Customers

This chapter describes how to view, create, and manage information for your customers and their contacts. Customer information includes profile, classifications, addresses, contact points, relationships, relationship hierarchies, accounts, transactions, notes, tasks, attachments, interactions, and source system mappings. You can also acquire D&B information for organizations to enrich customer information, and identify potential duplicates to improve data quality.

This chapter covers the following topics:

Introduction to Customers

In Oracle Customers Online (OCO), customers are organizations or persons, each as a party in the Oracle Trading Community Architecture (TCA) Registry. Customers Online provides various features for you to manage your customer information.

If the following features are enabled, you can:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Introduction to Oracle Customers Online

Major Features for Customers

Customers Online provides many features for you to view, create, and manage information about organizations and persons, whether they are your customers or other members of your trading community.

To start, you search for the organization or person that you want to manage, or create a new organization or person. See: Searching for Organizations or Persons.

After you find the organization or person that you want to work on, you can:

Related Topics

Introduction to Customers

Single Source of Truth Data

The Single Source of Truth (SST) record is a view of the most accurate organization information, based on your administrator's setup. Each attribute in the SST record contains either user-entered or source system data, depending on the setup and availability of data. See: Single Source of Truth Overview, Oracle Trading Community Architecture Administration Guide.

If the SST record is set up, then Oracle Customers Online uses the SST data where applicable, for example, the organization overview and profile.

Comparing Information from Data Sources

When you start the process to purchase D&B data for a specific organization, you first view the organization's existing user-entered and D&B information, if any. See: Overview. You can also view that information after purchasing D&B data. See: Viewing Information from Data Sources, Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide.

In the Business Verification subtab, you can also compare the D&B data with the Single Source of Truth record, if SST is set up. If not, you see only the D&B and user-entered information in this subtab.

Note: If you have the Oracle Customers Online Superuser responsibility, you can see all three sets of data at the time: user entered, D&B, and SST. If SST is not set up, only user-entered and D&B data are displayed.

Related Topics

Introduction to Customers

Introduction to Contacts

In Customers Online, a contact is a person who is a contact, employee, or member of an organization. Your administrator can add other roles, which a person plays in relation to organizations, to the Party Contacts relationship group to be considered a contact in Customers Online. A person can be a contact for multiple organizations. See: Relationships Overview, Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide

Information about a person is separate from the information for each contact role. For example, you can manage addresses for Joe Smith as a person, as well as for Joe Smith as a contact for Vision Corporation, and Joe Smith as a contact for Business World. These features for persons are also available for contacts:

To start, you search for the person that you want to manage information for as a contact. See: Searching for Organizations or Persons. After you select the person, you can switch from the person to a contact role, for the above features.

Customers Online allows enterprises that maintain both business-to-business and business-to-consumer customer relationships to switch between viewing a business-to-consumer person customer record and viewing the person in the context of his or her role as a contact of an organization.

To view and manage a contact, the person must be in a contact relationship for at least one organization. For a specific person, you can view the organizations that he or she is a contact for, and create and manage contact relationships from the person's perspective. You can also create and manage contacts for a specific organization, from the organization's perspective. See: Contact Relationships.

Customers Online supports detailed views of contacts, as described above, only for organization contacts. Persons who are contacts for other persons, such as an emergency contact, maintain their own addresses, contact points, and other information, and are not treated the same way as organization contacts.

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Searching for Organizations or Persons

The Organizations page is the starting point for your work on organizations, and the Persons page for persons. Use simple or advanced search to find the entity you want to work on. The entity may be an active party that has an active, inactive, or no account at all. However, you cannot search for inactive parties. You can also:

For organization searches only, if you use Oracle Customer Data Librarian and the HZ: Display Certification Level profile option is set to Yes, then certification levels are displayed to help you evaluate the search results. The levels are assigned in Oracle Customer Data Librarian to indicate the quality of records, and the meaning of each level is based on your organization's business needs. See: Assigning Certifications, Oracle Customer Data Librarian User Guide.

