Capability sets: choose exactly what you receive

Albert Haff

Every participant on Peppol and NemHandel publishes which documents it can receive. Senders look this up before they send anything, so what you publish decides what ends up in your inbox.

Until now, eCourier registered every participant with the same default set of profiles. With capability sets, you decide for yourself which profiles and document types each of your participants accepts.

What is a capability set?

In eCourier, a capability set is a named collection of profiles that you can assign to one or more participants. A profile describes a business process on the network, such as Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 or OIOUBL Simple ordering with simple billing.

For each profile, you choose the role you take in that process:

  • Customer: you receive the documents a buyer receives, such as invoices and credit notes.
  • Supplier: you receive the documents a seller receives, such as orders or invoice responses.

Today you can choose between Peppol BIS Billing, Invoice Response and Message Level Response on Peppol, and more than 20 OIOUBL profiles on NemHandel, covering billing, ordering and responses.

Why it matters

  • Only receive what you can handle. If your system only processes invoices, there is no reason to advertise that you accept orders. Senders see exactly what you support, and nothing more.
  • Different setups for different companies. One company might only receive invoices, while another also takes part in ordering. Create a set for each and assign them as needed.
  • Opt in to responses. Want Invoice Responses or Message Level Responses back from your customers' systems? Add the profile, and you're discoverable for it.

Getting started

In the portal, go to Network → Capability sets and create a new set. Add the profiles you need, choose the role for each, and assign the set when you create or edit a participant.

You can also assign a set through the API by passing capability_set_id when you create or update a participant:

PATCH /v1/participants/{participant}
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "capability_set_id": "01k9x3c8w2r7m4n6p5q1t0v8yz"
}

Participant responses now include the assigned set as capability_set, with its id and name. Send null to go back to the default profiles.

A few things to know:

  • eCourier publishes the changes to the Peppol and NemHandel registries for you. There is nothing to update on the network yourself.
  • Participants without a capability set keep the default profiles, so nothing changes until you assign one.
  • A set must include at least one profile for each channel the participant is registered on.
  • Test and production are separate, so you can try out a set on test participants before using it in production.

Coming next: the full NemHandel catalogue

We're working on support for the entire NemHandel document catalogue. Once it's in place, you'll be able to add any NemHandel document type to a capability set and receive it through the same API you already use.

Have a document type you'd like us to prioritise? Get in touch. We'd love to hear what you need.