Setting Up Web Requisitions
The Oracle Web Employees requisitioning feature is geared toward the large internal corporate user community that commonly creates simple requisitions for items on supplier catalogs, agreements or templates. Web Requisitions is a web-based application that allows employees to review product catalogs and place requisitions directly over the Web. Web Requisitions is integrated with Oracle Purchasing, so it's necessary to install Oracle Purchasing 11 or later if you intend to use the requisitioning features.
Oracle Web Employees contains the following Web Requisitions features:
- Browse Supplier Item Catalog and Requisition Templates
- Make Inquiries about Requisitions
- Submit Requisitions for Approval
Step 1. Install Oracle Purchasing Release 11 (Server side only required).
See: Oracle Applications Installation Manual for the Oracle Purchasing installation instructions.
To use Web Requisitions, you must also set up Oracle Purchasing, Release 11.
Attention: You can follow the setup instructions outlined in the Oracle Financial Applications or Oracle Manufacturing Implementation manuals. The purpose of this section is to highlight key considerations for setting up Web Requisitions.
Set up the following Purchasing facilities to run Web Requisitions:
- Category Relationships (optional)
- Requisition Template Relationships (optional)
- Supplier and Supplier Sites
- Supplier Item Catalog Purchase Agreement Information
Set up employee information for each web user:
- Define Oracle Web Employees Users
- Define Account Building Rules
- Define Web Requisitions Approval Workflow (optional)
The steps below provide instructions on how to set up Oracle Purchasing for use with Web Requisitions.
Step 2. Set up purchasing categories.
Web Requisitions groups supplier item catalog information based on categories. Your employees need to be able to immediately recognize which items fall into a specific category.
1. Configure your category flexfield and define your categories with descriptions that are as detailed as possible so it is easy for your users to see which category fits their task.
2. Use a Category Descriptive Flexfield segment to control which categories you want to offer over the web. For categories you wish to offer, enable the ATTRIBUTE10 descriptive flexfield. Simply set the flexfield to accept a value, and enter a value in every category you want to display on the web. See: Flexfields.
Step 3. Set up purchasing items.
1. To use Web Requisitions for predefined items in your item master, simply follow the standard setup as you would for your normal purchasing items.
2. Use the ATTRIBUTE14 descriptive flexfield segment in the PO_LINES_ALL table to specify additional URL to support drilldown to item specification web pages.
For items which support drilldown, enter the static URL for the item-specific web page in ATTRIBUTE14.
3. You may want to set up default expense accounts for each item you requisition on the web.
Step 4. Set up Purchasing Category Hierarchies
You may build logical groupings of your categories or set up a category hierarchy drilldown mechanism. To do this, log into Oracle Self-Service Web Applications as SYSADMIN and select the Maintain Category Hierarchies link. Select a category set from the list of values as the parent, or 'Top' category, then establish 'child' relationships with related categories. You may embed categories to multiple levels using the category/related category relationship.
Step 5. Set up requisition templates.
Follow the standard Oracle Purchasing setup steps to define your requisition templates.
1. Define URLs for Item Images and Specifications and Suppliers. You can easily integrate your existing product specification HTML pages into the Oracle Web Employees product, or you can provide direct connectivity to your supplier site for the item drilldown.
2. Enable the ATTRIBUTE14 segment of the PO_LINES (supplier item), MTL_SYSTEM_ITEMS (Items), or PO_VENDORS (Supplier) descriptive flexfield. Oracle Web Requisitions will automatically include hypertext links that allow you to drill down to the various locations you have defined.
3. For each supplier item you want to support drilldown, enter the static URL for the item-specific web page in ATTRIBUTE14 of the PO_LINES table.
4. For each item you want to support drilldown, enter the static URL for the item-specific web page in ATTRIBUTE14 of the MTL_SYSTEM_ITEMS table.
5. For each supplier you want to support drilldown, enter the static URL for the supplier-specific web page in ATTRIBUTE14 of the PO_VENDORS table.
Step 6. Set up Requisition Template Hierarchies
You may build logical groupings of your templates, or set up a category hierarchy drilldown mechanism. To do this, log into Oracle Self-Service Web Applications as SYSADMIN and select the Maintain Template Hierarchies link. Select a template set from list of values as the parent, or 'Top' template, then establish 'child' relationships with related categories. You may embed categories to multiple levels using the template / related template relationship.
Step 7. Set up suppliers and supplier sites.
Follow the normal setup you would use for all of your suppliers. See: Oracle Purchasing.
Step 8. Set up supplier catalog and/or purchase agreements.
Web Requisitions Catalog order displays information defined in both your supplier item catalogs (i.e. Quotation Price Catalogs) and your purchase agreements. Simply set up your standard purchase agreements and price/sales catalog quotations, and Web Requisitions automatically gives your requestors access to this information. Currently, Web Requisitions does not support multiple price breaks on purchase agreements and price/sales catalog quotations. You should specify a single line with agreed upon price in your source document setup. This provides a much simpler view of the purchase options for requestors - a simple interface is a key requirement to the successful roll out of wide-use applications such as requisitions and expense reporting.
Step 9. Set up employee information.
You should take care to provide the correct location and default expense account information for each employee. Web Requisitions uses the location provided on the employee assignment as the default "deliver to" location.
2. Every employee using the web requisitions features should have a default location.
3. Every item must have a default expense account. If you have not extended the web requisitions account builder function you must define the default for each item.
Step 10. Set up web users.
Oracle Web Employees includes functions for registration and administration that allow you to define your web users and link them to your internal employee information.
1. Verify that you have set up a web user account for each employee who will be generating requisitions.
2. Provide a default template for each web user. The web user has the option of changing the default template they will use.
Step 11. Set up requisition expense account.
Oracle Web Employees provides standard account defaults for your web requisitions based on your employee and item setup. Web Requisitions first uses the default expense account associated with your employee assignment. If the employee does not have a default expense account, the item expense account is used to create the requisition distribution.
Oracle Web Employees provides a standard PL/SQL API you can modify if your needs do not match the existing defaulting rules. Follow these steps to include your customer account building logic into the web requisitions system. Oracle Web Employees checks to see if your expense account is set up properly before creating a requisition in Oracle Purchasing.
1. Open the file ICXRQCUB.pls in
$ICX_TOP/patchsc/admin/sql
using an ASCII text editor.
2. Insert your custom logic into the procedure
cust_custom_build_req_account
of package icx_req_custom
. You can use the input parameters reference as part of your account creation. You should return either the account ID in the OUT variable account_id
or the account number (concatenated segments) via the account_num
OUT variable.
$ sqlplus <apps_username>/<apps_password> @ICXRQCUB.pls
Step 12. Set up requisitions import concurrent program.
Oracle Web Employees creates your Web Requisitions in temporary tables. To validate and move the data into the Oracle Purchasing tables, run the Requisition Import program in Oracle Purchasing at a set frequency. To process only those requisitions created on the Web, choose an Import Source as 'ICX'.
See Also
Setting Up