Trading Networks 10.3 | Administering and Monitoring B2B Transactions | Trading Networks Administrator's Guide | Creating Profiles | Working with TPAs | Defining a TPA
 
Defining a TPA
You can define a TPA between any two partners that have partner profiles.
*To define a TPA
1. In My webMethods: navigate to Administration > Integration > B2B > Trading Partner Agreements.
2. Do one of the following:
*To create a TPA by providing new information, click Add TPA.
*To create a TPA by copying an existing TPA and modifying it, click the copy icon in the row for the TPA to copy.
3. Fill the fields in the following fields.
Note:
The Sender, Receiver, and Agreement ID fields together uniquely identify a TPA. After you create a TPA, you cannot change or update these fields.
The following table lists the fields in a TPA:
Field
Entry
Agreement ID
Unique identifier that indicates the type of agreement between the two partners. The value you specify depends on the application that is going to use the TPA.
Sender
Name of the trading partner that has the sender role in the transaction the TPA will govern. Type the name of the sender or click Edit to select the sender from the Select Partner dialog box.
For EDI, to create a template that you will duplicate to create other TPAs, you can use the default value Unknown.
Receiver
Name of the trading partner that has the receiver role in the transaction the TPA will govern. Type the name of the receiver or click Edit to select the receiver from the Select Partner dialog box.
For EDI, to create a template that you will duplicate to create other TPAs, you can use the default value Unknown.
Control Number
Value that the application using the TPA expects. For example, the webMethods Module for EDI uses the control number to make sure documents are processed in order and no documents have been lost or unprocessed. This value is only required if the application using the TPA uses the Control Number field.
The value for this field must be an integer. The default value is 0.
Description
Optional. Description for the TPA.
IS Document Type
IS document type that defines the application-specific TPA data. Type the name of the IS document type or click Edit to browse the IS document types and select the one to use.
Trading Networks displays the data tree with all the high-level parameters of the selected IS document type in the bottom panel of the screen. Expand the high-level parameters to view/add data.
For parameters that contain an array of records (array records TPA icon), click the edit TPA icon to view/add values for the elements for the array. When you click the edit tpa icon, Trading Networks displays the Edit Record List pop-up window where you can create rows and add values for the child elements in the form of a table. Here, each row corresponds to an element of the array. For example, if DocumentSettings is a parameter of type array, Edit Record List helps you create and add values for DocumentSettings[0], DocumentSettings[1], DocumentSettings[2], and so on. The table format also makes it easy to compare the values specified for DocumentSettings[0], DocumentSettings[1], DocumentSettings[2], and so on.
If you already have a file that contains data for the selected IS document type, browse to locate the file and click Load Inputs.
When using the TPA feature for your own application, these are the parameters that your applications need access to during document exchange. webMethods products that use the TPA feature come with the IS document type to use for the TPA data. For example, the webMethods Module for EDI supplies the wm.b2b.editn.TPA:EDITPA IS document type, while the webMethods ebXML Module supplies the wm.ip.ebxml.cpa.rec:tpaDataSchema IS document type.
Data Status
When the TPA’s agreement status is Agreed (see Changing a TPA’s Agreement Status), whether the values for the TPA data defined in the IS document type can be modified.
Initialization Service
Optional. Service that populates the inputs to the variables in the IS document type with default values. Type the name of the service or click Edit to browse the services and select the one to use.
Validation Service
Optional. Service to validate the data added to the IS document for the TPA. Type the name of the service or click Edit to browse the services and select the one to use.
Note:
Specifying a validation service improves processing time because it eliminates the need to validate the TPA every time a process that uses the TPA runs on Integration Server.
Export Service
Optional. Service that exports a TPA and converts it to an industry-standard format. Type the name of the service or click Edit to browse the services and select the one to use.
After creating a TPA, if you need to obtain the industry-standard format of a TPA, you can execute your export service.