Oracle® Fusion
Applications Sales Implementation Guide 11g Release 5 (11.1.5) Part Number E20373-05 |
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This chapter contains the following:
FAQs for Define Sales Catalogs
You can set various options to customize the runtime instance of your product catalog.
The Functions and Miscellaneous tabs have several built-in features and options for you to choose from.
Select certain functions and specify how they should run depending on your processes.
Name |
Description |
Value |
Description |
---|---|---|---|
Availability Engine |
Determines the availability of a product in stock. |
Do not run |
Do not call the availability service. |
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Quick availability |
Show whether the product is available or out of stock |
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Detail availability |
Show the number of quantity available. Example 25 in stock. |
Eligibility Engine |
Determines the eligibility of a product or product group for a customer or a geographical area. |
Do not run |
Do not call the eligibility service. |
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Run and hide |
Call the eligibility service but hide the ineligible products, product groups and promotions. |
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Run and sShow |
Call the eligibility service and show the ineligible products, product groups and promotions with the appropriate message. |
Pricing Engine |
Determines the price for a product. |
Do not run |
Do not call the pricing service. |
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Complex |
Show the List Price, Your Price, Discount, and so on. |
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Simple |
Show the List Price only. |
Territory Engine |
Determines the products in a territory. |
Do not run |
Do not check for territory information. |
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Enforce territory |
Always show the products and product groups that are part of the territory. |
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Display user choices |
Provides the user with the choice to toggle between all product or product groups and the ones that belongs to the territory only. |
Set preferences such as button label, sort by text, number of products per page, and so on.
Name |
Description |
---|---|
Add item button label |
The selected value is shown next to the product in the runtime interface. |
Add category button label |
The selected value is shown next to the catalog or category in the runtime interface. |
Add category enabled flag |
Allows buttons to be shown next to the catalog or categories. |
Records per page |
Number of records to be displayed per page. |
Sort by format text |
Sort format of the entire label that you want displayed in the runtime interface. The default pattern is {ATTR}: {SORT_ORDER}. Example: Name: A to Z. |
Sort by product label prefix |
Sort format of the prefix label that you want displayed. Example: If the default is Name: A to Z, you can select an alternate label for Name. It could be Item: A to Z. |
Sort by sequence product ascending label |
Sort format of the ascending suffix label that you want displayed. Example: If the default is Name: A to Z, you can select an alternate for A to Z. It could be Name: Ascending. |
Sort by sequence product descending label |
Sort format of the descending suffix label that you want displayed. Example: If the default is Name: Z to A, you can select an alternate for Z to A. It could be Name: Descending. |
Sort by sequence ascending first flag |
Select Yes to display ascending labels first in the Sort By LOV. |
Show immediate child products only |
Shows immediate products of a given category disregarding the standard behavior of showing all products (including child categories) if narrow by is defined on the category. |
Image server |
Identifies the source of images for products and product groups. |
Image server alternate path |
Identifies an alternate image source location (URL) |
Enable transactional attribute |
Allows transactional attributes to show up in product detail page. Transactional attributes are attributes that can be selected such as color and size of shirt. |
Hidden category optional attribute list |
You can specify the attributes you would like to hide from the category UI here. This could be a comma separated list of attributes that needs to be hidden from the category list page. |
Hidden product optional attribute list |
You can specify the attributes you would like to hide from the product UI here. This could be a comma separated list of attributes that needs to be hidden from the product pages. |
Hide quantity |
Set this to Yes, to hide the quantity field shown in the product page. |
Hide unit of measure |
Set this to Yes, to hide the unit of measure field shown in the product detail page. |
Megan and the marketing team notice that when they browse the ComfyGooseCatalog, availability information is shown against each product. Since they have no visibility around the Loveseats product, the marketing team suggests to hide the availability information for the Loveseats category alone. Megan remembers from the training that Fusion Sales Catalog provides the ability to override the default behavior.
Megan recalls that she has to make this change from the Display Options for the Loveseats catalog.
Megan chooses the Loveseats catalog.
Megan creates a record and names it Hide Availability.
Megan selects the Base usage.
Megan validates the effect of this change at runtime.
Use the display options to control various aspects of the published product group.
You can make small but significant changes to a product group from these tabs. The changes here override default settings.
Applies To
Select the usage that this product group is applicable to. Usage defines the department or function within your organization for which this catalog is created.
Apart from usage, you can also select the mode within the usage. Mode defines the department or function within your organization that uses the same catalog but with minor changes from other consumers.
Narrow By
Select Narrow By attributes and their appearance. These attributes appear as filters to narrow searches at runtime.
Template
Select templates for category, product list, and so on.
Functions
Define the changes to specific settings in certain functions such as pricing and eligibility.
