Integrating Order Management with Third-Party Credit-Check Applications

This chapter discusses how to integrate order management with third-party credit-check applications. It includes the following topics:

About Third-Party Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications

Before completing an order for products or servicesSiebel eSales, your company may want to assess whether the customer has a credit rating that is good enough for you to sell to them. Different applications are used to perform credit checks depending on the method of payment.

For business customers paying with purchase orders, a back-office, third-party accounts receivable or credit management application does credit checks on the customer account. This chapter describes how to set up these applications.
For customers paying with a credit card, a third-party payment application does credit checks. This feature is available in customer applications. For more information about third-party payment applications, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide.

Third-party accounts receivable or credit management applications use logic to make a credit determination using your company’s previous history with the customer account and other credit data.

Integration with third-party credit checking applications uses a specific, prebuilt Application Services Interface (ASI) named External Credit Check. Some configuration is required to set up this integration, as described in this chapter.

For information about how to extend these integration objects, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration.

Sales representatives or call center agents can make purchase order credit checks for a quote or order. In the order process, this credit check is done at the payment line level, when the user clicks the Credit Check button in an order. In the quote process, it is done at the header level, when the user chooses the Verify menu option in a quote. The following two workflows directly control the process of checking the credit status of business accounts:

Credit Check - Quotes
Credit Check - Orders

In Siebel eSales, credit checks are performed as part of the check-out process after the customer clicks the Check Out button. The following two workflows directly control the process of checking the credit status of business accounts in Siebel eSales:

eSales - Authorize Order Process
Credit Check - Quotes

For more information about the customer check-out process, including the details of these workflows, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide.

Siebel Application Service Interface (ASI) is used to integrate order management with third-party credit-check applications. For an overview of how ASIs are used for integrating order management, see About ASIs for Order Management. For more information about to how to set up, use, and modify integrations according to ASIs, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration.

Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications

To set up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications, you must perform the following tasks:

Verifying the External Credit Check ASI User Properties
Configuring Web Services for Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications
Activating the Workflows for Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications
To set up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications, you can perform the following optional tasks:
Modifying User Properties for Purchase Order Credit Checking Integration
Turning Off Credit Checking
Customizing When Credit Checks Are Performed
Changing the Credit Auto-Approval Limit for Accounts
Skipping Credit Checks for an Account
Restricting Which Employees Can Administer Credit Checking
Extending the ASI for Credit Check Interface Request

Note: If you modify any lists of values such as order types or purchase order payment methods, then be sure to review the workflows processes in Credit Check - Quotes and Credit Check - Orders to verify that the application logic to determine whether to call credit check is still correct.

For more information about to how to set up, use, and modify integrations according to ASIs, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference.

Verifying the External Credit Check ASI User Properties

You must verify the External Credit Check ASI user properties.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

To verify the External Credit Check ASI user properties

In Siebel Tools, select the External Credit Check business service.
Select Business Service User Prop.

Verify that the Names and Values of the User Properties match those in the following table.

Name	Value
siebel_port_name	Default
siebel_web_service_name	External Credit Check
siebel_web_service_namespace	http://siebel.com/asi/

Configuring Web Services for Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications

Web services are used to direct the inbound and outbound messages to and from:

The third-party credit checking application
A demonstration script that can be used to test your integration setup
A middleware or integration server that will integrate with your fulfillment engine and accounts receivable application

You must make sure that the Web services are correctly configured.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

To configure Web services for purchase order credit checking applications

Navigate to the Administration - Web Services screen, and then the Outbound Web Services view.
Select the row with External Credit Check in the Name field.

Verify that the fields in the Outbound Web Services list match those in the following table.

Namespace	Name	Status
http://siebel.com/asi/	External Credit Check	Active

In the Service Ports list, click New, and enter the following values in the fields of the new record.

Field	Comments
Name	Enter a name for the port.
Port Type	Enter External Credit Check.
Transport	Select from the list. If you want to set up testing, for example when you are customizing applets or extending the ASI, then select Local Business Service.
Address	When you select a transport, the field is populated with a template address. Edit the address according to whether you are sending the data to middleware, the Credit Check application, and so on. If you want to set up testing, then enter Credit Check ASI Test.
Binding	If a SOAP header is expected by the receiving application, then select SOAP_RPC. If you are using Credit Check ASI Test, then select Property Set.

Activating the Workflows for Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications

For employee credit checking, you must activate the following workflow processes:

Credit Check - Quotes
Credit Check - Orders

For customer credit checking in Siebel eSales, you must activate the following workflows:

eSales - Authorize Order Process
Credit Check - Quotes

For information about activating workflows, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

For more information about configuring Web Services and setting up demonstration scripts, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

Modifying User Properties for Purchase Order Credit Checking Integration

Some of the user properties of the Credit Check Service business service are used to map integration object fields to their related business component fields. For example, the BC_CREDIT_DATE user property has a value of Credit Check Status As Of Date, which is the name of a business component field on the Quotes and Payments business components. The PROP_SET_CREDIT_DATE user property has a value of Credit Status As Of, which is the name of an integration object field. Together, these values show that the data in the Credit Status As Of integration object field is moved to the Credit Check Status As Of Date business component field. You do not need to modify these values.

