To make content items and hyperlinks available for your template designers to include in a template, you must register and enable the supplementary data source where the content items reside.
Oracle Receivables and Oracle Receivables Balance Forward are already registered as primary data sources in Bill Presentment Architecture (BPA) and enabled for use. Oracle Receivables primary data source provides transactional billing data. Use the Oracle Receivables Balance Forward primary data source to provide consolidated billing information for a template. All other data sources are supplementary data sources. Currently, BPA only supports registering supplementary data source for Oracle Receivables. Other Oracle applications, such as Oracle Order Management and Oracle Service Contracts, are registered in BPA, but you must first enable them for use.
If you want to use an application or other source that is not seeded in BPA as a source of content items, then you must register and enable the source as a data source. You can register any application that interfaces billing transactions to Receivables. Applications that can be registered include Oracle applications, third party applications, and legacy systems.
If you want a template to include a details page, then you must register a supplementary data source and register a details page view to provide content items. For more information on registering data source view see: Registering Data Source Views. Only supplementary data sources associated with Oracle Receivables templates can be registered in BPA.
Additional Information: Templates for balance forward bills cannot have a supplementary data source. For more information on entering details for consolidated bills, see: Balance Forward Billing Templates.
When you register a data source, you provide the following:
Data Source Name
Data Source Description
Data Source Level
Interface Context
Prerequisite
Define context field values for line transaction flexfield segments. You specify an interface context for transaction flexfield segments using the Application Developer responsibility. See: Oracle Applications Developer's Guide.
When you register a data source, you select the interface context for the data source that you want to register.
All transactions imported into Receivables via AutoInvoice have an interface context. The interface context is the context field value for the transaction flexfield in the source application. A source application, such as Oracle Order Management, uses the interface context to identify each transaction.
BPA uses the interface context to synchronize the transaction flexfield. See: Synchronizing Flexfield Content Items.
Note: A Bill Presentment Architecture (BPA) template with a supplementary data source displays only those transactions, which have the same interface context as the supplementary data source.
For more information about transaction flexfields and the interface context, see: Transaction Flexfields.
After you enable a data source, you can:
Use the data source as a source of content items when defining templates
Assign templates based on that data source to rules in Template Assignment
Create hyperlinks by selecting transaction attributes from the data source.
To change the status of a data source, select a data source from the list of registered data sources. From the list of values, select Mark as Enabled and click Go. After a data source is enabled, you can view its details, but you cannot make any changes.
Note: The primary data sources will always appear enabled. Oracle Order Management and Oracle Service Contracts must be enabled before you can use them as supplementary data sources.
You can disable a data source at any time, with the exception of Oracle Receivables and Oracle Receivables Balance Forward. You cannot disable these data sources because they provide the basic transaction line billing information for Bill Presentment Architecture.
You can update, synchronize flexfields, and delete a data source only if its status is disabled. You can also view disabled data sources.
Warning: Do not disable a data source while creating or updating a template, or while assigning templates to rules.
You can view the following information about a data source by clicking on the data source name:
The name, description, and interface context for the data source.
Each view registered for the data source, including the technical view name and the area where the view can be displayed.
The templates that currently use content items from the data source.
When viewing a data source, you can sort its associated views by clicking on a column heading. You can also drill down to view the details of the associated views, including the database view name and the content items for the view.
If you want to display transaction flexfields on a bill, then you must synchronize the transaction flexfield column information with Receivables transaction information. You can do this before or after you register views from the data source, but only if the status of the data source is disabled. To synchronize, select the content items to be available in Template Management.
Note: You do not have to synchronize the flexfield content items for the supplementary data source, Oracle Order Management. Content items from this seeded application have already been synchronized with Receivables.
For Oracle Service Contracts, only some content items have been synchronized. You can synchronize additional flexfield content items from this supplementary data source if you want to add them to a template.
You can unsynchronize flexfield content items that are not used in a template. Content items used in a template are grayed out. To unsynchronize a content item used in a template, you must first remove the item from the template and disable its data source.
Prerequisites
For each content item, BPA displays the column name, item name, and item display label. The template item column lets you to select the content items to include in your custom data source view.
Additional Information: You can select the content items in Balance Forward Header view as both template items and assignment attributes.
BPA creates a default description for each content item using the format <Data Source Name>-Flexfield-<Item Name>. For example, the default description for the Amount content item is:
Oracle Service Contracts-Flexfield-Amount
This indicates the data source of the content item and identifies the item as a flexfield content item.
You can change the item display label on this page or in the Update Properties page.
From the Configuration tab, you can designate content items from the Oracle Receivables Invoice Header View, Balance Forward Header View or the header level flexfield synchronization for supplementary data sources as template assignment attributes by checking the corresponding check box. To make a content item unavailable as a template assignment attribute uncheck it. Items currently in use as template assignment attribute in rules will have grayed check boxes and cannot be updated.