This chapter covers the following topics:
You can generate a price book for a specific customer to publish lists of products and their prices. You can create a full price book for all selected products or a delta price book that shows only the items for which prices have changed since the corresponding full book was published. To create a price book, you select the items that you want to see on the price book, select a publishing option, then run a concurrent request (either immediately or at a predetermined time) to generate the price book. You can select from various printing and delivery options:
Print the price book by either:
Viewing the document online and printing it.
Specifying the printer in the publishing options of the price book. This uses the Delivery Manager of XML Publisher (a component of the Oracle E-Business Suite).
Send the price book in e-mail as an attachment to the external customer using the Delivery Manager option of the XML Publisher.
Publish the price book using the available seeded templates in the following formats:
Excel spreadsheet
PDF (Portable Document Format)
RTF (Rich Text Format)
Note: You can also define your own template using XML publisher.
Send as an XML message.
Alternatively, the input criteria for generating the price book can also be accepted by an OAG XML Transaction (GET_CATALOG_002) from the trading partner (external customer). The price book is then transmitted to the trading partner as the OAG XML Transaction (SYNC_CATALOG_003) . The technology stack components that are involved in generating a price book includes Oracle XML Gateway, Oracle Workflow Business Event System, and Oracle Supply Chain Trading Connector.
Typically, both internal and external customers can create price books for a variety of business reasons as described in the following scenarios:
Internal Customers
Pricing Analyst or Pricing Super-user: Can generate price book to define pricing reports for audit or planning purposes and for ongoing maintenance activities for pricing rules.
Product Managers: Product managers who want to define list prices and dealer or distributor prices could generate price books to review existing prices and generate hard copies of prices that are related to a specific product or product category for a customer.
Sales Managers: Sales managers who call on customers or want to review existing prices can use price books to generate hard copies of prices that are related to a specific customer.
External Customers
A specific customer of a dealer may want to look up prices on a vendor or dealer web site and view a published list of prices. Using a Price Book API, the customer can retrieve the price book information and make it available on their web site.
These are some typical scenarios in which external customers may use price books:
Dealers and distributors of a client company want to look up prices they must pay to a vendor.
Distributors wanting to create price books for general pricing or for specific customers who want to know the current prices on the day the price book is generated.
Companies want to publish price books for future dates: If a price increase will go into effect October 1st, the company could print and mail out price books in September.
For price books, Oracle Advanced Pricing provides seeded workflows that are associated with business events . A workflow - a sequence of activities that can be performed either automatically or by end-user intervention - can help automate your business process. When a defined business event occurs, such as booking an order, it triggers a related workflow process.
oracle.apps.qp.pricebook.catso: This event is raised by the pricing concurrent program that generates or initiates the publishing of price books.
oracle.apps.qp.pricebook.catgi: This event is raised by the XML Gateway (ECX) when it receives the GET_CATALOG_002 message from a Trading Partner.
Oracle Pricing uses the following workflows that are seeded in the Oracle Supply Chain Trading Connector (CLN) application for the collaboration history component:
oracle.apps.cln.ch.collaboration.create: This event is linked to the pricing concurrent program that generates or initiates the publishing of price books. A CLN workflow for this event creates tracking information for the price book collaboration in the collaboration history tables.
Advanced Pricing provides the following public application programming interfaces (APIs) for the price book feature: Create Price Book API and Get Price Book API. Applications that are integrated with Advanced Pricing can call these APIs to generate or retrieve a price book. The following list describes the price book public APIs:
Create_Price_Book API: Use this API to create, overwrite, and publish new or existing price books (either full or delta price books). Based on the input criteria, a concurrent request is submitted by the system (a concurrent request is also submitted when you are creating price books either through the price book feature or Get_Catalog). The Request ID, a return status, and any errors that are encountered during input parameter validation or when you are submitting a concurrent request will be returned as output parameters. Once you have created the price book, use the Get_Price_Book API to retrieve it.
Get_Price_Book API: Use this API to retrieve an existing price book by entering the following input parameters: price book name, price_book_type, and customer.
Related Topics
Oracle Order Management Open Interfaces, API, & Electronic Messaging Guide
Before using the price book, complete the following implementation steps:
The price book feature uses the following profile options to define the default settings:
QP: E-mail From Address: Defines the from e-mail address for any e-mails that are sent from the price book feature.
QP: External Default Pricing Perspective: Sets the default pricing perspective for all external users.
QP: Inbound XML Messaging Responsibility: Defines the responsibility to be used for inbound XML messages.
QP: Internal Default Pricing Perspective: Sets the default pricing perspective for all internal users
QP: Pricing Perspective Request Type: Defines the mapping between a pricing perspective (calling application) and the request type it uses.
For information about setting up and using the profile options, see Oracle Advanced Pricing Implementation Guide, Profile Options.
When sending a price book as e-mail, you enter the e-mail addresses in the Email Address field on the Create Price Book page. After the price book is generated, it will be sent to the specified e-mail addresses using the e-mail server that is specified in the configuration. Price books that are sent by e-mail use the default e-mail server. To specify the e-mail server, you must add it to the Oracle XML Publisher Delivery Manager configuration and specify it as the default entry. For information about how to configure the Delivery Manager, see the Oracle XML Publisher User's Guide.
Note: When sending the price book as e-mail, you must select a template which defines the layout and appearance of the price book that you e-mail.
When printing the price book to a specific printer, enter the printer name in the Printer field on the Create Price Book page. If no printer name is specified, then the default printer that is defined in the configuration is used. To define the default printer, you must add the printer for your site to the Oracle XML Publisher Delivery Manager configuration and specify it as the default entry. You can also set up additional printers by adding more entries into the configuration. For more information about configuring the Delivery Manager, see the Oracle XML Publisher User's Guide.
Note: The printer name that you enter in the Printer field on the Create Price Book page must correspond to a printer server name in the Oracle XML Publisher Delivery Manager configuration. When printing a price book, you also must select a template that defines the layout and appearance of the printed price book.
Using Oracle XML Publisher, you can publish your price books in a variety of formats such as PDF, RTF, and Excel.
Note: The Delivery Manager component of the Oracle XML Publisher (XDO) product is required to directly publish a price book to a printer or e-mail attachment. The Delivery Manager component with the publishing options to print and send e-mail is available in XML Publisher 5.0.
To select an XML Publisher Template
Oracle Advanced Pricing provides seeded XML Publisher templates that you can use to generate your price books. You can use Oracle XML Publisher to create and maintain additional templates that define the layout for the published price book. You may want to create multiple templates depending on the desired publishing option (e-mail or print) and the desired output format (Excel, PDF, RTF). For example, you may want a separate template for print versions and another for .PDF output.
When printing or sending the price book by e-mail, you select the appropriate template for the chosen publishing option. If you do not want to show the List Price for products, you can copy one of the seeded price book templates and then remove the List Price column (or any other column) from your new template.
Price book requires the following XML gateway message maps to generate and transmit price book information to and from external customers:
GET_CATALOG_002 message map: To receive input criteria from the trading partner (external customer) and generate the price book by means of an OAG XML transaction.
SYNC_CATALOG_003 message map: To transmit the price book to the trading partner by means of the OAG XML transaction.
XML Gateway Message Maps are created in the XML Gateway Message Designer and stored as .xgm files. These maps are loaded into XML Gateway as seed data. XML Messaging also requires a Trading Partners and a Trading Partner Detail record each for the Get Catalog and Sync Catalog messages.
