For Shipping Instructions will all parties need contact details?

[cmsdroff]

Looking at the Shipping Instruction schema the partyContactDetails is required for party currently this is not all that common to provide or in some cases known, is this a new requirement that all parties to appear on the bill of lading will mandate that contact information needs to be provided or an oversight?

Currently in partyContactDetails only name is required which is defined as the name of a person.

Typically we would see the following parties linked to a Shipping Instruction

• Consignor / Shipper
• Consignee
• Notify Party
• Carrier (identified by carrier SCAC code and recipient)
• Freight Forwarder (optional if shipper direct)

So when sending we would need to put a persons name in the field for the Carrier I would not know who to put as I'm sending the Shipping Instruction to the API, the carrier would know this internally.

Freight Forwarder would likely set their operator name i.e. the person handling the work, so no issue.

Shipper not currently being used when they transact via a forwarder, but possible to fill in.

Consignee maybe not always available as might not be outlined in a letter of credit or provided by the shipper but a possibility to fill in.

So i'm questioning if it really should be mandatory for all parties? Currently looking at the datasets I have from shipper EDI and forwarder this data is not provided, so would form new requirements, welcome thoughts before pushing back.

[cmsdroff]

Also very much appreciate this might be a needed change for eBL moving forward

[HenrikHL]

Hi @cmsdroff
I am so sorry for not getting back to you on this. For some reason my GitHub notifications are not working so I was not aware of all the issues you have raised. Will look into it ASAP ;-)