Integrating with Fulfillment and Billing Systems

This chapter provides an overview of fulfillment integration and discusses how to:

• Activate integration points.

• Create autonumbering for orders and quotes.

• Map line statuses.

• Publish order and quote messages.

• Subscribe to order status messages.

• Subscribe to order and quote acknowledgements.

• Subscribe to advanced shipping notices (ASNs).

• Manage externally originating orders.

• Integrate with billing systems.

Understanding Fulfillment Integration

This section discusses:

• Integration setup.

• Integration points.

• Activation of integration points for use with PeopleSoft SCM.

• Order maintenance integration points.

• Customer Data Hub (CDH) impact on integrations with PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM).

See Also

Defining Integrations and Mappings

Defining Order Capture Business Units

Integration Setup

The primary setup of Order Capture integration occurs in the Order Capture Integration Workbench. The Integration Workbench is designed so that all of your fulfillment and maintenance activity can be configured there. There are also a few fields that must be populated on the Business Unit Definition page.

Integration Points

Order Capture uses integration points to transfer information between itself and an order fulfillment system, such as PeopleSoft Order Management or PeopleSoft Inventory. These integration points enable you to configure your collaborative selling solution to work with any third-party fulfillment system or enterprise application integration (EAI) system.

Note. Delivered integration points are configured for integration with PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management (SCM), which provides corresponding integration points for example, integration points that publish the information for which PeopleSoft CRM listens. Integration with other fulfillment or EAI systems might require the use of the PeopleTools Integration Broker to build the necessary transformation layer on top of the existing integration points that PeopleSoft delivers.

PeopleSoft provides the following integration points to support the order fulfillment process:

Note. The integration points listed in the preceding table use PeopleTools Integration Broker messages. Application Message Monitor and Send Master (a PeopleTools testing utility) help you track and test the messages and transformations that make up these integration points. The Get Autonumber integration point is an exception in that it uses PeopleTools Business Interlink technology.

Activation of Integration Points for Use with PeopleSoft SCM

If you are using PeopleSoft SCM, you need to:

• Activate the product, customer, and business unit integration points.

  These integration points synchronize the customer, product, and business unit data in the two systems. This synchronization is required when you use PeopleSoft SCM as your fulfillment system.

• Activate PeopleSoft CRM services, service operations and routings for the PSFT_EP node.

• Activate the SCM integration points that support the CRM/SCM fulfillment integration.

  The SCM integration points for Product Availability and Get Order Status are XML links rather than Integration Broker transactions; the activation process for those integration points is therefore different.

Note. If a product uses an inventory item, that item must also be in the CRM (Item Master Table), otherwise the CRM CI Process will fail. Make sure that you sync the item master first before ProductFullSync or ProductSync.

Order Maintenance Integration Points

When an order is captured in PeopleSoft CRM, it is passed to the fulfillment system for processing. Subsequent changes to the order are sent from and received by the fulfillment system by means of appropriate integration points. The integration points support integrations with PeopleSoft SCM and other third-party fulfillment systems. The Get Order Status integration point is used as part of the Order Maintenance process when an order is retrieved for maintenance. This ensures that PeopleSoft only allows edits on orders and order lines that are not yet fulfilled.

Note. Order maintenance messages, such as CRM_SALES_ORDER_CHANGE, always contain RO_HEADER information, and always publish the RO_INTEGRATION, RO_HISTORY, and RO_CHARGE data for the order. The remainder of the CRM_SALES_ORDER_CHANGE data only contains order information that has been added or changed.

