Setup Peppol AP

This page explains how to setup a Peppol AP from scratch. AP is the abbreviation for Access Point which is the technical endpoint for sending and receiving business documents. See the Dictionary for more abbreviations.

Since 2020-02-01 AS4 is the mandatory transport protocol in the Peppol eDelivery network.

There are a few known Open Source possibilities (I'm aware of) on how to build/run a Peppol AccessPoint (in alphabetical order) and they are listed on this page.
The solution described in this document is phase4 as the AS4 communication channel for sending and receiving Peppol AS4 messages.
phase4 is a shared library for AS4 message exchange and can hence be used in versatile scenarios. phase4 is already used by a huge amount of users around the globe - a few of them are listed at https://github.com/phax/phase4/wiki/Known-Users.

Table of contents
  1. Prerequisites
  2. AS4 specifics
    1. AS4 Message structure
    2. AS4 AccessPoint receiver
    3. AS4 AccessPoint sender

Prerequisites

Before you can start you need to have the following information in place:

  1. As the very first step you need to sign the Peppol agreements (previously called TIAs - Transport Infrastructure Agreements) with your Peppol Authority OpenPeppol AISBL.
  2. Afterwards you need to apply for an AP certificate at OpenPeppol. This certificate is required to run the AP.
  3. At least one of the default Peppol BIS (processes) must be implemented. A list of all available BISs is available on the Peppol website.
  4. You should have a look at the official Peppol AS4 profile.
  5. You should have a look at the official Peppol Envelope specification (SBDH).
  6. You should be familiar with Java
  7. Basic knowledge about Apache Tomcat (and optionally a reverse proxy) should be present

AS4 as a transport protocol (mandatory)

The Peppol AS4 profile is based on the CEF eDelivery AS4 1.14 profile which in turn is a (non-perfect) profile of the OASIS AS4 profile v1.0 which (you guessed it) is a profile of the OASIS ebXML Messaging V3.

AS4 Message structure

Peppol adds specific limitations on the usage of AS4. AS4 Messages MUST be signed and encrypted. AS4 messages MUST have exactly one encrypted payload which MUST be a Standard Business Document (SBD). Peppol AS4 message MUST use the MIME encoding for message transmission.

Peppol AS4 message structure

AS4 AccessPoint receiver

See the official phase4 documentation on phase4-peppol-servlet for details.

AS4 AccessPoint sender

See the official phase4 documentation on phase4-peppol-client for details.

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