This section discusses the setup steps which define your supplier's preferred communication method. Oracle Purchasing supports the following methods of communicating purchase orders:

• Print

• Facsimile (fax)

• Electronic mail (e-mail)

• Extensible Markup Language (XML)

• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

See: Purchase Order Communication to Suppliers.

   Print purchase orders:

The standard way to communicate purchase orders to your supplier is by printing them and sending a copy to the supplier in the mail. Your purchase order can be printed using text or PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) formatting. This method requires that your system administrator configure the printers attached to your computer system. See: Setup Steps.

Setup steps for printed purchase orders:

1. Navigate to the Supplier Sites window.

2. Under the General tab, choose Printed Document as the Supplier Notification Method.

   Fax purchase orders:

Purchase orders facsimiles can be sent using text or PDF formatting. If you choose text format you must implement a third party FCL compatible fax software (such as RightFax). If you choose PDF format you may also use a third party fax software. See: Purchase orders in PDF.

This communication method also requires that your system administrator configure your Oracle Application to support fax transmission. See: Oracle Applications System Administrator's Guide.

Setup steps for faxed purchase orders:

1. Navigate to the Supplier Sites window.

2. Under the General tab, choose Fax as the Supplier Notification Method. Enter a default fax number for the supplier site. You can change the default fax number or the notification method at the time of document communication.

   E-mail purchase orders:

You can send e-mail copies of purchase orders using HTML or PDF formatting.

Oracle Purchasing supports various types of file attachments (MS Word, Excel, PDF etc.) that can be appended to purchasing documents in addition to long and short text attachments. When a purchase order is e-mailed to the supplier, the corresponding file attachments appear in a zip file attached to the e-mail. You may specify the maximum allowable size for this zip file to minimize network traffic through the Purchasing Options window.

This communication method requires that your system administrator configure your Oracle Application Notification Mailer workflow to support e-mail transmission. See: Implementing Notification Mailers, Oracle Workflow Administrator's Guide.

Setup steps for E-mail PO:

1. Navigate to the Supplier Sites window.

2. Under the General tab, choose E-mail as the Supplier Notification Method. Enter a default e-mail address for the supplier site. You can change the default e-mail address or the notification method at the time of document communication.

3. Define an alternative e-mail address in the Profile option PO: Secondary E-mail Address to send a copy of the e-mail PO to your company. If you wish to resend the e-mail, the user will need to log into this secondary e-mail account and resend it from there.

4. Generic terms and conditions can be appended on the e-mail PO body by putting them in a text file. This text file needs to be placed in one of the directories specified in the UTL_FILE parameter in the INIT.ORA file. Make sure that the file is placed in the directory that exists where the database server is running. Once this is done, the following profile options need to be set for e-mail PO to read the terms and conditions file and display them in the e-mail body.

   • Set profile PO: In File Path with the absolute path of the directory where the terms and conditions file is placed.

   • Set profile PO: Terms and Conditions File Name with the name of the file.

5. Restart the workflow notification mailer after setting the above profiles. Navigate to Requests, Submit Requests, and run the concurrent program Notification Mailer to restart the mailer. (See Setting Up Oracle Workflow in the Oracle Workflow User's Guide for more details)

6. Failed e-mails (due to incorrect e-mail address) will be delivered by the mailer into a discard file. You need to monitor this file and look for common expressions such as Undisclosed Recipient (or other common expressions) and insert these expressions into the tags file as defined by the TAGFILE parameter in the workflow mailer configuration file. You then need to change the standard error handler workflow to look for these tags and take appropriate actions (send notifications to administrator/buyer).

   XML purchase orders:

Purchase orders and change orders can be communicated to the supplier using XML if the Oracle XML Gateway is implemented. For details on setting up the XML Gateway for Oracle Purchasing see Oracle Purchasing XML Transaction Delivery Guide.

   EDI purchase orders:

Purchase orders and change orders can be communicated to the supplier using EDI if the Oracle e-Commerce Gateway is implemented. For details on setting up the e-Commerce Gateway for Oracle Purchasing see Oracle e-Commerce Gateway User's Guide.

   Purchase orders in PDF:

Purchase orders can be viewed online or e-mailed, and faxed to suppliers in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). You can specify a style sheet template to control the appearance and layout of the formatted PDF file. If you have implemented Oracle Procurement Contracts, you can specify a style sheet template to control the appearance and layout of the contract terms as part of the purchase order PDF file. These templates are managed using Oracle XML Publisher. See the Oracle XML Publisher User's Guide.

Setup steps for PDF purchase orders:

1. If Oracle Procurement Contracts is implemented, define terms and conditions for procurement documents template. See the Oracle Procurement Contracts Implementation Guide for details.

2. Setup supplier:

   • Assign the preferred method of communication to the supplier site. Refer to the instructions given above.

   • Assign a language to the supplier site.

3. From the Control tab of the Purchasing Options window set the PO Output Format to PDF. See: Defining Control Options.

4. Assign a Unix directory to the profile PO: Fax Output Directory for the PO Document. The system will store the generated PDF document in this directory when the communication is fax.

5. Define the Document Type Layout in the Document Types window. There must be a layout template for the document type. If Oracle Procurement Contracts is implemented, define the layout template for the contract terms. See: Defining Document Types. These style sheets are created in the Oracle XML Publisher Template Manager. See the Oracle XML Publisher User's Guide.

6. If Oracle Procurement Contracts is implemented, define security for the buyer. Administrators can define the buyers that have access to the terms and conditions. When a buyer doesn't have access to the terms and conditions, he sees just the PO details in the PDF document. When the buyer has access to the terms and conditions, he sees the PO details and the textual terms in the PDF document. See the Oracle Procurement Contracts Implementation Guide for details.