Purchasing Collaboration Template

Customer Interaction Management (CIM) applications generate material requirements to support customer return and repair processes. However, Material Requirements Planning (MRP), and purchasing and receiving processes are not executed within such front-office applications.

An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application uses its master data to convert the material reservation or purchase requisition into either a work order (make) or a purchase requisition (buy). After the material is produced or purchased and received, the ERP application moves the material to the location or expense account specified within the material reservation or purchase request.

The Purchasing collaboration object uses the generic Requisition business object to synchronize a material or stock request from a CIM application to an ERP application's purchasing documents. The collaboration facilitates the creation of a purchasing document in the destination ERP application. The collaboration can be configured to verify the existence of requisitioned items within the destination ERP application before it creates a purchasing document.

Synchronizing referenced items

Business object Related collaboration properties Called collaborations

Item

ItemBasic

ItemOrder

ItemPlanning

VERIFY_SYNC_ITEM ITEM_TYPE

ItemSync

ItemWrapper

Notes:

Issues and assumptions

Collaboration object setup

This section includes information on port bindings and required steps for setting up collaboration objects based on Purchasing. For information on standard features, ports, and configuration properties for collaboration templates, refer to the Collaboration Development Guide. For general information on creating collaboration objects, refer to the System Implementation Guide.

Port information

Figure 1 illustrates Purchasing's ports, as they are displayed in System Manager.

Figure 1. Purchasing collaboration ports

Note: To prevent the collaboration object from using a port, bind that port to the Port connector. Binding the port indicates that the port is unused without causing the collaboration object to provide additional functionality.

Port name: DestinationAppRetrieve
Business object Bound to Function Verbs used
Requisition. The destination application's connector. Sends a reference-valued business object to retrieve the full-valued business object. The result determines the verb to use when synchronizing the Requisition.

Retrieve.


Port name: From
Business object Bound to Function Verbs used
Requisition. Source application's connector or calling collaboration. Receives the triggering business object. At the end of a synchronous call, this port also returns the triggering business object to the source application when the collaboration ends successfully.

Create Retrieve Update Delete


Port name: To
Business object Bound to Function Verbs used
Requisition. The destination application's connector.

Sends the triggering business object out of the collaboration.

Create Update Delete.


Port name: ToItemWrapper
Business object Bound to Function Verbs used
Requisition. The From port of the ItemWrapper collaboration. Sends any of the supported generic item business objects (Item, ItemBasic, ItemOrder, or ItemPlanning) to an ItemWrapper collaboration.

Exists Sync.

Setting up the collaboration object

Using Purchasing as stand-alone

To set up Purchasing as a stand-alone collaboration object, follow these steps:

  1. Create the Purchasing collaboration object.
  2. Bind the collaboration object's ToItemWrapper port to the destination application or to the Port connector.
  3. Bind the remaining ports as described in Port information.
  4. Keep the Purchasing collaboration object's VERIFY_SYNC_ITEM configuration property set to "neither".
  5. Set the remaining configuration properties as described in Configuration properties.  

Using Purchasing in a collaboration-object group

To verify or synchronize referenced items as part of the Purchasing process, create one of the following collaboration-object groups:


Verify Synchronize Required collaborations
Items   Purchasing, ItemWrapper
  Items Purchasing, ItemWrapper, ItemSync

Using Purchasing in a collaboration-object group

The following procedure describes setting up Purchasing as part of a collaboration-object group:

  1. Create collaboration objects from the Purchasing, ItemWrapper, and (optionally) ItemSync templates.
  2. Edit the Purchasing collaboration object to bind its ToItemWrapper port to the From port of the ItemWrapper collaboration object.
  3. Bind the remaining ports for the Purchasing collaboration object as described in this document's Port information section.
  4. Set the Purchasing collaboration object's VERIFY_SYNC_ITEM configuration property. For item verification, set it to "verify"; for item synchronization, set it to "sync".
  5. Set the InventoryMovement collaboration object's ITEM_TYPE property to the desired item type.
  6. Edit the ItemWrapper collaboration object to bind its To port.
  7. Bind the ItemWrapper collaboration object's remaining ports. For more information, see Port information in the Wrapper collaboration reference page.

    Note: System Manager will have already bound the ItemWrapper collaboration object's From port to the Purchasing collaboration object. For item verification, go directly to step #9.

  8. For item synchronization, edit the ItemSync collaboration object to bind its ports. System Manager will have already bound its From port to the ItemWrapper collaboration object. Bind its remaining ports. For more information, see Port information in the ItemSync Collaboration reference page.
  9. Set the configuration properties for each collaboration. For more information, see:

Collaboration template processes

This section illustrates the process logic for this collaboration template:

Overall process logic

Figure 2 illustrates the Purchasing collaboration's process flow.

