| Oracle® Retail Assortment Planning Implementation Guide Release 14.1 E55310-01 |
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| Oracle® Retail Assortment Planning Implementation Guide Release 14.1 E55310-01 |
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The following information needs to be considered before configuring AP:
It is recommended that you have at least one year of historical sales and inventory data for creating buy plans. Less data can be used, but the more data that is available, the more statistical significance can be given to the buy plans.
The following factors can affect hardware space requirements:
Points of Commerce–number of physical, web, and other distinct retail outlets.
Calendar– number of historical and future time periods in the domain. This impacts the overall size of the environment.
Workbooks– amount of space used by workbooks. This is typically greater than the domain itself. The number of workbooks is related to the number of users.
Partitioning is done to avoid contention for resources. Building a workbook and committing data are two processes that can cause contention.
How data is partitioned has an impact on the business process. The AP domain is defined as a global domain. For performance reasons, a single domain is not recommended. There should be an even distribution of users across a set of local domains. For example, men's merchandise could be in a domain, women's merchandise in a domain, and children's merchandise in a domain. When a user is committing data in the men's merchandise domain, this will not affect the users in the women's or children's domains because of the use of partitioning.
Consider the following questions when defining the partitioning of the domain:
How do I partition to meet my business needs?
How do I partition my users?
How do I create groups of users to further partition the solution?
Domain partition is supported on any PROD and LOC dimension.
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Note: The partitioning level in the AP configuration is department. It is recommended that this not be changed. |
Formatting can be done in the configuration or the workbook after the domain is built.
An implementer can create generic styles for the measures and assign them to measure components or realized measures. For each measure, these styles can be overridden on each workbook template. Formatting can be changed by using the RPAS Configuration Tools or through the user interface. For more information, see the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Configuration Tools User Guide or the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server User Guide for the Fusion Client.
After the domain is built, the implementer can set up worksheet sizes and placements, exception value formatting, gridlines, and other formatting. The implementer opens a workbook of the template to set up specific formatting by using the Format menu. The updated format is then saved to the template so that it is available to all users for any newly created workbooks. For information on how to use the Format menu, see the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server User Guide for the Fusion Client.
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Note: There is no Configuration Tools plug-in for AP. |
Plug-ins are application-specific Java code modules that run inside and automate the RPAS Configuration Tools to assist the implementer with specific application configuration. There are rules that an implementer must follow when configuring an application. A plug-in makes such adherence easier by automating parts of the configuration process and validity, checking entries that are made.
A prepack optimization plug-in is available to automate the steps required to configure the prepack optimization parameters. This plug-in is used to create optimized pre-pack definitions and is licensed with the SPO solution. Note that this plug-in is different from the pack optimization feature (optimization of receipts to define packs and eaches) available in the standard AP configuration. For information on this prepack optimization plug-in, see Oracle Retail Size Profile Optimization Implementation Guide.
There are two types of patches that can affect the AP domain:
Changes to the code in the RPAS libraries
The configuration is not affected by this type of patch. For these types of changes, applying the patch is a straightforward process.
Changes to the configuration
These types of changes can be more complex. If you have customizations in the configuration, you can use the rpasConfigMgr utility to determine the differences between your existing configuration and the new one. Then, you can use the utility to merge the two configurations. Any changes that cannot be applied are written to a change log. For more information, see the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server configuration Tools User Guide.
Batch scripts are lists of commands or jobs executed without manual intervention. A batch window is the time frame in which the batch process must run. It is the upper limit on how long the batch can take. Batch scripts are used for importing and exporting data. The retailer needs to decide the best time for running batch scripts within the available batch window.
How often to upload updated sales and inventory data needs to be determined. You have to consider at what interval to load the latest sales and inventory data. It is recommended that this is done on a weekly basis. For more information on batch scripts, see Chapter 7.
To define workbook template security, the system administrator grants individual users, or user groups, access to specific workbook templates. Granting access to workbook templates provides users the ability to create, modify, save, and commit workbooks for the assigned workbook templates. Users are typically assigned to groups based on their user application (or solution) role. Users in the same group can be given access to workbook templates that belong to that group alone. Users can be assigned to more than one group and granted workbook template access without belonging to the user group that typically uses a specific workbook template. Workbook access is either denied, read-only, or full access. Read-only access allows a user to create a workbook for the template, but the users are not be able to edit any values or commit the workbook. The read-only workbook can be refreshed.
When users save a workbook, they assign one of three access permissions to the workbook:
World– allow any user to open and edit the workbook
Group– allow only those users in their same group to open and edit the workbooks
User– allow no other users to open and edit the workbook
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Note: A user must have access to the workbook template in order to access the workbook, even if the workbook has world access rights. |
For more information on security, see the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Administration Guide for the Fusion Client.
Internationalization is the process of creating software that can be translated more easily. Changes to the code are not specific to any particular market.
Oracle Retail applications have been internationalized to support multiple languages.
The RPAS platform supports associated solution extensions and solution templates.
A solution extension includes a collection of code and generally available configurations. Typically, solution extensions are implemented by a retailer with minimal configuration.
A solution template does not include code. A solution template is most typically implemented as a retailer configuration.
Oracle Retail releases the translations of the RPAS server and client, as well as strings from the solution extensions.
Translations of the solution templates are not released. Since the labels for measures, hierarchies, dimensions, and workbook templates, are typically changed by the retailer at implementation time, languages for the templates are not released. All templates have the ability to support multibyte characters.