If you see from the search results that the entity does not already exist, you can create organizations or persons. See: Creating Organizations or Persons.

Tip: When you create a new person, you can also create a new contact relationship between that person and an organization.

You can also:

The Organizations and Person pages also provide the same recent items from the Home page. See: Recent Items.

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Creating Organizations or Persons

If you are creating a new contact for a specific organization, it is the same as creating a person with the organization already entered. See the note below. For more information on creating a contact, see: Creating Contact Relationships.

Enter the new organization or person's profile and address information. See: Creating and Updating Addresses.

Note: To display an asterisk for mandatory fields in the Address page, you must define the same fields as mandatory in FAF and address validation, if both are used.

With the address feature in Oracle Customer Online, you can add more addresses after you create this organization or person, and select the primary address for each purpose. See: Addresses.

Important: If you enter an organization for the person you are creating, then:

You can view and manage information for the person in this contact role. See: Introduction to Contacts.

You can optionally create the organization or person and immediately add more details, such as:

See: Profile.

Related Topics

Preventing Duplicate Organizations, Persons, or Contacts

Searching for Organizations and Persons

Preventing Duplicate Organizations, Persons, or Contacts

If your administrator has enabled organization, person, or contact duplicate prevention, you are warned if the organization, person, or contact that you are creating is a possible duplicate of an existing party. Duplicate prevention applies also to creating organizations or persons as part of creating a new relationship.

You can either:

You can view the status, and start and end dates of a contact relationship, on personalization.

Related Topics

Preventing Duplicate Relationships

Creating Organizations or Persons

Marking Duplicate Organizations or Persons

If you have Oracle Customer Data Librarian (CDL), and your administrator has set up duplicate identification for Customers Online, you can specify in Customers Online which organizations or persons are potential duplicates. Each set of duplicates that you mark is sent to CDL as a merge request.

The data librarian can evaluate your merge request and merge the duplicates into one record, as well as determine how the duplicates' relationships, including contact relationships, are merged. The data librarian can also reject your merge request and retain the merge candidates as independent customer records. See: Merge Requests Overview, Oracle Customer Data Librarian User Guide.

The HZ: Merge Master Party Defaulting profile option determines the default master record, which remains after the other duplicates merge into it. The data librarian can reassign the merge master before the actual merge.

Related Topics

Searching for Organizations and Persons

Overview

The overview displays the most critical profile information about the selected organization, person, or contact, and lets you manage the associated notes and tasks. You can switch between the person and contact overview.

Note: You get a view-only version of the overview if you navigate here by clicking an organization, person, or contact name within a process flow.

You can also:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Introduction to Contacts

Profile

The profile allows you to view and enter the organization, person, or contact's profile details. You can switch between the person and contact profile.

If you change attributes that are common to both the person and the contact, the change is not reflected in both cases. For example, you have Joe as a person and the same Joe as the contact for Vision Corporation. If you change the address for Joe, you do not update the address for Joe in his contact role for Vision.

Note: The person and contact name is always the same. If you change Joe as a person to Joseph, you also get Joseph as the new contact name for all of Joe's contact roles.

For contacts only, you can enter purposes for the contact relationship. For example, Joe can be a contact for Vision's billing and shipping purposes.

Note: Additional attributes are available if your administrator has set up extended custom attributes.

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Introduction to Contacts

Maintaining Parties, Oracle Customer Data Librarian User Guide.

Profile History

The profile history allows you to view the change history for an organization or person. You can use the profile history information to identify the changes since the time the customer is created.

You can also filter the change history by the source system identifier.

The Organization Profile History page displays the organization name, D-U-N-S number, tax ID, date of creation, the date from which the organization is effective, the date when the organization is inactive, and the source system name.

The Person Profile History page displays the prefix, name, gender, the taxpayer ID, date of creation, the date from which the person is active in the system, the date when the person is inactive, and the source system name. You can use OA Personalization to personalize the page.

