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Inventory Locations View

The Inventory Locations view defines the inventory locations in a service business. The drop-down list below the view bar provides these choices for inventory locations: My Inventory Locations, All Inventory Locations, and All Inventory Locations Across Organizations.

All Inventory Locations Across Organizations

An organization is a category that limits the visibility of data within a company. The All Inventory Locations Across Organizations view shows the inventory locations for all organizations within a company. Inventory transactions can take place only between locations within the same organization (set in the Inventory Locations list). For more information about setting up organizations, see the chapter on access control in Siebel Security Guide.

The person who owns a record can see this record in the My Inventory Locations view, even if it is in a different organization. However, for the same person, this record does not appear in the All Inventory Locations view.

CAUTION:  Improper configuration of organizations and inventory locations can lead to unintended results. It may not be possible to carry out inventory transactions between certain locations.

Setting Up External Locations

The seed data supplied with Field Service contains an External Location with the type, Virtual. This location is used as the default in the absence of a source or destination location. The seed data also allows inventory transactions between locations in different organizations. For more information, see Inventory Transactions Across Organizations View.

The administrator cannot delete the External Location record. The ROW_ID (for example, VIRTUAL_INVLOC) makes this value unique. Certain C⁺⁺ code in Field Service references this value. If the administrator were to delete this row and re-create it, the record would be assigned a new ROW_ID and certain transactions would fail. The administrator can rename the location.

To assure that all field service engineers in any organization within the company can use the External Location, using the Organization field, associate all organizations in the company with the External Location.