Order maintenance activities require customer service representatives (CSRs) to have accurate information about changed orders. The following table explains the four integration points that form the backbone of Order Capture's order maintenance activities:

Here is a complete list of the SCM integration points to activate for complete fulfillment functionality:

• SALES_CRM_ORDER_LOAD

• SALES_CRM_QUOTE_LOAD

• ADVANCED_SHIPPING_NOTICE

• SALES_ORDER_ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

• SALES_QUOTE_NOTICE

• SALES_CRM_ORDER_CHANGE_LOAD

• SALES_ORDER_CHANGE_NOTICE

• SALES_ORDER_STATUS

Customer Data Hub (CDH) Impact on Integrations with PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM)

Customer merges can happen in the CRM system at any time. This raises the possibility that customer information on a transaction that was originally sent by Order Capture to FSCM via an EIP message is replaced on the CRM transaction due to a merge. This would cause the customer on the original transaction to be lost, because FSCM does not update customers information due to PeopleSoft merges. To ensure that it is always possible to map from the current customer BO_ID in CRM to the original customer BO_ID is SCM, a field that stores the original customer information has been added to the following EIPs:

• Fulfillment EIPs.

  • CRM_SALES_ORDER and SALES_CRM_ORDER_LOAD

  • CRM_QUOTE and SALES_CRM_QUOTE_LOAD

  • CRM_SALES_ORDER_CHANGE and SALES_ CRM_ORDER_CHANGE_LOAD

  • SALES_ORDER_ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  • SALES_QUOTE_NOTICE

  • SALES_ORDER_CHANGE_NOTICE

  • SALES_ORDER_STATUS

  • SCM_GET_PROD_AVAIL and SCM_PROD_AVAIL

• Billing EIPs.

  • CONTRACT_RESPONSE

  • CONTRACT_REQUEST

  • CONTRACT_TXN

• Proposal Management EIPs.

  • OSA_ESA_PROPOSAL

  • OSA_ PROPOSAL_PRICE

  • OSA_ESA_PROPOSAL_STATUS

The existing mapping tables between CRM and SCM are not changed as part of this feature.

If CDH is installed, this mapping of CRM customers to SCM customers is maintained by the CDH data synchronization process, otherwise the mapping is maintained by the Customer Sync EIP.

Note. If PeopleSoft SCM is your fulfillment system, you must keep customer and product data synchronized in the two systems. The Product Sync EIP manages product data synchronization. If you have CDH installed, the CDH data synchronization process manages customer data synchronization; otherwise the Customer Sync EIP manages customer data synchronization.

See Also

Understanding Customer Data Hub Integration

Activating Integration Points

This section discusses how to activate Integration Broker integration points.

Activating Integration Broker Integration Points

Integration Broker integration points are inactive when delivered. You must activate fulfillment integration points. If you are integrating with PeopleSoft SCM, you must activate the Order Management and Inventory integration points listed in the previous section as well. To activate integration points, activate each of the following elements:

• PeopleTools Application Messages:

  You no longer need to activate messages. Messages are created and viewed through PIA. Navigate to PeopleTools, Integration Broker, Integration Setup, Messages to view the messages.

• Integration Broker Service Operations and Routings: Service Operations are accessed through PeopleTools, Integration Broker, Integration Setup, Service Operations. Select the Active check box and save the service operation to activate.

  Routings can be either accessed from a tab on the Service Operations page, or directly through PeopleTools, Integration Broker, Integration Setup, Routings.

  Select the Active check box and save to activate a routing.

You need to set the necessary Queues (called Channel in previous releases) to a Run status in order to process integration broker messages. This is accessed through PeopleTools, Integration Broker, Integration Setup, Queues. Fulfillment uses queues CRM_ORDER_STATUS, SALES_ORDER_LOAD, SALES_ORDER_ACKNOWLEDGEMENT and SALES_ORDER_STATUS.

Creating Autonumbering for Orders and Quotes

You can choose either the autonumbering or grid option for your orders and quotes. Autonumbers are controlled by business unit. When you set up autonumbering, you choose the business unit that controls autonumber generation and specify whether autonumbers are generated in the PeopleSoft CRM system or in an external fulfillment system.

