Terminology

Routty supports both inbound flows, i.e. documents from external parties sent to the tenant such as purchase invoices as well as outbound flows, i.e. documents sent to the tenant’s customers such as sales invoices.

For inbound flows, Routty acts as an aggregator that normalizes incoming documents, received in different formats over different networks and delivers them seamlessly to the tenant’s back-end, usually an ERP system.

For outbound flows, Routty allows the tenant to send electronic invoices, or other electronic documents to customers over a network that both sender and receiver support.

In order to define such a processing flow, Routty makes use of some well-defined concepts, as described below:

• business partner: either a supplier or a customer of the tenant.

• company group ID: allows to group companies of the same tenant, by assigning them the same company group ID.

• connector: is the software component that connects the Routty platform to either an IT system or a network, for example, the SAP output connector connects the Routty platform to an SAP system. Connectors can either be output connectors (from the Routty platform towards the external system) or input connectors (from the external system to the Routty platform).

• connector config: an instantiation of a connector, for a specific tenant and potentially for specific companies within that tenant (as identified by the company group ID). Each connector config has a unique API key associated to it.

• default mapping: a default mapping is used in the formats section. This default mapping defines the standard transformation from the input format to UBL (input mapping), or from UBL to the output format (output mapping). Routty advises to use the standard mappings because they are maintained by the Routty Administrator.

• direction: either input or output. A direction is associated with a format and optionally a mapping. The input direction is the direction from the IT system/network into the Routty platform. The output direction is the direction from the Routty platform towards either the IT system or the network.

• flow: a flow can either be inbound or outbound. For inbound flows, documents are received from external networks, processed by Routty and sent to an ERP system or other IT system. In an outbound flow, documents are received from an ERP system, processed by Routty and sent to a network, based on applicable route configuration.

  • Inbound flow examples that are received by the tenant in Routty: Purchase Invoice, Sales Order ,…

  • Outbound flow examples that are sent by the tenant from Routty: Sales Invoice, Purchase Order,…

• format: determines the standard format of an xml document. Implementation partners cannot create new formats, only Routty admins can. When new formats are added to the platform, those formats can immediately be used by all implementation partners for all tenants on the platform. A format always has a direction and a default mapping associated to it. The format determination path and value determine how one can discover whether a particular document is of this format, see also the xpath section for more information.

• mapping: defines the customer specific mapping between the input format and UBL (input mapping) or the mapping between UBL and the output format (output mapping). A mapping always has an XSLT file associated to it that defines how to transform the document. Routty advises to avoid the use of custom mappings as much as possible. In case of doubt whether the standard format supports your specific case, contact the Routty admin.

• processed documents: the aggregate number of documents that have been processed for this tenant. This is the sum of documents processed in the inbound and outbound flow. Documents that end up in an error state are also counted as processed documents. When re-processing documents in the error state, the document counter will increment.

• route: a route defines how a document should be processed, based on the input format and optionally also based on the customer and business partner. In case either the business partner or customer (or both) are specified, the more specific route will take precedence over the more generic route definition. In order to determine the applicable route, the following priority rules apply:

  • route with input format, customer & business partner defined;

  • route with input format and business partner defined;

  • route with input format and customer defined;

  • route with input format defined (default route).

The route defines the input mapping for the document as well as the output connector config and the output mapping. A route is always associated with a specific tenant.

• xpath: xpaths are used within the format definition to identify document format, document type, business partner and company. In case multiple xpaths are defined to identify the document format or document type, all of them need to match (AND relation between the xpaths). Business partners and companies are identified based on the identifiers that were uploaded as masterdata. The xpaths to identify business partners and companies are priority ranked and as soon as a match is found, the corresponding customer or business partner is assumed to have been identified.