Classifications

Classify organizations and persons using classification schemes, which include a class category and a class code. The class category is a broad subject that you can classify entities in, and the code, or classification, is a specific value of the category.

For organizations only, you can use standard industrial classifications, including SIC, NACE, and NAICS codes. See: Classifications Overview, Oracle Trading Community Architecture Administration Guide.

To manage classifications for the selected organization or person, you can:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Assigning Classifications

Within the class category that you selected for the organization or person, select the classification, or class code, that you want to assign. Depending on whether multiple assignments are allowed for the class category, you can select either only one or multiple classifications. Class categories must be compiled before their classification codes can be associated with parties. Only active classification codes can be associated to parties.

If the selected class category is hierarchical, you can optionally view the category in a hierarchical structure. The hierarchy focuses on the specific classification that you click View in Hierarchy for.

After you select at least one classification to assign, either in a nonhierarchical or hierarchical view, specify the date range for the classifications. If a classification is already assigned to the organization or person, you can add the same classification again only if the date ranges do not overlap.

Related Topics

Classifications

Addresses

Aside from entering an address when you create an organization, person, or contact, you can create and maintain additional addresses, assigning different purposes to each address. The identifying address is the main address for identifying the organization, person, or contact, regardless of purpose.

For other views of these addresses, you can:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Introduction to Contacts

Creating and Updating Addresses

First select the country, which determines the address format for you to use. See: Address Entry and Formatting Process, Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide.

Tip: Set the territory in your user preferences to determine the default country for creating and updating addresses.

If your administrator has set up address validation, then the address is validated based on the setup. If you do not enter complete or accurate address information, then you can select from a list of suggestions, if available. See: Address Entry and Real-Time Validation Process, Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide.

If the HZ: Validate First 5 Digits of US ZIP Code profile option is set to Yes, or you have not specified a value for the profile, and you enter more than five digits for a US ZIP code, then only the first five digits are validated against the Geography repository. If the first five digits are valid according to the HZ_GEOGRAPHIES, then the 5-digit ZIP code is displayed in the list of suggestions in the - State, County, City, and ZIP Code format. For example, if you enter 94404-1234 as the ZIP code, then the Suggestions list displays records, which match the ZIP code - 94404. If you do not enter a value for the ZIP code, then a value from the list of suggestions is displayed.

If the first five digits of the US ZIP code are valid, then the remaining digits after the fifth digit are stored in the ZIP+4 format.

You can specify that the address is the identifying address only if the address is active. If an identifying address already exists for the organization, person, or contact, the identifying address is switched from the previous address to the newly designated address.

You can enter multiple purposes for the address. To view all addresses of this organization, person, or contact by purpose, and to select the primary address for a purpose, use the Select Primary Address by Purpose page.

Note: Additional attributes are available if your administrator has set up extended custom attributes.

Related Topics

Addresses

Contact Points

Contact points are specific ways of contacting the organization, person, or contact. You can create and update these types of contact points: phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and URLs.

The primary contact point is the identifying contact point for each type. For example, of all e-mail addresses that a person has, only one is designated as the primary, or identifying, e-mail for that person.

The primary contact point must be active. When you update a contact point to be primary, but one already exists, the primary contact point for that type is switched from the previous contact point to the newly designated one.

You can remove, or inactivate, contact points. You cannot remove a primary contact point until you update another contact point of the same type and designate it as primary.

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Introduction to Contacts

Contact Relationships

In Oracle Customers Online, contacts are persons who play any of a specific group of contact roles for organizations. You can manage information about contacts separately from information about the persons themselves. See: Introduction to Contacts and Relationships Overview, Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide.

Note: For contact relationships between persons, see: Other Relationships.

For organizations, you can view and manage their contacts. An organization that has contacts is called an employer. For persons, you can see the employers that they are contacts for.

