What Is an EDI 864 (Text Message)?

An EDI 864 is the X12 Text Message, a transaction set written for a person to read rather than for a system to process.

X12's purpose statement for the 864 sets out what it carries and how it should be used:

• What it carries: messages, contracts, explanations, and other one-time communications.
• Who reads it: people. X12 says the intent of the transaction set is to provide electronic communication (messages) for people, not for computer processing.
• What it is not for: X12 discourages using the 864 to transmit quasi or unique transaction set standards.
• The sender's job: the Text Message demands of the sender certain detailed information about the recipient. The recipient's network dictates what capabilities are available for delivery, and X12 says it is the sender's responsibility to obtain that information and include it in the transmission.

Because X12 meant it for people, an 864 is read by a person on the receiving end, not processed by a system.

The 864 is easy to confuse with the 824 and the 997. Each answers a different question:

• 997 Functional Acknowledgment: the results of the syntactical analysis of the electronically encoded documents. X12 says it does not cover the semantic meaning of the information in the transaction sets.
• 824 Application Advice: the results of an application system's data content edits, reporting the acceptance, rejection, acceptance with change, or partial acceptance or rejection of any transaction set, in either coded or free-form format.
• 864 Text Message: a human-readable message, contract or explanation, meant for people.

Put simply, a 997 says whether a transaction set was well formed, an 824 says whether its data passed the receiver's application edits, and an 864 carries a message for someone to read. X12 adds that the 824 should not be used in place of a transaction set designed as a specific response to another one, such as a purchase order acknowledgment.

A distributor's EDI team receives 864s from four retail customers in one week: 2 from the first, 3 from the second and 1 each from the other two. That is 2 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 7 messages.

None of them updates an order on its own. Each one has to be read and routed to the person who can act on it, whether that is customer service, accounts receivable or the warehouse.

On Shopify, one place to keep a human-readable message about an order or a customer is Timeline. Shopify says Timeline lets you view detailed histories and write notes and comments for orders, draft orders, customers, and transfers, and that all notes and comments are internal and won't be visible to your customers.

• Notify the right person: if you @mention another staff member, that staff member gets an email notification with your comment. If you don't @mention anyone, Shopify does not notify anyone about your comment.
• Permissions matter: a staff member without access to Orders won't receive notifications for order comments.
• Attach context: you can attach files to a Timeline comment to add context.

When an 864 concerns a specific order or customer, staff can post its text as a Timeline comment on that record and @mention whoever needs to act, so the message sits next to the order it explains.

Uncap's guide to Shopify EDI integration separates the two jobs: EDI middleware handles document translation and transmission, and it does not handle your ERP sync. As the guide puts it, most B2B Shopify suppliers need both, an EDI connector for trading partner communication and an ERP connector for back-office sync.

• EDI 824
• EDI 997
• EDI 856
• EDI 860
• EDI (electronic data interchange)
• AS2

• X12: 864 Text Message
• X12 Transaction Sets
• Shopify Help Center: Timeline