Miscellaneous
Change basic settings for the product group such as button label, number of items per page, invocation of the configurator, and so on.
This example demonstrates how to create a sales catalog. In this example, ComfyGoose Inc is a state of the art outfit in the business of selling chairs and sofas. As part of their expansion plans, they recently bought Oracle Fusion CRM and are uptaking the best business practices and all the functionality it brings.
Megan works in the product marketing department and is excited about the sales catalog and the ease with which she can create products and catalogs. She gathers information about the categories to be created and the products that need to be associated to each category. She is familiar with the layouts and the navigation paradigm in the application.
As a first step, Megan decides to create a sales catalog.
Megan enters the following details for her catalog.
Field |
Sample Data |
---|---|
Name |
ComfyGooseCatalog |
Display |
Comfy Goose Catalog |
Description |
Contains ergonomic chairs for your home or office needs, chairs for businesses such as call centers and offices; at attractive prices. |
Root Catalog |
Select to make this a root catalog.Only root catalogs can be added to a usage in Product Group Usage Administration. |
Megan creates the following subgroups for the ComfyGoose Catalog product group.
Field |
Sample Data |
---|---|
Subgroup Name |
|
Megan creates further categories within some of the subgroups.
Parent Subgroup |
Sample Data |
---|---|
Chairs |
|
Sofas |
Sofas and Loveseats |
Sofas and Loveseats |
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A published catalog is available for use by different departments which is done via Usage Administration
Megan selects the Base usage and adds ComfyGooseCatalog to this usage.
This example demonstrates how you can reuse a sales catalog. In the scenario used in this example, ComfyGoose Inc is a state of the art outfit in the business of selling chairs and sofas. As part of their expansion plans, they recently bought Oracle Fusion CRM and are uptaking the best business practices and all the functionality it brings. Megan works in the product marketing department.
Megan gets a call from another division of the company, after a few months of deploying the ComfyGooseCatalog. They have heard of the new catalog that she helped build for the marketing team and enquire if they can have a similar subset for their division. They want to leverage as much as possible having a consistent look-and-feel.
An application developer must create an application and should be able to consume the sales catalog task flows to achieve this example. This task is similar to what the Sales module has done to consume the task flows provided by the sales catalog team.
Megan gathers the necessary information and identifies that this division primarily needs what is in the Chair category of the ComfyGooseCatalog. She is very excited because she knows that she can simply reuse the Chairs category. In the past, she would have had to create another catalog repeating the same data, a maintenance overhead.
Megan creates the Call Center Division usage
You can choose only product groups that are catalogs by themselves here. In other words, the catalog must be a root catalog.
Megan realizes that the Chairs catalog that she wants to reuse is a subgroup of the ComfyGooseCatalog. To make it a root catalog, she follows these steps:
Navigate to the Product Group Administration page
Select the product group Chairs from the Product Group pane
From the Details tab, select Root Catalog
Save and publish the catalog.
The Chairs catalog is now available for the Call Center Division.
This example demonstrates how to enable filtering by attributes. In the scenario used in this example, ComfyGoose Inc is a state of the art outfit in the business of selling chairs and sofas. As part of their expansion plans, they recently bought Oracel Fusion CRM and are uptaking the best business practices and all the functionality it brings. Megan works in the product marketing department. She has created the ComfyGooseCatalog and tried changing some usage attributes.
Megan now reviews the ComfyGooseCatalog with the team and decides that it will be nice to provide the user with few narrow by filters. After reviewing the definition of products associated to the Chairs category and its subcategories, it is decided that attributes Color and Material can be used for filtering.
The attributes must already be registered in the Product Group Attribute Administration page. These attributes must be present and associated in the Item Master.
Megan selects the Chairs category.
Note
The attribute is already registered in the Product Group Attribute Administration page.
Megan selects the Color and Material attributes.
Megan creates Blue, Pink and Black as the values for the chair color. She also creates values for the chair material.
Megan validated the changes in the graphical catalog. She can see the attributes that she created and their values in the Advanced Search, Narrow By and Sort options of the catalog.
You can add custom labels for your catalog by specifying them in the Miscellaneous tab of Display Options. For example, you can change the default Add to Cart label and can select a different label such as Add to Shopping Cart. You can add an additional value for the button label from the Manage Product Group Lookups page from the Setup and Maintenance Overview page. You can enter a new value using the lookup Add Item Label Values. Once done, you can navigate to the product group administration to either override the button label for the entire catalog via the usage functions or to a specific product group from the display options tab.
Apart from customizing button labels, you can also set the number of items to display per page from the Miscellaneous tab.
A rollup catalog does not have the same product appearing multiple times within its hierarchy. The primary purpose of a rollup catalog is to create a hierarchy more tailored to forecasting purposes where a particular product appears only once in the entire hierarchy.