For hierarchical contact relationships, you can also use the hierarchy to view and manage relationships for existing persons and organizations. See: Hierarchies Overview.

Contact Relationships from Organization's Perspective

Manage contacts for the selected organization.

Contact Relationships from Person's Perspective

Manage employers that the selected person is a contact for.

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Creating Contact Relationships

Whether you are adding a contact for an organization, or an employer for a person, the relationship is the same and both directions of the relationship are created. The only difference is whether you are creating the relationship from the person or organization's perspective, meaning with the person or organization as the relationship subject.

You can enter an existing or new person as the contact, or organization as the employer. If you enter a new entity, you create not only the contact relationship but also the new person or organization.

The profile, address, and contact point information are all for the contact, not the person or organization itself. See: Introduction to Contacts.

With the address feature in Oracle Customer Online, you can add more addresses for this contact, and select the primary address for each purpose. See: Addresses.

You can optionally create the relationship and immediately add more details, such as the purposes of this new contact relationship. See: Profile.

Note: The new relationship has a start date of today, and no end date. To end the relationship, just remove the contact or employer.

You can also create a contact relationship as part of creating a new person. See: Creating Organizations or Persons.

Related Topics

Creating Relationships

Preventing Duplicate Organizations, Persons, or Contacts

Contact Relationships

Other Relationships

You can use the Other relationships feature to view and manage all relationships for a person or organization:

See: Relationships Overview, Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide.

For the selected person or organization as the subject, you can:

For all hierarchical relationships, you can also use the hierarchy to view and manage relationships for existing persons and organizations. See: Hierarchies Overview.

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Creating Relationships

When you create a relationship for a selected organization or person, you create both directions of the relationship. For example, the selected organization is Vision and you create a relationship with Subsidiary as the role and Vision2 as the object of the relationship. You can then see that Vision's subsidiaries include Vision2, when viewing the relationships of Vision. When you view relationships of Vision2, however, you can also see that Vision2's headquarters is Vision.

Date Ranges

You can create multiple relationships between the same two parties, with different relationship roles, even if relationship date ranges overlap. For example, Joe Smith can be both a contact and beneficiary of Jane Smith at the same time.

To use the same relationship role for multiple relationships between the same two parties, however, the relationship date ranges must not overlap. For example, Joe Smith can be a contact for Jane Smith from 1997 through 2002, and then again from 2004 on.

If you use the current date for the start date, then the relationship's start time is the system time. If not, the start time is at the beginning of the start date. The relationship's end time is at the end of the end date. You do not have to enter an end date.

Preventing Duplicate Relationships

You can use new or existing organizations and persons to create a relationship with. You create the new organization or person as well as a new relationship. If duplicate prevention is enabled, you are warned if your new organization or person is a potential duplicate of existing parties. See: Preventing Duplicate Organizations, Persons, or Contacts.

If you use existing organizations or persons for the relationship, you cannot create the relationship if a relationship between the two parties already exists with a date range that overlaps your new relationship.

Related Topics

Other Relationships

Updating Relationships

You can update only the date range of existing relationships. If other relationships already exist between the same two parties with the same relationship role, your updated date range must not overlap the date ranges of those existing relationships.

You can enter or change an end date to terminate a relationship at the specified date. You can also extend a relationship by entering a later end date or removing the end date, even for relationships with an end date that already passed.

If you use the current date for the start date, then the relationship's start time is the system time. If not, the start time is at the beginning of the start date. The relationship's end time is at the end of the end date.

Related Topics

Other Relationships

Visualizing Relationships

Use visualization to view relationship information in a graphic format that shows all relationships, no matter how complex, to the selected organization or person. Select a party to place that party at the center and view all relationships to that party.

You can also:

From the list of relationship roles, you can select a function and click + or - to select a corresponding setting.

You can access this visualization feature only from the organization or person overview. See: Overview.