Choosing a Business Unit to Control Autonumber Generation

When you define an Order Capture business unit, you map it to an Order Management business unit. You can map multiple Order Capture business units to a single order management business unit. Therefore, to ensure a single source for all numbers that are sent to the order management system, CRM uses the order management business unit to drive autonumbering. For example, if order capture business unit A is mapped to order management business unit B, then when you create an order in business unit A, its number is generated based on the rules for business unit B.

Note. By design, PeopleSoft SCM cannot use CRM as its autonumbering master for orders and quotes, only for customers, contacts, and products.

Establishing an External ID Source for Orders and Quotes

You can generate order and quote numbers in the CRM system or in your order fulfillment system. If the CRM system does not have an external autonumbering master for orders and quotes, then order numbers are created locally. In this case, be sure that your autonumbering rules include a CRM-specific prefix so that numbers are unique across both your CRM and order fulfillment system. If your fulfillment system is the autonumbering master, the Get Autonumber integration point fetches order numbers from the external system as orders are created. Because order numbers in both systems come from a common autonumbering definition, this configuration ensures that order numbers are unique across both systems.

Note. The external ID for an order or a quote in Order Capture is used to identify the order or quote in your fulfillment system. The RO_INTEGRATION table stores the external ID data. This table stores the external ID by source code (for example, SCM), thus allowing for multiple external IDs per CRM order. In addition to storing the external order number, we use this table to store a mapping of sequence numbers on header and line notes.

Notes no longer have sequence numbers in CRM, but SCM requires a sequence number to identify a note, which is why we map the information in RO_INTEGRATION. In our previous release, EXTERNAL_ID was simply a field on the RO_HEADER table.

Mapping Line Statuses

When you send an order to your fulfillment system, that system is responsible for tracking status of the order; CRM integration points bring status information into CRM to display the status of an order.

Understanding Line Status Mappings

Because different systems can use different order statuses, you must map your fulfillment system's statuses to Order Capture statuses. The Get Order Status integration point reads the map and converts your fulfillment system's statuses into Order Capture statuses. For line statuses, Partial means that if a part of one line is backordered and part is shipped, it is in fact, partially shipped.

Header status mappings may differ slightly. PeopleSoft delivers a map for all the Order Management statuses. If you integrate with a different fulfillment system, modify the map accordingly.

Note. Order Capture maps the status values to node, PSFT_EP, and if you are using a different node name for your Order Management system, you need to enter status mappings against your node name. The node name is read-only once the data is saved.

The following table shows the delivered line status mappings for SCM statuses:

Publishing Order and Quote Messages

When you capture an order or quote in Order Capture, the system instantiates the CORE_ORDER_BP or CORE_QUOTE_BP business project. Both of these business projects include a task that runs the RO_EIP_PUB Application Engine process, which triggers the Publish Order and Publish Quote integration points. These integration points, which consist of the CRM_SALES_ORDER and CRM_SALES_QUOTE messages, make order and quote information available to your fulfillment system. PeopleSoft delivers the Integration Broker transformation rules required to integrate with SCM; integration with other systems requires additional transformation rules.

If you use Order Management, integration points receive the transformed messages and enter order data into Order Management staging tables. The orders have a source code of CRM and start with a status of Open.

Note. The instantiation of these business projects is determined by the setID. Some setIDs may run business processes.

Running Batch Jobs in Order Management (PeopleSoft SCM customers only)

Subsequent to order submission, the Order Management fulfillment process starts with the OMEC process followed by the OM_BACKGRND process; OM_EC - OM Electronic Commerce is the process that moves data from the staging tables to the order production tables. OM_BACKGRND - Order Completion process completes the defaulting of values onto the order. .In Order Management, you can set up exclusions to choose which subprocesses within OMBACK to run or skip based on the order source code. Because orders that originate in CRM already have tax, freight, and pricing information, you should configure OMBACK to skip tax, freight, and pricing calculations for orders with the PeopleSoft CRM source code.

