Mailmark™ Customer Specification
Mailmark™ Customer Specification
Author: Jay Chapman
1 Background to the Requirement
1.1 Existing Situation
Customers sending mail through UK Mail currently provide UK Mail with a bag level manifest when a
mailing is presented. This bag level manifest is used for the processing of their mail and is then
passed along to Royal Mail for final delivery and correct invoicing.
The bag manifest is a key part of the UK Mail processing and invoicing situation, as each container is
then scanned and the data on the label compared to the data already provided by end-clients. As a
result, the information within this manifest should ensure to be as accurate as possible.
1.2 Required Situation
With the addition of Royal Mails new Mailmark™ service, Royal Mail will be requesting that all mail
sent under this particular service have an item ID associated to them. This brings with it a whole set
of new barcodes, both 2D and 4-state. These barcodes must contain a set of new information in line
with Royal Mail specification, which include a Supply Chain ID and an Item ID.
The requirement however is not only to have this information included within the barcode, but a
new item level manifest must also be provided for each set of items to be handed over. As a means
of reducing the complexities in timing for customers wishing to send Mailmark™ mail, UK Mail have
opted to receive the item data direct from end-customers, and create the item level manifest
themselves. By handling this manifest creation themselves, the item data can be kept in line with the
bag manifest, so that when a container of mail is scanned, the item data associated to it is prepared
in manifest form for Royal Mail. As a result of this, any issues relating to the report cut-off of 5 days,
as stipulated by Royal Mail, are reduced to their minimum levels.
Mailmark Customer Specification
Version: 1.4
Status: Approved
Page 1 of 5
13/10/2014
Classification: ORGANISATIONAL
Mailmark™ Customer Specification
2 High-Level Requirements

Any customers who wish to send Mailmark™ mail must provide their item data to UK Mail
via a set of web-services provided by UK Mail. The format in which this would be presented
conforms to the Royal Mail item data specification with some small modifications. These
modifications would be in the use of a spare field to contain a link between the item and
which bag it is held within. There is also the Royal Mail requirement that all items uploaded
contain a batch reference, therefore this upload will be performed in such a way that a
customer will specify in the header what their batch reference for the body of the
information will be. An example of this is available in Appendix A.
The minimum volume requirement for sending items within a batch is the same as that of
the minimum mailsort volume. At the current date, this volume is set at 4000 items
minimum. If this volume is not met, this service cannot be used.
The item data will be sent over secure web-services, with the option of secure FTP being
viable in some cases. As these are secure, they will require each customer to be set up with
their own login details for the services from a UK Mail side.

Bag level data will be sent the same as is currently done with non-Mailmark™ services. New
service codes will be provided for customers to integrate with UK Mail and print out the new
format of codes. For any sending of mail under the Mailmark™ services, customers will need
to provide a bag-item link, mentioned in the previous requirement. This link will be in the
alternative reference field available in the direct web-service calls to UK Mail (for selflabellers) and in Consignor Live. The bag-item link will be fully explored in section 3.

Should a customer spoils any items, these items must be removed from the bag manifest as
usual, using the selection of spoil methods exposed by UK Mail. They must also be removed
from the item manifest. Failure to remove these items will result in discrepancies between
the bag and item manifests, and therefore have an impact in the Royal Mail reports.
For the purpose of removing spoils from the item manifest, an additional spoils service will
be exposed where a customer may import individual items in a file. This service will import a
text file where each line is one spoil record consisting of SCID and item ID. An example for
this is detailed would be:
1234567~00000001
1234567~00000005
1234567~00000022

Additional products and services will be made available for users wishing to send pre-sorted
Mailmark™ mail, for both Access 70 Letters and Access 70 Large Letters. The ability to start
sending Mailmark™ mail is dependent on the end-customer first passing the entry criteria
and a relevant testing phase.
Mailmark Customer Specification
Version: 1.4
Status: Approved
Page 2 of 5
13/10/2014
Classification: ORGANISATIONAL
Mailmark™ Customer Specification