A sales catalog can have the same product appearing multiple times within its hierarchy. For example, the product Toys can be part of the Children category as well as the Electronics category within the same catalog.
Note
The Allow Duplicate flag distinguishes between a rollup catalog and a sales catalog. By default, the flag is selected making it a sales catalog. The Allow Duplicate flag is in the Details tab of the Product Group Administration page.
Products in your catalog are active for a specified period. Once the period expires, the product becomes inactive and does not appear as part of the published catalog. Activate the products from the Products tab of the Product Group Administration page.
An eligibility rule can be a physical eligibility rule or a marketing eligibility rule
Some points to remember when you create an eligibility rule:
An eligibility rule can determine one of the two kinds of eligibility for a product group, physical or marketing. They cannot be combined.
A rule can be of two types: Available and Not Available. If contradictory rules are defined for the same product group, the Not Available rule will prevail.
All children of a product group inherit rules from the parent product group.
Eligibility rules set at the product level have precedence over the rules set at the product group level.
When you create a physical eligibility rule, select attributes from these: Country, State or Province, City and Postal Code.
When you create a marketing eligibility rule, select a value for Customer Type.
This example demonstrates how to use a new template in a catalog. Megan informs the marketing team that the IT department has created a new template that gives a cool web 2.0 feeling and asks their permission to try it out. She informs them that it gives a carousel effect which is quite common while browsing songs, DVDs, and so on. The marketing team agrees to give it a try.
Using Fusion JDeveloper, application developers have to create a task flow using the Fusion ADF component and all necessary VOs to support the task flow. The task flow must be registered in the template administration.
Megan decides to use the template ComfyGoose Carousel template in the ComfyGoose Catalog's browsing categories.
Megan creates a record and names it Carousel.
Megan selects the Base usage.
Megan selects the Category List Template as the type and the ComfyGoose Carousel template as the template.
Megan verifies the change in the catalog at runtime. The marketing team loves this cool effect and agrees to adopt it for the final catalog roll out.
This example demonstrates how you can modify attributes for an application's usage. In this scenario, the Call Center division only deals with call centers across the world, they have not seen if any product they have sold is not applicable to call center companies. Therefore, they decide to switch off the eligibility and availability messages that show up in their side of the catalog.
Megan knows that this is a fairly simple task because she can do these settings from the Product Group Usage Administration page.
Megan selects the Call Center usage.
Name |
Value |
---|---|
Availability Engine |
Do not run |
Eligibility Engine |
Do not run |
Megan accesses the catalog and finds that the availability and eligibility messages do not appear anymore for the Call Center division's catalog.
Related groups shows the relationship between two different product groups. For example, a group that contains extended warranty products is related to a group that contains laptops. There are various relations types supported such as revenue, service and so on. This relationship is used in the other applications.
Eligibility is the condition of being qualified or being entitled for a purchase or enrollment.
There are two types of eligibility.
Physical eligibility: Determines whether a service is available in a given area.
Marketing eligibility: Determines whether a company is willing to sell a product, service, or promotion to a customer.
Some examples of eligibility are:
Video Conferencing is available in California.
Liquor is not available to minors.
ESPN pay-per-view Requires HD Package
In the Filter Attributes tab of the Product Group page, change the value for the Display of the attribute. The attribute can have an internal name but the name displayed at runtime can be more meaningful and customer friendly.
For example, if the attribute name is Laptop Color, you can change the display to Available Colors. This will display in the narrow by or advanced search options at runtime.
To modify a product group, you must first lock it. Click Lock in the Product Group page. If the product group is locked by another user, the Lock button is not visible and the Locked flag is enabled in the Details tab.
There may be several promotions running at any given time. You can associate active promotions to a product group from the Promotions tab. Coupons are a part of promotions and are added to the product group along with the promotion. You can also view the promotion's effective period.
A product group can have two versions, Administration and Published. The Published version is visible to the end user in the graphical sales catalog. The administrator must make any changes to the product group in the administration version.
After publishing the administration version, the changes are made available to the published version and to the consuming applications
Use product group mapping in the following situations:
If a product group is reused, find it in the target hierarchy.
Identify the right product group in the target hierarchy when the source product group is not recognized.
Do a reverse mapping by passing the target product group to get the source product group.
You can set exceptions for a usage from the Modes tab of the Product Group Usage Administration page. Exceptions can be made when you need minor modifications for different departments in your organizations, for the same usage. The following modes are available: Lead Management, Campaign Management, Opportunity Management, Territory Management, Opportunity Landscape and Sales Prediction.
You can get this information from the Product Groups Shared With region in the Product Groups pane. By default, all product groups are shared.