Figure 2. Purchasing collaboration process flow

Inherited process logic

This collaboration template uses the following standard collaboration business processes:

For information on these processes, see the Collaboration Development Guide.

Verification or synchronization of Items

Figure 3 illustrates Purchasing's process for verifying or synchronizing related items.

Figure 3. Verification or synchronization of items

Compensation processing

InterChange Server Express can roll back a transaction when any step in a transactional collaboration fails. For example, when Purchasing is a member of a collaboration-object group that participates in a transactional collaboration, its actions are one subtransactional step in a larger transaction. If any step in the collaboration-object group's business process fails, the transactional collaboration details how InterChange Server Express rolls back the processing of every collaboration in the group.

When a Purchasing collaboration object is used independently of other collaboration objects or the collaboration object's From port is bound to a source application rather than to another collaboration, its process comprises a single transactional step. In such a situation, it is not necessary to perform rollback.

To cause a collaboration object or a collaboration-object group to perform rollback requires modification of the collaboration template. To understand transaction processing in the IBM Business Integration Server Express Plus system, see the System Implementation Guide. For information on adding transaction processing to the collaboration template, see the Collaboration Development Guide.

To extend the collaboration object to handle transaction processing, complete the following steps:

  1. Add this capability to the collaboration template and to every other collaboration template in the collaboration-object group.
  2. Set the minimum transaction level of the collaboration object and all members of the collaboration-object group to a value higher than None. If a failure occurs in any subtransaction step, settings of Minimal Effort or higher cause this collaboration object and other collaboration objects in the group to execute compensation for Create, Update, and Delete operations performed on all business objects.
  3. Set the USE_RETRIEVE property of the collaboration object and all other members of the collaboration-object group to "true". Forcing the collaboration objects to retrieve values before changing them allows the collaboration objects to restore the original values in an Update or Delete process.

Configuration properties

This section describes the standard properties and collaboration template specific properties for this collaboration template:

Standard properties

This collaboration template uses the following standard configuration properties for collaboration templates:

For information on these configuration properties, see the Collaboration Development Guide.

Properties specific to this collaboration template

In addition to its standard configuration properties, this collaboration template has the configuration properties described below.

Configuration properties specific to the purchasing collaboration template

Property name and explanation Possible values Default value

ITEM_TYPE

Set to the type of generic Item whose existence must be synchronized or verified before the collaboration creates the Requisition business object. The VERIFY_SYNC_ITEM property uses the value of this property to determine the type of item to be synchronized or verified.

Item, ItemBasic, ItemOrder, ItemPlanning Item

VERIFY_SYNC_ITEM

Set to "sync" to cause Purchasing to synchronize related items in the destination application. Purchasing copies the ItemId from the Order business object and creates the type of generic business object specified in the ITEM_TYPE property. Purchasing sends the business object with the Sync verb to ItemWrapper. In turn, ItemWrapper retrieves values for all attributes from the source application and sends the business object with the Create verb to ItemSync. If ItemSync fails to create the related item, Purchasing handles the error as specified in its INFORMATIONAL_EXCEPTIONS property.

Set to "verify" to cause Purchasing to verify related items in the destination application. Purchasing copies the ItemId from the Order business object and creates the type of generic business object specified in the ITEM_TYPE property. Purchasing sends the business object with the Exists verb to ItemWrapper. In turn, ItemWrapper retrieves the business object from the destination application. If ItemWrapper fails to retrieve a related item, Purchasing handles the error as specified in its INFORMATIONAL_EXCEPTIONS property.

Set to "neither" to cause Purchasing to synchronize the triggering Order business object without first synchronizing related items or verifying existing related items in the destination application.

neither, verify, sync

neither

Collaboration messages

Note: Messages that provide warnings appear at the trace destination only if the trace level has been set to 3 or higher.

To view an explanation of the messages of this collaboration template, launch the Log Viewer and open the collaboration template's message file. To launch the Log Viewer and open the collaboration template's message file:

  1. In the Start menu, click Programs > IBM WebSphere Business Integration Express > Toolset Express > Administrative > Log Viewer.
  2. In the File menu, click Open.
  3. Use the Look In field to change the current folder to ProductDir\collaborations\messages, and then select the message file for this collaboration template.

Upgrade information

Upgrade process

To upgrade to a newer version of the collaboration template, perform the following steps:

  1. Stop the current Purchasing collaboration.
  2. Back up the repository. For information about backing up the repository, see the System Implementation Guide.
  3. If you have customized the collaboration template:
  4. Install the new Purchasing collaboration template.
  5. Add your customizations to the new collaboration template.
  6. Create the new collaboration object, binding it to the appropriate connectors. For more information, see Collaboration setup.
  7. Run and test the new collaboration object.
  8. Make changes to the collaboration object based on any problems found during testing.

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