BMG
Beginning segment for text message: purpose and a description.
EDI 864: Text Message
A free-form text message inside the EDI channel, for notices that have no structured document. Either party to the other. This page covers what the 864 is for, the segments you meet when you open one, the documents it travels with, where it tends to go wrong, and how it moves over AS2 into your systems on Files.com, which receives, parses, validates, and routes it as configuration.
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What The 864 Is For
The 864 carries text. Trading partners use it for notices that do not fit any structured document: a holiday shipping schedule, a system outage, a new contact, a plain-English explanation of a rejection. It rides the same EDI channel so it is logged and acknowledged like everything else.
Because it is unstructured, systems rarely process an 864 automatically; it is routed to a person or a mailbox. Its value is that the message arrives inside the same governed, receipted exchange as the business documents rather than in a separate email thread.
The Segments You Meet First
In document order, the segments that carry the 864's meaning. A partner's implementation guide says which are required and which fields each must hold.
N1
Sender and receiver.
MIT
Message identification: a reference number and a title.
MSG
Message text: the free-form lines of the message.
Where It Goes Wrong
Nobody reads the mailbox it lands in. An 864 announcing a specification change, filed and unread, is how a partner’s next document starts rejecting without warning.
The Documents It Travels With
The 864 rarely moves alone. These are the documents that precede, answer, or settle it.
824 · Application Advice
A business-level accept or reject of a received document, with the reasons, beyond what a 997 can say.
See The 824997 · Functional Acknowledgment
The receipt that says an EDI transmission arrived and was parsed, with any syntax errors found.
See The 997How The 864 Moves On Files.com
A partner sends the 864 over AS2, SFTP, or FTPS, and it lands in that partner’s inbox folder on Files.com with the transport receipt recorded. From there it is a workflow, not a project: TransformScript parses the X12 natively into the JSON, CSV, or XML your ERP or WMS reads, content validation flags a document whose contents are wrong before anything ingests it, and an automation routes the result to the system and the people who act on it.
Outbound is the mirror image. Your system exports its record, TransformScript builds the 864 the partner’s guide specifies, and the file dropped in the partner’s outbox goes out over AS2 with automatic retries until the MDN confirms delivery. Every transmission in both directions is in the audit log, and delivery monitoring alerts when a 864 that was due never arrives. The full picture is on the EDI software page.
EDI 864 Questions
What teams ask about the 864 and how it moves on Files.com.
An EDI 864 is the X12 Text Message, a free-form text document trading partners use for notices that have no structured EDI equivalent, sent through the same channel so it is logged and acknowledged.
Yes. Files.com is a standards-compliant RFC 4130 AS2 endpoint, and a 864 sent by a trading partner lands in that partner’s inbox folder with a signed MDN receipt returned to the sender. Partners who exchange over SFTP or FTPS connect to the same platform and the document lands in the same place.
Yes. TransformScript parses the X12 864 natively and writes the JSON, CSV, or XML your systems ingest, as a step in the workflow that fires when the document arrives. Outbound, the same engine builds a 864 from your system’s export and drops it in the partner’s outbox for delivery.
Exchange The 864 Without The Legacy Stack
Start the 7-day trial, turn AS2 on, and exchange certificates with your partner. The 864 lands in their folder, parses into the record your system reads, and every transmission carries a signed receipt.
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