Customer information is often stored in a hierarchy with the customer that is referenced in Sales Order Processing (the SoldTo customer) at the top. In the WebSphere Business Integration Server Express Plus system, the CustomerSync collaboration maintains the integrity and consistency of these SoldTo customers across all systems in the enterprise. CustomerSync also maintains the relationships between the SoldTo customer and its related customers (such as the Billing address or the BillTo customer).
The CustomerPartnerSync collaboration specifies a common process for maintaining and synchronizing customer entities that are related to the SoldTo customer across all systems that use such entities. The collaboration uses the generic CustomerPartner business object, which stores data about the subordinate customers related to the SoldTo customer.
CustomerPartnerSync ensures a common view of subordinate customer information throughout an organization. CustomerPartnerSync synchronizes customer information between a Customer Interaction Management (CIM) application and an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application. Either of these applications can serve as the source or destination for the synchronized information.
This replication of data allows separate applications to use information consistently whenever data is added, changed, or deleted in the enterprise. The collaboration assures the accuracy of duplicate information in the destination application without duplicate entry.
See the reference page for the CustomerSync collaboration for more information about how the Customer Manager collaboration-object group:
This section includes information on port bindings and required steps for setting up collaboration objects based on CustomerPartnerSync. For information on standard features, ports, and configuration properties for collaboration templates, see the Collaboration Development Guide. For general information on creating collaboration objects, see the System Implementation Guide.
Note: If the destination application does not store the customer partner as an independent object, the collaboration will not subscribe to the Create event and the CONVERT_UPDATE property should be set to "false"'.
Figure 1 illustrates CustomerPartnerSync's ports, as they are displayed in System Manager.
Figure 1. CustomerPartnerSync 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.
Business object | Bound to | Function | Verbs used |
---|---|---|---|
CustomerPartner | 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 CustomerPartner. | Retrieve |
Business object | Bound to | Function | Verbs used |
---|---|---|---|
CustomerPartner | 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 |
Business object | Bound to | Function | Verbs used |
---|---|---|---|
CustomerPartner | The destination application's connector | Sends the triggering business object out of the collaboration. | Create Update Delete |
CustomerPartnerSync is triggered directly by a source application's connector when a subordinate customer entity (CustomerPartner) is created, modified, or deleted in the source application.
If you use CustomerPartnerSync in conjunction with the CustomerSync collaboration so that related Customers are synchronized along with the other collaboration's triggering business object, CustomerPartnerSync becomes part of a collaboration-object group. In this scenario:
This section illustrates the process logic for this collaboration template:
Figure 2 illustrates CustomerPartnerSync's main processing.
Figure 2. CustomerPartnerSync collaboration main process
This collaboration template uses the following standard collaboration business processes:
For information about these processes, see the System Implementation Guide. For information about adding these processes to the collaboration template, see the Collaboration Development Guide.
InterChange Server Express can roll back a transaction when any step in a transactional collaboration fails. For example, when CustomerPartnerSync is a member of a collaboration-object group that participates in a transactional collaboration, its actions are one subtransactional step of 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 CustomerPartnerSync 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. For information about these processes, see the System Implementation Guide. For information about 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:
Note: CustomerPartnerSync does not have unique configuration properties. All of its properties are standard. 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.
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:
To upgrade to a newer version of the collaboration template, perform the following steps: