Bookshelf v7.5: About Application Services Interfaces

Siebel Order Management Guide > Preparing for Integration >

About Application Services Interfaces

Siebel's Application Services Interfaces (ASIs) are predefined interfaces that allow the exchange of information between Siebel applications and external applications.

Several features of Siebel Order Management use ASIs:

Availability to Promise. Availability to promise (ATP) allows end users to inquire about whether an item is available. End users can specify a requested date, a specific source such as an inventory location, and preferred shipment methods that could impact the delivery time. End users can also reserve available products for a customer to make sure they will be available when the order is processed, and they can unreserve products if customers change their minds. When the user clicks the Inquire, Reserve, or Unreserve button in a quote or order, the business service sends a request to a back office fulfillment engine to determine whether the specified line items are available. For details about how to set up the Availability to Promise ASI, see About Using Third-Party Product Availability Applications. For details about the user's experience of using the ATP functionality, see Checking Availability to Promise (ATP).

Credit Check. When a customer uses the purchase order payment option for a quote or an order, the end user can perform a credit check to make sure that the customer can make the purchase on credit. In an order, the user clicks the Credit Check button in the Payment view tab to perform the credit check. In a quote, credit check is performed as part of the verification process when the user chooses the Verify menu option. Both actions launch a workflow that first determines if credit check is applicable for the selected quote or order and then, if needed, sends a request to an external system to get the credit decision for that transaction. Typically, the external system that performs the credit check is the back-office order or credit management system. For details about how to set up the Credit Check ASI, see About Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications. For details about the users' experience of using the credit check functionality, see Checking Credit for a Purchase Order.

Submit Order. When users have finished defining an order for a customer and the customer has agreed to the price and provided payment information, the order is submitted to the back office. When the user clicks the Submit button, the Submit Order ASI workflow sends information about the order to the back office system. For details about setting up the ASIs used by this workflow, see Setting Up Quote and Order ASIs. For details about the user's experience of using the submit order functionality, see Submitting an Order.

Submit Quote. After a quote has been verified, the user can submit the quote to the back-office or any external system. When the user chooses the Submit menu option for a quote record from the menu on the Quote list, the Submit Quote ASI workflow sends the quote information to the external system and updates Siebel with the response from the external system. The external system might use the quote information for converting a quote to an order or for production planning. Additional configuration required for this can be made in the Siebel application as required to meet your company's business needs. For details about setting up the ASIs used by this workflow, see Setting Up Quote and Order ASIs.

Query Order Status. Typically, a company will receive information about the status of orders at regular intervals from the fulfillment system. However, when a sales person talks with a customer about the status of an order, they want to make sure that they present the most current information. In order to do so, they can click the Get Status button on an order. This calls the Get Order Status ASI workflow, which retrieves information from the back-office system. For details about setting up the ASIs used by this workflow, see Setting Up Quote and Order ASIs. For details about the user's experience of using the submit order functionality, see Submitting an Order.

Updating Order Status. When the status of an order is updated in a back-office system, it can replicate that information in the Siebel application to keep the two systems synchronized. This is done by using the Siebel Order ASI with a method of Update or Sync, and can be set up as a Web service. For details about using the Siebel Order ASI, see Setting Up Quote and Order ASIs.

Figure 4 shows the points in the order process where ASI integration occur.

Figure 4. ASI Integration Points in the Ordering Process

You must set up the ASIs shipped with Siebel Order Management before they can be used. This chapter provides the procedures that you must perform to set up these ASIs. It also describes the ways that Siebel Order Management invokes ASIs, and documents the workflows that you may want to modify to change the ways that ASIs are invoked.

For general information about ASIs, see Application Services Interface Reference: Siebel eBusiness Application Integration Volume VI.