There are fours specific SCM processes you need to run to complete the pre-fulfillment tasks. These consist of:

1. Order Validation Process (OM_EC)

2. Order Completion Process (OMBACK)

3. Outbound Acknowledgement (OMEC Outbound)

4. Data Exchange (Data Publish)

Note. If you navigate to Order Management, Quotes and Orders, Create/Update Order, and choose your business unit, you can search for any order and see that a specific order is In Process.

Understanding the Transformation Process

PeopleSoft delivers transformation rules that you can use when sending information to Order Management. The Application Engine program that performs the transformation has three stages:

1. It evaluates products and packages that were ordered and transforms order lines as follows:

   1. Service products are not sent at all, but other products are sent exactly as defined in the order line.

   2. Product packages are sent as packages, as there is a 1 to 1 mapping of information with Order Management here. However, lightly configured packages are broken into multiple order lines and packages contained in other packages are broken into multiple order lines. Each product included in the package within a package is given its own order line. For example, if Package 1 consists of product A and Package 2, while Package 2 consists of products B and C, then an order line for Package 1 is broken into three order lines: one each for products A, B, and C.

      Note. If you use PeopleSoft SCM and you set pricing at the package level (rather than the component level), no pricing details are sent; each component is sent with a price of zero. Therefore, if you are a SCM customer, pricing for dynamic packages needs to be at the component level.

2. It performs an XSL transformation to structure the integration point data for Order Management.

3. It adds SCM customer information (for example, bill to and ship to addresses) to the order data by looking at the tables (RB_INT_CUSTOMER and RB_INT_CUST_ADS) that map PeopleSoft CRM customer data to SCM customer data. This mapping is maintained by the Customer Sync integration point.

Note. If you use PeopleSoft SCM as your fulfillment system, you must keep customer and product data synchronized in the two systems. The Customer Sync and Product Sync integration points manage this synchronization.

Understanding the Message Content

This section describes certain parts of the order and quote messages published by CRM. For more details about the messages, refer to the integration point catalog and the message definitions. Order and quote messages published by PeopleSoft CRM include:

• EXTERNAL_ID field from the Integration table RO_INTEGRATION: This is the ID that maps to the order or quote number in the fulfillment system.

• Order Management business unit: This is the business unit that is associated with the Order Capture business unit (on the Order Capture Business Unit Definition page).

• An order source code of “CRM”: If Order Management is your fulfillment system, this code affects certain processes. For example, Order Management allows CRM orders to be price protected.

• Order line numbers: Order Capture expects the fulfillment system to carry the line numbers through the entire fulfillment process. For example, if an order has five lines and lines two, four, and five are sent to Order Management, then the order in Order Management has three order lines numbered 2, 4, and 5. This enables order line tracking even when different order lines are sent to different fulfillment systems.

• Pricing: This includes order-level discounts, shipping, and tax information.

• A price protection setting: This prevents Order Management from altering price information.

• Order level discount information.

• Giveaway information: The ORDER_LINE_TAG field ties a giveaway to a specific order line.

• Credit card information: PeopleSoft stores encrypted credit card data, which is what the message sends.

• Quote messages: Quotes include additional information specific to quotes, such as the quote due date and expiration date.

Subscribing to Order Status Messages

In PeopleSoft SCM, the Data Exchanges > Publish Outbound Message utility enables you to publish a snapshot of the order as it exists in the SCM system. The Sales Order/Quote Status option enables you to publish orders by business unit, source code (for example, CRM), customer, order type, order number range, order date range, and order change date range. Also, you can choose to publish orders for specific order status values.

Order Capture subscribes to these SALES_ORDER_STATUS messages to provide a method for synchronizing changes made to the order in SCM, so that the order reflects the same information. For example, if an order is maintained in SCM, and a new order line is added, the SALES_ORDER_STATUS message delivers that order and its new line to Order Capture.

Also, as part of the SALES_ORDER_STATUS processing, the current order status is updated, just as the Get Order Status integration point provides.

