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Cotermination is used to determine the end date for service programs that you order for new products in Order Entry/Shipping or for existing products in Oracle Service. The system cotermination date is checked first; if none is found, Oracle Service checks the customer cotermination date.

Suppose you set a cotermination date at the system level for October 31, and a customer cotermination date for December 1. Service programs first check for the system cotermination date and set the end dates to October 31. If no date had been set at the system level, when the system was defined, the customer level cotermination date is used. Another customer has five systems, each with a different cotermination date. For each system, the individual cotermination date becomes the cotermination date for that system only. In turn, if the system had not been assigned a cotermination date, the customer cotermination date would be used.

A customer is notified late in December that the current service programs covering their power generators will be replaced on December 1 of the following year with a more comprehensive service program, and the current service program will not longer be valid. A cotermination date is set at the customer level of November 30. The same customer renews a current service program in January for an existing power generator. In March, the customer orders three more power generators and service programs for other sites. All service programs are checked for cotermination. All four service programs will coterminate on November 30, so the new service programs can start on December 1.

If a service program is ordered, if there is no cotermination date set at either the customer or system level, and if the Coterminate check box has been checked when ordering the service program, the cotermination date is the end date of the service program and the duration is one year. For example, if a service start date is June 26, 1996, the cotermination date is June 25, 1997.

Any service programs applied to customer products use the cotermination date that is current at either the system level or the customer level. If you should change the cotermination date at either the customer or system level, services ordered after the change use the new cotermination date. For example, if a customer level cotermination date is August 31, and five service programs are ordered for customer products in February, the cotermination date is August 31. If the date is then changed to July 31, and new service programs are ordered, the cotermination date for the existing five service programs remains August 31, but the cotermination date for the new service programs is July 31. All subsequent new service programs have the July 31 cotermination date until the date is changed.

You can also define a minimum service duration (in days) with the Service:Minimum Service Duration profile option. For example, you have a cotermination day and month of December 31, and a minimum service duration of 30 days. All services ending on or before December 1 coterminate on December 31 of the current year, and services ending after December 1 coterminate on December 31 of the following year. If coterminating a service program sets its duration to less than the minimum duration, then the service program will be set to coterminate during the following year.