got your project implemented.

Can you please help with the setup.

Regards,

Akhilesh

​ Kumar​

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[Akhilesh Kumar]

Hello John,

We are working on how to connect Odoo with Bots.

Can you please share what you worked on.

We found several videos on Odoo... Have installed Odoo and Database.

We are looking for a good case solution for now. Once we understand we will work on the bad cases as well.

Need to see the power of Odoo or else move to search some other OpenERP

Any help would highly be appreciated.

Regards,

Akhilesh

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