Related Topics

Contact Relationships

Other Relationships

Accounts

An organization or person can have multiple accounts for various business purposes. You can view and maintain key information about each account, including the account sites, contacts, and relationships.

From the Accounts page, you can:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Customer Overview, Oracle Receivables User Guide

Creating Accounts

Aside from the account description and established date, the rest of the available information depends on what your administrator has set up in the Customer Information flexfield. When you create an account, the account number is always automatically generated.

Click Add More Details to save the new account and enter account details, for example site and contacts. See: Viewing and Updating Accounts.

Related Topics

Accounts

Viewing and Updating Accounts

Account Overview is the central page for account information, where you can view and update general account information as well as sites, contacts, and relationships. All this information is available on one page, to help you completely understand your relationship with your customers.

The account overview is either view only or updatable, depending on how you navigated to the page. Both versions provide the same information, but the updatable page lets you update account profile and detail information as well as create account sites, contacts, and relationships.

Note: You can choose to view or update information relevant to specific operating units, or all operating units that you have access to. The operating unit setting applies also to subsequent subpages you might navigate to, for example to create account sites, account site contacts, and account relationships.

General Information

For organizations only, view the account's credit summary, if the account has a credit review. See: Viewing the Credit Summary, Oracle Credit Management User Guide.

If you are updating the account general information, you can change the account status. You can update the account number only if the Automatic Customer Numbering system option in Oracle Receivables is not set to Yes. Aside from the account description and established date, the rest of the available information depends on what your administrator has set up in the Customer Information flexfield.

Account Sites

Aside from viewing the account's active sites, you can also:

Account Contacts

Aside from viewing the account's active contacts, you can also:

Account Relationships

Aside from viewing the account's active relationships, you can also:

Related Topics

Accounts

Creating and Updating Account Sites

Address

Note: The displayed operating unit comes from the operating unit selected in the Account Overview page for this account. See: Viewing and Updating Accounts.

When creating an account site, select an existing address as the site. You cannot create a new address as a new account site. Information in addition to the address is available based on the setup for the Address Information flexfield.

You cannot update the address or the additional flexfield information.

Business Purpose

Account Site Contacts

Account site contacts are available only on the Update Account Site Details page, not on the Create Account Sites page. Aside from viewing the account site's active contacts, you can:

Related Topics

Accounts

Transactions

View the selected organization or person's associated transactions. Customers Online displays transactions based on these customer relationship life cycles:

Note: You can choose to view transactions relevant to specific operating units, or all operating units that you have access to. Some transactions, such as campaigns and leads, are not associated with operating units, so the information displayed for these transactions does not change based on the selected operating unit.

Note: You can view transactions originating in non-Oracle applications on the Transactions page. See Extending the Transaction Viewer to Non-Oracle Applications, Oracle Customers Online Implementation Guide.

To create or update these transactions, use the Oracle application that the displayed information comes from, or another relevant application. For example, you can update credit items in Oracle Receivables, where those transactions come from.

This table shows the transaction types displayed in Customers Online and the application that the information comes from.

Transaction Type Description Oracle Application See Also
Campaigns Marketing activities designed to support a goal, advertising the organization or person's products, services, offers, and messages in front of existing and potential customers. Oracle Marketing Oracle Marketing User Guide
Events A seminar, class, product demonstration, or any other activity that is location specific. Events can be standalone or part of a marketing campaign. Oracle Marketing Oracle Marketing User Guide
Leads Marketing leads of the organization's or person's customers. Oracle Leads Management Oracle Leads Management Implementation and Administration Guide
Opportunities The organization or person's potential sales to their existing or new customers. Oracle Sales and Oracle TeleSales Oracle Sales User Guide and Oracle TeleSales User Guide
Quotes Offers from the organization or person to customers, including a total price and the primary salesperson for the quote. Oracle Quoting Oracle Quoting User Guide
Orders Orders from the organization or person's customers for products or services. Oracle Order Management Oracle Order Management User's Guide
Debit Items The organization or person's debit items. Oracle Receivables Oracle Receivables User Guide
Credit Items The organization or person's credit items. Oracle Receivables Oracle Receivables User Guide
Installed Base Records of products shipped to the organization's or person's customers, including serial numbers and current status. Oracle Install Base Oracle Install Base User Guide
Service Requests Requests for service from the organization or person's customers. Oracle TeleService Oracle TeleService Implementation Guide
Delinquencies The organization or person's payments that do not meet the invoice schedule. Oracle Advanced Collections Oracle Advanced Collections User Guide
Broken Promises The organization or person's promises to pay with the Broken status. Oracle Advanced Collections Oracle Advanced Collections User Guide