Any customers who send unsorted items which they have already barcoded will be provided
with a new declaration type for Unsorted Mail. The item data for this unsorted mail must be
sent along with the item data for their pre-sorted mail.
3 Bag-Item Link
There is a Royal Mail requirement that all bags using the Mailmark™ service must have an associated
eManifest ID and SCID in the bag manifest uploaded on a daily basis. As a carrier, UK Mail will be
sending both the eManifests and the bag manifests to Royal Mail. Because of this, there will need to
be a method in place to link individual items to the bags/trays that they are contained within.
The solution in place is that both the bag and item data sent to Royal Mail must contain links
between the two to ensure that this link may be established on the UK Mail side. This link may be
placed at the mailsort level, when items are being printed and enclosed, as it is at this level that the
bag fills and therefore containers will be determined.
The link to be used will be that of the UCID between UK Mail and the end customer (commonly
denoted as account number), the process date and a sequentially increasing number. This must be
reflected in the SPARE8 field of each item and in the Alternative Reference field of each row in a bag
level file. The Alternative Reference field has a maximum size limit of 20 characters, and should
therefore be divided:
 Account Number: 7 characters
 Date: 6 character
 Sequential increaser: 5 characters
This also caters for dividers to be in place between each section of the reference.
As an example to the above requirement, this will be displayed in the following way:
Stripping out all irrelevant information to this section, item data being sent to us would look the
following way, using Account F371137, being processed on 01-01-2014, with a bag fill of 5 items per
container and a total of 2 bags:
<c:EIBItemID>0000001</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00001</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000002</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00001</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000003</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00001</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000004</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00001</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000005</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00001</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000006</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00002</c:Spare8>
Mailmark Customer Specification
Version: 1.4
Status: Approved
Page 3 of 5
13/10/2014
Classification: ORGANISATIONAL
Mailmark™ Customer Specification
<c:EIBItemID>0000007</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00002</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000008</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00002</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000009</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8> F371137_010114_00002</c:Spare8>
<c:EIBItemID>0000010</c:EIBItemID>
<c:Spare8>F371137_010114_00002</c:Spare8>
The associated bag level lines for this would therefore be as follows:
34050 5 250 LY511F371137 MAILING ID
CUSTOMER REF
34050 5 250 LY511F371137 MAILING ID
CUSTOMER REF
F371137_010114_00001
F371137_010114_00002
Should any bags be presented under the Mailmark service without its associated item level detail
also being sent, these bags will be held and contact will be made with the customer to determine
how to proceed. It will be dealt with on a case by case basis and subsequent cases where a customer
fails to comply with this requirement will result in the Mailmark service being turned off for this
customer.
4 Constraints
Any customers who wish to use the Mailmark™ services must comply with the following standards:
1. This service will be available only to those customers who upload bag level information into
UK Mail. Item level manifests which comprise of one line of just a Sort Selection Code will
not be viable for Mailmark™.
2. Customers wishing to send under the Mailmark™ service will first have to pass the entry
criteria to ensure that their mail complies with the industry standard, and that they have no
issues with sending item data alongside bag level data to UK Mail. Part of this entry criteria
will involve a test mailing organized between UK Mail and the end customer; this will be
realised by the intermediary sales representative.
5 Customer development
When a customer opts to begin their own development for Mailmark™, this document should be
used for guideline purposes, and UK Mail should be contacted for any queries relating to in-depth
design. This includes web-connection URLs, exact XML formats, testing scenarios and account/login
details for sending item data.
Mailmark Customer Specification
Version: 1.4
Status: Approved
Page 4 of 5
13/10/2014
Classification: ORGANISATIONAL
Mailmark™ Customer Specification
Appendix A – Code and Connection Parameters
UKMail Mailmark
Interface
Mailmark Customer Specification
Version: 1.4
Status: Approved
Page 5 of 5
13/10/2014
Classification: ORGANISATIONAL