If the SALES_ORDER_STATUS message contains orders that did not originate in Order Capture (for example, EDI orders), then order header information is created so that these orders are viewable through the Order Search screen. When users drill down for further details, they are transferred to the uniform resource locator (URL) specified in the Source Code definition for that order. If no URL is specified, then the user is only able to view the header information for that order.

Getting On-Demand Status Updates

The Get Order Status integration point provides on-demand status updates. Users invoke the update by clicking the Refresh button on the Order Tracking page.

The Get Order Status integration point updates:

• The status for individual order lines.

• The scheduled shipping date and the scheduled arrival dates.

The integration point also updates the RO_LINE_HIST table, which stores a history of line statuses. You can query this history, but it does not appear on any Order Capture pages.

Subscribing to Order and Quote Acknowledgements

In PeopleSoft SCM, the Batch Publish job publishes regular acknowledgments (the SALES_ORDER_ACKNOWLEDGEMENT and SALES_QUOTE_NOTICE messages) and change acknowledgements (the SALES_ORDER_CHANGE_NOTICE message) for orders that come from electronic commerce channels—that is, for orders that are entered into the SCM staging tables.

Note. Change acknowledgements are not published for orders that originate within PeopleSoft Order Management.

In CRM, the Receive Order Acknowledgement and Receive Quote Acknowledgement integration points subscribe to SCM messages, while the Receive Order Change Acknowledgement integration point subscribes to the change acknowledgement message. When PeopleSoft CRM receives a change acknowledgement, the order status and change history are updated, while rejected order changes are rolled back. When Order Capture receives a simple order acknowledgement, it updates the order header status to In Process, and it sets the order line statuses to the line status map that you established in the Integration Workbench. When an SCM order line status is set to Open, and this is the status that the acknowledgement message sends, Order Capture maps this to a status of In Fulfillment.

Change History was created with a status of Open when order changes were initially submitted. When the change acknowledgement is processed, changes that were accepted by the Fulfillment system are marked Confirmed, and changes that are not accepted are marked Rejected. When a requested change is rejected, the original values on the order are restored back to their values prior to the change. For example, if a quantity on an order line was increased from 1 to 2, and that change is rejected because the order line had shipped, the quantity is restored to 1 following the processing of the change acknowledgement.

Change Acknowledgement updates order statuses just as the Get Order Status integration point does, providing a current snapshot of the order status at the time the Change Acknowledgement was published. Order statuses are set based on the status mapping that you establish. The Change Acknowledgement also creates order notifications based upon the setup for the Order Capture business unit.

Notifications may be specified to go to the customer, the CSR, both, or none, based on the acceptance of the changes that were requested. In addition, when notifications are specified for the CSR, the notification is sent based on the CSR's preferred notification setting as found in the Worker component, which can be email, worklist, or both. Notifications to the customer are sent to the email address of the contact listed on the order, or for a consumer order, the consumer's email address. If there is no email specified for the contact or consumer, notifications cannot be sent to the customer. Email notifications show the changes requested, along with the acceptance status of Confirmed or Rejected, and display the order following the Change Acknowledgement processing. A CSR's Worklist notification is a link to the order in the Order Capture Worklist.

Subscribing to ASNs

PeopleSoft Inventory publishes ASNs that provide the number of items that have shipped for a specific order line. These messages do not contain status information about items that have not shipped.

The Receive ASN integration point subscribes to the ASN message.

When PeopleSoft CRM receives an ASN, it updates statuses using the following logic:

1. The shipped quantity from the ASN is added to any previously recorded quantity shipped.

2. If the total shipped quantity is greater than or equal to the quantity ordered, the line and all items in the line have a status of Shipped.

3. If the total shipped quantity is less than the quantity ordered, the system assumes that the items with the highest status were shipped and adjusts statuses accordingly.

