Use the Party Relationship subtab of the Customer Overview page to define, view, and update relationships among existing customers (parties), using predefined relationship types and roles.
Note: Relationship types and roles are defined using Oracle Trading Community Architecture Relationship Manager. See: Creating Relationship Types.
Party relationships model your party registry as a realistic business world so that you can better understand and make decisions about the parties (customers) that you transact with.
A relationship represents the way two entities interact with each other, based on the role that each entity takes with respect to the other. For example, the employment relationship type between a person and an organization is defined by the role of the person as the employee and the organization as the employer.
A relationship can be reciprocal. Each entity is either the subject or object, depending on the perspective, or direction. The party that you define relationships for is the subject, and the party that you relate to is the object. For example, if Joe is the employee of Oracle, then Joe is the subject and Oracle is the object. Oracle as the employer of Joe, which reverses the subject and object, still describes the same relationship.
This example shows that a relationship comprises:
Interacting parties: In this example, Joe and Oracle.
Relationship type: In this example, employment.
Relationship phrase and role pair: In this example, employee of and employer of. A relationship phrase and role pair contains a correlating phrase pair and role pair, which describe the reciprocal roles that the two entities play in the relationship. The relationship phrase and role pair, employee of and employer of, contains the employee of and employer of phrase pair as well as the employee and employer role pair.
Oracle Receivables also supports hierarchical relationships, and in some cases, you can relate parties to themselves. For example, a party can be the headquarters of not only its subsidiaries but also of itself.
Define customers
Define relationship roles and relationship types
This table describes some terms in the pages used for this procedure.
Selected Terminology
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Relationship Role | Describes the role that an entity plays in a relationship. |
Navigate to the Party Relationship subtab on the Customer Overview page.
Click Add Another Row.
Select the party to which you want to relate.
Select the appropriate relationship role.
Enter the relationship start date and end date.