Participants

When someone (typically a company) is registered in the Peppol network in order to receive business documents, they become a participant in Peppol nomenclature. A participant is C1 when it sends a document and C4 when it receives one. The corners are explained on Transactions.

In Arratech Solution, a participant always lives in the scope of an organisation, meaning that the organisation owns and manages one or more participants. Whether and when a participant is registered on the Peppol network depends on its kind, described under Participant kinds below. Where Arratech registers it, the registration is in the Peppol SML. If you also want a participant to show up in the Peppol Directory, you publish it in a separate API call.

Peppol SML

The Peppol SML is the central Peppol service that serves as the DNS/address registry for all document transactions. When registered in the SML, a participant can be discovered by others and receive documents. Note that the test equivalent of the SML is called SMK, where all participants associated with test certificates are listed.

Peppol Directory

The Peppol Directory is a non-mandatory registration service where participants are registered with additional, richer metadata than in the SML. It allows more flexible searches than the SML, for example searching for participants by name.

Create a Participant

To create a participant you need a valid Peppol participant id scheme value. These identifiers are generally country specific and based on the ISO 6523 scheme. Which number and scheme code to use for your country is explained on Peppol IDs.

Typically a participant uses its company registration number as the Peppol id. An example of a Swedish identifier is 0007:2120000787.

In addition to the participant identifier you must provide a name, an access point and an SMP. Depending on the mode the organisation runs in (shared or whitelabeled), the access point can be an Arratech access point or the organisation's own. The access points your organisation can use are listed in the API reference. For SMP, the only available choice right now is the Arratech-hosted SMP.

Besides the required data, you can add optional metadata grouped as a business card. It gives more information and enriches lookup and search results for the participant.

Supported Documents

The business card holds metadata for the participant, and the access point defines where documents for the participant are sent. One more piece is needed: which document types the participant can receive. These are usually added after the participant has been created. Drafts, and participants in a country with its own registration flow, can supply them when they are created.

Participant kinds

A participant is one of a few kinds, depending on who registered its identifier on the Peppol network. The kind decides what you can do with it, and it is shown in the participantClass field. Not every participant has a kind: a French participant of your own in the French flow has none, and neither does any participant created where external participant registration is not enabled.

Own. Arratech registers the identifier for you. Where external participant registration is on, an own participant starts as a draft: the identifier is registered in the SML and in Arratech's SMP, but without document types, so nothing can be delivered to it yet. Once it is published with its document types, it is a registered own participant and can receive.
Own, registered in another registry. The participant is yours, but a registry that Arratech does not run holds its registration, its document types and its publication. It is reachable on the Peppol network, but Arratech's own SMP holds nothing for it. Slovak participants are of this kind today.
External. The company is already registered on the Peppol network by another service provider. You can exchange documents with it, but its registration belongs to that provider. Arratech keeps a read-only copy of what the provider publishes, which only changes when you ask for a refresh, plus an editable name and business card. An external participant is never written to the SML, an SMP or the Peppol Directory, and deleting it removes it from Arratech only. Its document types come from the provider.

How a create is classified

Where external participant registration is on, Arratech first checks the identifier against the network when you create a participant. An identifier nobody has registered becomes an own draft. An identifier already registered by another provider becomes an external participant. Arratech switches this on per environment, so ask whether it is on where you integrate.

Where it is off, an identifier that is already registered elsewhere cannot be added, and a new identifier is registered in the same call and the participant becomes ACTIVE straight away, with no draft.

A draft goes live once every condition on it is cleared and at least one document type is chosen. If you send the document types with the create and nothing else holds the participant back, it is published in the same call. That publish is best effort, so check the returned status. Otherwise publish the draft yourself once the last condition is cleared. The participant creation walkthrough shows the steps. Some countries have their own registration flow. For France, see France: onboarding and KYC.

Participant status

The status says where a participant is in its life.

ACTIVE. Fully created and operational.
UNPUBLISHED. An own draft. It is saved and listed, and you can still change its document types. Publishing it completes the registration and makes it ACTIVE.
PENDING. Still being onboarded.
PENDING_MANDATE. Waiting for KYC approval. French participants wait here.
PENDING_TAX_REGISTRATION. KYC approved, waiting for registration in the tax authority's directory.
PENDING_ACTIVATION. Created from a customer's choice on a tax authority's portal, waiting for you to activate it.

A participant that is still pending is visible but read-only. The one exception is an external participant, whose name and business card can be updated in any status, including a French send-only participant waiting in PENDING_MANDATE. Everything else, such as updating document types or publishing, is refused until the participant is ACTIVE. You can delete a participant in PENDING, PENDING_MANDATE or PENDING_ACTIVATION, but not one in PENDING_TAX_REGISTRATION. Participants in PENDING_MANDATE, PENDING_TAX_REGISTRATION and PENDING_ACTIVATION do not count toward your organisation's participant total.

Slovak customer selections

You do not create Slovak (0245) participants yourself. The customer chooses their intermediary on the Slovak tax authority's portal, and Arratech records that choice as a participant under the organisation they chose, waiting in PENDING_ACTIVATION. You activate it, which registers it in Slovakia's central SMP, or delete it to turn the customer's choice down. What you can and cannot do with a Slovak participant, and the error codes, are in the Slovak participants section of the API reference.

Reference lists

Three read-only lists help you fill in a participant: Peppol document types, participant identifier schemes and countries. The document type list is the official Peppol code list plus some national profiles that Arratech maintains. All three can be filtered as described in Querying.

Looking up a Peppol participant

Use lookup to check whether a participant is registered in the Peppol network and to get their routing details before you send. It searches both the public Peppol registries (SML/SMK and the Peppol Directory) and Arratech's own registry. In Arratech's solution each participant connects to one access point, but results from other Peppol providers can include several.

Moving to or from another provider

A participant can switch service provider without changing its identifier and without leaving the network. How that works is explained on Participant migration.

French (FR) participants

French participants use the Peppol scheme 0225 and are onboarded differently from other participants. They need a signed mandate, KYC approval and registration in the French Annuaire before they become ACTIVE. The identifier rules, the steps, send-only External participants and the check on French recipients are explained on France: onboarding and KYC. French e-reporting is on France: e-reporting.