Since status numbers increase as an item moves through the fulfillment process, the unshipped item with the highest status is considered the most likely item to have been shipped.

For example, consider the following status update history for an order line consisting of ten items:

At 10:00 am, the order was submitted. An order acknowledgment message caused the system to set the status of all ten items to In Fulfillment.

At 1:00 pm, an ASN message indicated that five items had been shipped. Status changes for these five items and the remaining five items keep the status In Fulfillment.

At 2:00 pm, the order status message provided one status for all ten items of that order line, which will be displayed in the Line Details section and the Status By Quantity section of the order in the CRM system.

At 5:00 pm, an ASN message indicated that three more items were shipped. The system updates the Status By Quantity section after the receipt of this ASN message: three items with the status of Shipped and seven items with the status of Partially Shipped. Note that the update only reflects the change in item shipment gathered in this particular ASN message. Access the Package Tracking section of the order to view the total number of items that have been shipped successfully.

At 8:00 pm, an ASN message indicated that two items have shipped. The order will now show us that five have shipped and five are Partially Shipped (even though its true that all have shipped, we don't know that unless we look at the package tracking section).

At 10:00 pm, we receive an Order Status message, and it tells us that ten items have shipped, and now the CRM system shows ten Shipped.

Note. If an ASN is received for any component of a static package, the entire package is considered to have been shipped. When all products on the order have been marked either Shipped, Complete, or Cancelled, the order header status is set to Complete.

Managing Externally Originating Orders

This section explains how Order Capture handles externally originating orders, and explains how to specify URLs for tracking purposes.

Handling External Orders

Order Capture uses the Receive Orders integration point to create PeopleSoft CRM records for orders that originate in your fulfillment system (or any other external system). Unlike the Get Order Status integration point, the Receive Orders integration point does not attempt to match the external system's order numbers with Order Capture order numbers. Each Order Capture business unit definition specifies the source code that is used for orders created in the PeopleSoft CRM system. Orders that are entered by the Receive Orders integration point have a source code provided by the external system. Make sure that the source codes are different for orders that originate internally and externally.

Note. If a user attempts to view an order with a source code other than the one specified in the business unit definition, the system reroutes the user to a page that you specify. If you haven't specified a URL, then you see the header information in order tracking but you can't click on the order for details.

You can specify different target pages to be used when accessing orders in the internal Order Tracking page and the external (self-service) Order Tracking page. The system marks orders that originate outside of CRM, and if you provide the system with the URL for the external system, then a user who attempts to view such an order in the CRM order tracking pages is automatically redirected to the system where the order originated.

Integrating with Billing Systems

Order Capture integrates with PeopleSoft Transaction Billing Processor to allow access to standard billing functionality such as revenue recognition structure, billing cycle details, and account rules for applying revenue to the General Ledger. It also allows the enterprise to apply surcharges and taxation to billable amounts and process them through user-defined invoice formats.

Setting Up an Integration to PeopleSoft Transaction Billing Processor

This integration is detailed in a chapter in the PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9.1 Services Foundation PeopleBook.

See Also

Transaction Billing Processor Integration

Using the Transaction Billing Processor Integration from Order Capture

If a contract doesn’t exist, the Order Capture transaction triggers a new contract to be created in the Billing system. Pricing is done by the Enterprise Pricer through Order Capture. For agreement products, pricing is also done by the Service Pricing routines. Order Capture sends the total for each order line containing a service or agreement product to the Transaction Billing Processor.

Note. Transaction Billing Processor integrates with Order Capture and enables you to create invoices and recognize revenue for service products. However, Order Capture sends standard products through the integration to Order Management. Order Capture uses Proposal Management to send engagement-type services.

Order Capture only sends transactions that are ready to be billed to the Transaction Billing Processor. Order Capture also sends tax parameters, which are used to retrieve the sales and use tax or VAT rate.

See Also

PeopleSoft Enterprise Contracts 9.1 PeopleBook