Map for Get_Catalog_002 XML message
The XML Gateway Message Map, QP_CATGI_OAG72_IN.xgm, is provided to get the GET_CATALOG_002 XML document. The following tables are mapped to the incoming XML Message:
QP_PB_INPUT_HEADERS_B
QP_PB_INPUT_HEADERS_TL
QP_PB_INPUT_LINES
The GET_CATALOG_002 XML document conforms to the following Open Applications Group (OAG) document type definition (DTDs), 129_get_catalog_002.dtd and the oagis_extensions.dtd. These and other relevant DTDs (oagis_domains.dtd, oagis_entity_extensions.dtd, oagis_fields.dtd, oagis_resources.dtd, oagis_segments.dtd) are loaded to the XML Gateway, and are located at $qp/xml/oag.
Tables and views that are used by this map are ECX_OAG_CONTROLAREA_TP_V (provided by XML Gateway for the Control Area Mapping), and the tables listed previously.
Map for SYNC_CATALOG_003 XML message
The XML message SYNC_CATALOG_003 is an OAG standard that provides an electronic method of publishing a price book for business collaborations involving Oracle Applications. The SYNC_CATALOG_003 enables a seller to publish product catalogs from Oracle Advanced Pricing to the buyer.
The seller uses SYNC_CATALOG_003 to publish a new price book. If the price book information changes, the seller can re-publish the price book so the buyer can replace the price book with the more recent price book.
An XML Gateway Message Map, QP_CATSO_OAG72_OUT.xgm, is provided to generate the SYNC_CATALOG_003 XML document and has the following inputs:
Price Book Header: Generated using QP_PRICE_BOOK_HEADERS_V
Price Book Lines: Generated using QP_PRICE_BOOK_LINES_V (price book summary lines)
Price Book Line Details: Generated using QP_PRICE_BOOK_LINE_DETAILS_V (price list lines and modifier lines)
Pricing Attributes of the Price List Lines: Generated using QP_PRICE_BOOK_ATTRIBUTES_V (price list lines)
Price Break Lines of Price Break Header Modifiers and Price List Lines: Generated using QP_PRICE_BOOK_BREAK_LINES_V (price list lines and modifier lines of type Price Break Header)
The SYNC_CATALOG_003 XML document conforms to the following OAG DTDs: 128_sync_catalog_003.dtd and the oagis_extensions.dtd. These and other relevant DTDs (oagis_domains.dtd, oagis_entity_extensions.dtd, oagis_fields.dtd,oagis_resources.dtd, and oagis_segments.dtd) are located at $qp/xml/oag. Tables and views that are used by this map include ECX_OAG_CONTROLAREA_TP_V (provided by XML Gateway for the Control Area Mapping), and the views listed previously.
Setting up the XML Gateway Trading Partners
To enable the inbound GET_CATALOG_002 and outbound SYNC_CATALOG_003 XML messages for an external customer, you must first define the customer as a trading partner in the Oracle XML Gateway Trading Partner Setup. In this setup, add the following two transactions to the trading partner:
GET_CATALOG_002 Transaction Type = QP Transaction SubType = CATGI Standard Code = OAG External Transaction Type = CATALOG External Transaction Subtype = GET Direction = IN Map = QP_CATGI_OAG72_IN SYNC_CATALOG_003 Transaction Type = QP Transaction SubType = CATSO Standard Code = OAG External Transaction Type = CATALOG External Transaction Subtype = SYNC Direction = OUT Map = QP_CATSO_OAG72_OUT
For more information about setting up a trading partner, see the Oracle XML Gateway User's Guide. You can use the responsibility Workflow Administrator Web Applications > Transaction Monitor to monitor the status of the XML messages.
If your company uses customer item numbers and customer item descriptions, then you may want to customize the Price Book Details page. Hidden columns are available for the customer item number and the customer item description. Enabling these columns will enable your users to see the customer item number and description when available for an item.
Price book uses the pricing parameter Price Book Pricing Events (QP_PRICE_BOOK_PRICING_EVENTS) to associate pricing events with request type codes for use with price book engine calls. Typically, you do not need to change the seeded value.
This pricing parameter is at the Request Type level. You can associate more than one pricing event with a request type by separating the events with commas. Ensure that the events that are used as values for this pricing parameters are valid, applicable pricing events.