The price/sales catalog notification workflow uses the Price Update Tolerance you set to determine when a price increase in an Update price/sales catalog submission exceeds your tolerance. Workflow is an underlying technology that sends a notification to the buyer if the price tolerance is exceeded and waits for the buyer to accept or reject the price increase. The Purchasing Documents Open Interface applies or does not apply the price increase depending on the buyer's action.
The buyer is notified automatically by the workflow. The supplier is notified of price update rejections only if you customize the workflow to do so.
You can view or modify this workflow in the Oracle Workflow Builder. See the Oracle Workflow Guide.
The following figure shows how the workflow affects line statuses in the Purchasing Documents Open Interface tables:
You can view the workflow in a Process window using the Workflow Builder.
To display the workflow in the Oracle Workflow Builder:
Choose Open from the File menu, and connect to the database.
See: Opening and Saving Item Types.
The Display name of the price/sales catalog notification workflow is PO Catalog Price Tolerance Exceeded Notifications. The name of its Workflow definition file is poxprcat.wft.
Expand the data source, then the item type branch within that data source.
Expand the Processes branch, then double-click the Issue Notifications process activity to display its diagram.
There are no required modifications you need to make to this workflow.
Although you can use the workflow as is, you may wish to customize it further to accommodate your organization's specific needs. You can modify the Issue Notifications process to suit your business needs.
You could modify the process to send the buyer a reminder sooner or later than the activity Wait for Buyer Action from Exceeded Price Tolerances Form does by default. You could modify the workflow to send the notification to people other than the buyer. If you want to send the supplier an automatic notification of rejected price updates, you must modify the workflow. Some of these customizations are described below.
To help you with your customizations, refer to the sections later that describe the components of this process.
See also: Customization Guidelines.
To change the Timeout period from seven days:
In the Workflow Builder, expand the Functions branch and select the Wait for Buyer Action from Exceeded Price Tolerances Form activity.
Open the activity's Properties window.
Change the Timeout to a period of time that best suits your organization's needs.
In Oracle Applications, submit the Workflow Background Process if you haven't already. See: To Schedule Background Engines.
Create Workflow users and roles for your suppliers and associate e-mail addresses with them.
See: Setting Up an Oracle Workflow Directory Service.
To send automatic notifications of rejected price updates to the supplier:
Create a function activity that for a given supplier assigns the correct supplier user name to the Supplier User Name item attribute.
When you create a function activity in the Workflow Builder, you also have to create the PL/SQL stored procedure that the function activity calls.
Place the function activity in the Issue Notifications process diagram.
You could place it after the Were Any Items Rejected? activity and before the Supplier Username Value activity. Your new function activity will assign the supplier's user name to the Supplier User Name item attribute. Then, the Supplier Username Value activity retrieves the supplier name from the item attribute.
You cannot modify any of the item attributes except for Supplier User Name. (Information about when you might customize this attribute is provided in the section above.) You cannot modify any of the function activities or messages in the workflow; however, you could replace them in the Issue Notifications process with ones of your own. You can modify the notification activities.
For important information on how to customize workflows, see the Oracle Workflow Developer's Guide.
If you modify the process, either by replacing a portion of its flow or by adding additional function activities, remember the following:
Attributes that are set by default function activities in the default processes must also be set if you replace default function activities with ones of your own. That is, if a function activity in that process uses a SetItemAttr statement, then that function activity is setting an attribute to be used by another function activity later. Therefore, your new function activity must do the same. You should also preserve SetItemUserKey and SetItemOwner statements, if any. (Depending on your customizations, you may also want to preserve GetItemAttr statements.)
Any database state maintained by the default processes must also be maintained by processes you customize. That is, if a function activity in that process uses an Update or Insert Into statement, then that function activity is updating or inserting rows in the database. Therefore, your new function activity must maintain the same database state.
To get a list of the workflow function activities that use SetItemAttr, GetItemAttr, SetItemUserKey, SetItemOwner, Insert Into, or Update statements, run the PL/SQL script powfcust. For instructions on running this script, see: Customization Guidelines.