The list view shows the top five transactions for each transaction type. You can click More to view more or all transactions for the organization or person.

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Extending Transactions Viewer to Non-Oracle Applications, Oracle Customers Online Implementation Guide

Notes

Manage notes associated with the organization or person, using the Oracle Applications Framework notes features from Oracle Common Application Calendar. A note is information, such as directions, special instructions, or reminders, that is attached to an object.

You can:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Tasks

Manage tasks, defined as the lowest units of work, that are related to the organization or person, using the Oracle Applications Framework tasks features from Oracle Common Application Calendar. You can:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Source Systems

Source System Management (SSM) allows mappings between an organization, person, or contact and its source systems. Use SSM mappings to track which legacy, third party, or other systems the record originated from. See: Source Systems Overview, Oracle Trading Community Architecture Administration Guide.

In Customers Online, you can view active and inactive source system mappings. The source ID is the ID of the record in the source system. In the source system history are the inactive, or removed, source system mappings, which have passed end dates.

If your administrator has provided you privileges through the HZ: Source System Mapping Access profile option, you can also:

Related Topics

Major Features for Customers

Hierarchies Overview

A hierarchy is a collection of parties associated with a particular hierarchical relationship type at a given point in time. The hierarchy is a tree structure that shows relationships by organizing parties in hierarchical levels. For example, you can get a visual representation of a corporate structure. See: Relationships Overview, Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide.

In Oracle Customers Online, you can view and manage hierarchies for existing organizations and persons. To start, you search for the hierarchies you want to manage, or to make sure that the hierarchy you want to create does not already exist. You can search by:

The search results display hierarchies that include the party you searched for. You can:

The Hierarchies page also provides the same Recent Items bin from the Home page. See: Recent Items.

The relationships in hierarchies are the same as ones in the contact and Other relationships features. To create relationships with new persons or organizations, you must use those features. Hierarchies involve only existing parties. See: Contact Relationships and Other Relationships.

D&B Hierarchy

If D&B data was batch loaded or the Enterprise Management GDP acquired through online purchase, you can also access the corporate hierarchy that D&B provides. Use the D&B Hierarchy relationship type. See: D&B Hierarchy, Oracle Trading Community Architecture Administration Guide.

All OCO hierarchy features also apply to the D&B Hierarchy. You should make a copy of the original D&B Hierarchy as provided by D&B. See: Copying Hierarchies. The copied hierarchy would have a different relationship type, and you can make changes to it without modifying the original.

Related Topics

Introduction to Customers

Creating Hierarchies

To create a hierarchy, you first define:

The name of the hierarchy is automatically created based on the root node and hierarchy type. For example, if you enter Vision as the root party, and Corporate as the type, then the hierarchy name is Vision - Corporate Hierarchy.

You then add another existing party as a child of the root node.

When you view this hierarchy, you would see this relationship between the root and the child, as well as other existing relationships that belong to the hierarchy. See: Viewing and Updating Hierarchies.

Tip: You can also create new hierarchies by copying existing hierarchies.

Related Topics

Hierarchies Overview

Viewing and Updating Hierarchies

In the hierarchy that you select to view, the specified party is at the top. You can see its children, or parties ranked lower in relationships. If the selected person or organization is not the actual root node, then you can choose to view the entire hierarchy, all the way up to the root.

By default, the hierarchy as of the current date is displayed. The hierarchy represents a structure of relationships for the date that you specify. The hierarchy displays all relationships that fit both of these criteria:

This table shows an example of three relationships and their date ranges.

Relationship Start Date End Date
A January 1 January 10
B January 10 January 30
C January 15 None

This table shows examples of which relationships the hierarchy would display depending on the as of date.

As Of Included Relationships
January 1 A
January 10 B
January 15 B and C
January 30 C

The hierarchy displays all existing, active relationships for the date, including relationships created and maintained with the contact and Other relationship features.

Aside from viewing hierarchies, you can also:

Related Topics

Hierarchies Overview

Copying Hierarchies

From an existing hierarchy, you select the part of the hierarchy that you want to copy for creating a new hierarchy. Whether you select the root node or not, the copied hierarchy includes all relationships from the selected node down.

You must select a different relationship type for the copied hierarchy. Only relationship types that contain all the relationship roles of the original hierarchy are available. For example, if the hierarchy that you are copying from contains a total of six relationship roles, the available relationship types for the copied hierarchy must have at least those six roles.

Note: If no relationship types are available for the copied hierarchy, your administrator can create relationship types with the roles you need.

You copy the hierarchy as it is on the date you specify, even if you were viewing the original hierarchy as of another date.

Your new hierarchy is named the usual way, based on the root node and the relationship type.

Related Topics

Viewing and Updating Hierarchies

Creating Hierarchies

Adding Children in Hierarchies

You can add children to nodes in hierarchies, either as part of creating a new hierarchy or for updating an existing hierarchy. You create a new relationship between the parent and the child that you enter.

The relationship role describes the role of the child, or object party, with respect to the parent. For example, if Vision is the parent, you can enter Subsidiary for the role and Vision2 for the object party to create this hierarchical corporate relationship: Vision2 is a subsidiary of Vision.

The selected hierarchy type determines the available roles, and the selected role determines the type of party for the object. For example, if the Subsidiary role is defined so that only an organization can be a subsidiary, then only organizations are available as the object party.

Note: You can use only existing parties as parent and child. Duplicate prevention, therefore, does not apply to creating relationships through a hierarchy.

Related Topics

Creating Relationships

Viewing and Updating Hierarchies

Updating Relationships in Hierarchies

When you select a relationship in a hierarchy to update, you can change only the relationship role and date range. The displayed role is the role that the subject, or parent, plays in the relationship.

When you change the relationship role, the existing relationship actually ends, and a new one is created with the new role. The current date is the end date of the old relationship. The new relationship has the date range that you specify.

Related Topics

Updating Relationships

Viewing and Updating Hierarchies

Moving Parties in Hierarchies

When you move selected parties within a hierarchy, you accordingly update affected relationships. You can select one or more parties that you want to move under a new parent in the same hierarchy. The parties that you move and the new parent can be on any level of the hierarchy.

Note: You cannot move parties with the relationship start date in the future.

Each move ends the existing relationship and creates a new one based on the new structure in the hierarchy. The current date is the end date of the existing relationship as well as the start date of the new relationship.

Note: If you need to change start or end dates after moves, see: Updating Relationships in Hierarchies.

For example, the current hierarchy has Party A as the parent of Party B, which is the parent of Party C, which is the parent of Party D. You move Party C and select Party A as its new parent. This move ends the relationship for Party B as the parent of Party C and creates a new relationship for Party A as the parent of Party C. Party D moves along with Party C and remains a child of Party C.

This diagram shows the hierarchy before and after the move:

the picture is described in the document text

The relationship role of the moved relationship stays the same with respect to parties that you move. For example, if Party C was a subsidiary of Party B, it would then be the subsidiary of Party A, and Party D is still a subsidiary of Party C.

Related Topics

Viewing and Updating Hierarchies