EDI stands for electronic data interchange, which is exchange of information between a company and their vendors. This information is normally sent by phone or fax to the vendor with the intention of having a service provider, who will in turn forward the relevant data to the end user. This data is usually used to help in the smooth and error-free transaction between the vendor and his/her customer/s.
EDI Testing is vital to ensure that none of the technical issues in vendor operations shall affect the normal flow of products to their retail outlets, payments to clients and receipt of product on hand to users. The testing process includes verifying that your application file is identical to that of the original Myer document file to make sure that the alignment of GTINS, serial numbers and other key codes, where applicable, are maintained. In addition to this, the test also verifies that all necessary field conversion (date, time, number of ticks, dollar amount) are appropriately updated. Any incomplete data sets shall result in the rejection of your trading system or application.
To facilitate an EDI Test procedure, there are two kinds of approaches that can be adopted automated approach and manual approach. For the automated method, a test file containing the required claims as well as the supporting and validating EDI-ese data is initially generated. Based on the quality parameters of the testing program, the EDI Testing team will verify that the generated test file matches the requirements. Once this is verified, the test file is saved into a file that can be used by the testers for proper verification and validation.
During the verification process, all tests must be run one by one. This ensures that the missing tests are appropriately declared as "failures". During the manual EDI Testing, testers to create test cases by browsing over the EDI documentation and identifying the areas of concern. The test cases are then edited to remove any unwanted comments and modifications are made according to the requirements of the testing team. Based on the test results, appropriate corrections are then made to the underlying ERP applications.
A large number of healthcare providers have already started using electronic data interchange to enhance their workflow. The implementation process involves several steps, which include defining the collection, scanning and safe keeping of patient EDI-ese information. The next step involves the conversion of this EDI data into standard and accurate claims. Based on the pre-defined format and rules, healthcare providers can then process the claims with the help of third-party vendors. E-etimes software is one of the best tools that have been designed for this purpose.
Another reason for implementing e-etimes is the implementation of a large number of reports from a number of different sources. Using a manual testing services framework will not be able to generate these reports in a reliable manner, as EDI can only provide information on certain events. Therefore, when generating reports from this framework, testers must use high-quality, pre-tested tools that are based on the latest version of the EDI specification. Using these tools, testers will get detailed information on all the testing activities that took place.
While most testing tools require developers to create test files that can be used for comparison purposes, e-etimes can provide developers with test file templates, which will significantly reduce the time spent developing test cases and extract more information from the test environment. Once the test file has been generated, it can be used for several activities, such as data collection, meta-data validation, scoring and other data wrangling activities. Since these tools generate test file automatically, they also eliminate the need for manual verification, which can greatly reduce the time taken for debugging problems in the application. In addition, by allowing multiple unique test names to be set with the use of a single command, testers can set up a test environment that allows for maximum flexibility and portability, especially when the application being tested has a large number of independent test methods.
Lastly, e-etimes allow test engineers to easily validate data sets generated using manual tools. These data sets usually consist of database schemas, user interfaces, or authorization claims, among others. While developers can create these test files manually using a text editor, they may not always be able to validate these files using the latest versions of the specifications. Using e-etimes to generate a large database, user interface or authorization claim will allow developers to make these items automatic, thereby reducing the amount of effort required in testing each item.