Customize the default (original) workflow that Purchasing provides, after you make a backup. Unlike the PO Approval, PO Requisition Approval, and PO Create Documents workflows, only one price/sales catalog notification workflow can be called in Purchasing. You can't select a separate customization, like you can with the other workflows in the Document Types window. Therefore, you need to make your customizations to the default workflow. You'll always have your backup to revert to, if you need, while you are testing your customizations.
The Issue Notifications process is associated with an item type called PO Catalog Price Tolerances Exceeded Notifications. This item type identifies all workflow processes available with the price/sales catalog update submission.
The PO Catalog Price Tolerances Exceeded Notifications item type also has several attributes associated with it. These attributes reference information in the Purchasing application tables. The attributes are used and maintained by function activities as well as notification activities throughout the process.
To view descriptions of each item type attribute, select the attribute in the Workflow Builder and choose Properties from the Edit menu. Look in the Description field.
To view the properties of the Issue Notifications process, select the process in the navigator tree, then choose Properties from the Edit menu. The Issue Notifications process has no result type, indicating that when the process completes, it has no defined result of, for example, End (Valid) or End (Invalid) corresponding to any lookup type in the navigator tree.
This process activity is runnable, indicating that it can be initiated as a top-level process to run by making calls to the Workflow Engine CreateProcess and StartProcess APIs.
Node 2 sends the buyer a notification if any of the supplier price updates exceed the price tolerance you have set as described in the section Monitoring Price Increases in a Price/Sales Catalog Update. Node 3 waits for the buyer to respond before updating the price or price breaks. If the buyer at node 3 does not respond after the amount of time you specify in the Control Properties page, the notification at node 2 is sent to the buyer again.
As soon as the buyer responds to all of the pending price updates, node 2 cancels the notification so that it does not show up the next time the buyer queries for notifications.
Node 5 determines if any price updates were rejected. If they were, node 7 can notify the supplier of the document lines whose prices were rejected if you customize the workflow to send automatic supplier notifications. See Optional Customizations.
The following is a description of each activity listed by the activity's display name. You can create all the components for an activity in the graphical Workflow Builder except for the PL/SQL stored procedures that the function activities call. All function activities execute PL/SQL stored procedures which you must create and store in the Oracle RDBMS. The naming convention for the PL/SQL stored procedures is:
<PACKAGE>.<PROCEDURE>
<PACKAGE> is the name of the package that groups all of the procedures. <PROCEDURE> represents the name of the procedure.
To view the package and procedure names used by the Issue Notifications process, view the Properties page for each function activity. For example, the function activity Cancel Any Outstanding Buyer Notifications uses the <PACKAGE>.<PROCEDURE> name PO_WF_PO_PRICAT_UPDATE.CANCEL_BUYER_NOTIF.
You can use the Item Type Definitions Web page to view <PACKAGE>.<PROCEDURE> names. See: Item Type Definitions Web Page.
If any of the price updates in the price/sales catalog update submission exceed the tolerance you have set, this activity sends the buyer a notification. One notification is sent for each document.
This function activity waits for the buyer to respond to the notification. The price update is not made and the workflow does not continue until the buyer responds. If the buyer does not respond after the amount of time specified in the Control Properties page of this activity, the notification is sent to the buyer again.
As soon as the buyer responds to the notification, this activity cancels the notification so that it does not show up the next time the buyer queries for notifications.
This function activity determines if any price updates were rejected.
This function activity is a standard Workflow activity used to do comparisons. It makes sure that the supplier's user name is on the list of user names in Oracle Applications. This activity is used only if you create a function activity to populate the Supplier User Name item attribute. This function activity is associated with the Standard item type.
If the function activity Were Any Items Rejected? records any price updates that the buyer rejected, this activity sends a notification to the supplier if your supplier is set up in Workflow to receive such notifications. See the Oracle Workflow Guide.