You will need to modify the value of the ERROR_STATUS_CODE user property if it does not match the value of the error code returned from the middleware.

To modify the error status code

In Siebel Tools, select Business Service in the Object Explorer.
Query for the Credit Check Service business service.
Select Business Service User Prop in the Object Explorer.
Change the value of the ERROR_STATUS_CODE user property to match the middleware value.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

Turning Off Credit Checking

For Siebel eSales, you can turn off credit checking by removing the Credit Check subprocess step from the eSales - Authorize Order Process workflow.

For employee applications, in a quote, credit checking is part of the verify functionality. You can turn it off by changing the Credit Check user property in the Quotes business component. When the Credit Check user property is set to N instead of Y, the verify function will not perform the credit check.

You can also pick what workflow you want to call to execute the credit check by going to Business Component screen, and then the Quote view and changing the following Business Component User Properties:

For the Credit Check user property, change the value from Y to N.
For the Credit Check Workflow user property, change the value from Credit Check Quotes to the workflow you want to use.

For employee applications, in an order, the user performs the credit check by clicking the Credit Check button. To turn off credit check for orders, you can either modify the Credit Check - Order workflow or remove the button from the Payment Detail - Purchase Order applet.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

Customizing When Credit Checks Are Performed

A credit check does not need to be performed on every quote or order that is paid for with a purchase order. You can customize when a credit check is performed by modifying the Credit Check - Quotes workflow process and the Credit Check - Orders workflow process.

In the default credit check business processes, credit check will only be performed if all the following conditions apply:

Payment method is Purchase Order
The bill-to account's Skip Credit Check flag is Off
The purchase order amount is greater than the bill-to account's Credit Auto Approval Limit amount

In addition, credit check is not applicable for orders of type RMA and Internal Order, so it is skipped.

Caution: If you want to modify the Credit Check - Quotes workflow process, then it is important to know that this workflow process is also used by Siebel eSales to create an order.

For more information about the impact of the Credit Check - Quotes workflow process, see the topic about this workflow process in Siebel eSales Administration Guide. If you want to have different workflows for Quotes and eSales, then you will need to create an additional workflow.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

Changing the Credit Auto-Approval Limit for Accounts

You can change the credit auto-approval limit for accounts in several different ways:

Using Siebel Tools. When your company wants to change the limit for all new accounts, you can change it in Siebel Tools.

In Tools, go to the Credit Limit Amount field on the Account business component. Set a default value for the Credit Limit Amount field. This configuration changes the default for all subsequently created accounts. When creating an account in the application UI, a user can change this default value for the individual account.

Note: Making this change in Siebel Tools does not affect previously existing accounts.

Using a batch eScript. If you need to change the value for a large number of account records, then you can do so with a batch eScript.
Editing the value for an account. To change the limit for a few accounts, you can manually editing the value of the Credit Auto Approval Limit for a specific account in the Account screen, Credit Profile view.

Note: Do not confuse the Credit Auto Approval Limit field with the PO Auto Approval Limit field.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

Skipping Credit Checks for an Account

End users can skip automatic credit checking for particular accounts by changing the value of the Skip Credit Check field. This field is displayed in the Account screen, Credit Profile view. When this check box is checked, it indicates that credit checks must be skipped for the account.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

Restricting Which Employees Can Administer Credit Checking

There are two ways to restrict which employees can administer credit checking on accounts:

Create a read-only version and a read-write version of the Account Detail - Credit Profile view. Give employees who must administer credit checking access to the read-write view. Give employees who must not administer credit checking access to the read-only view.
Add a rule or logic to restrict who can update fields related to credit checking. For example, only allow an account’s primary sales representative to update these fields.

For more information about restricting employees’ access to features, see Siebel Security Guide.

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.

Extending the ASI for Credit Check Interface Request

If you want to extend the ASI, then you must add fields to:

The following external and internal interfaces:
- Credit Check Interface Response
- Credit Check Interface Request
The following internal objects:
- Credit Check Interface Request - Quote
- Credit Check Interface Request - Order

This will create the necessary mapping between the Credit Check interface structure and the Siebel Quote and Order business components.

If you add a field, then make sure that the names of the fields in the Internal and External integration objects match. For example, if you want to add the field Priority that maps on quote to Priority-quote and on order to Priority-order, then you would set up the names as indicated in the following table.

Table Naming Fields

Object Name	Name	External Name
Credit Check Interface Request	Priority	none
Credit Check Interface Request - Quotes	Priority	Mapping of the Priority field to the correct field on the Quotes Business Component
Credit Check Interface Request - Orders	Priority	Mapping of the Priority field to the correct field on the Orders Business Component

For information about how to extend the integration object, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration. This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications.