Prerequisites

Before your suppliers can access specific inquiries, you must:

• Set up secured external access for suppliers.

  To give access to PeopleSoft Engineering information for suppliers, you must establish appropriate external facing internet access. Implementations for this vary by customer site depending on firewall configurations. However, the basic setup provides external supplier access to only the SUPPLIER registry—by way of a uniform resource locator (URL)—within your PeopleSoft system.

• Define suppliers by using the Supplier Information component in PeopleSoft Purchasing.

  See PeopleSoft Source to Settle Common Information: Understanding Supplier Maintenance.

• Enable suppliers to log in.

  Set up supplier profiles by associating suppliers with a user ID. Use the Supplier User Setup component in PeopleSoft Purchasing to associate each user ID with one or multiple supplier codes. Then when a supplier user logs in to PeopleSoft Engineering, the system determines to which supplier the user is associated. If a user is associated with multiple suppliers, the Select Supplier page enables the user to select from a list which supplier the user is interested in viewing. If no supplier code is assigned to the user, then the system administrator must assign a supplier code to a user ID.

  If you have installed PeopleSoft eSupplier Connection, you can also enable suppliers to allow their own employees access to PeopleSoft Engineering. Providing this direct access relieves your own employees of the task of administering access permissions. You always retain control of the type of access that each supplier's users are allowed.

  See PeopleSoft Source to Settle Common Information: Supplier Profiles.

  See Select Supplier Page.

  See PeopleSoft eSupplier Connection: Establishing Self-Service Security for Suppliers.

• Define BOM, ECR, and ECO access privileges by supplier.

  Before your suppliers can access the ECR, ECO, and BOM data that you want them to view and, in the case of ECRs, possibly create or update, you must give the suppliers, from within the PeopleSoft system, access to the data at the item level. With the BOM Access by Supplier page, you can associate business unit items with suppliers, thereby granting suppliers item access by supplier code. Specify the business unit items (including BOM type and BOM code) to which each supplier has access, and specify whether suppliers can view the associated BOMs, ECRs, and ECOs.

  See PeopleSoft Manufacturing: BOM Access by Supplier Page.

• Set up supplier BOMs, attachments, and email capability.

  See Attachments and Email Capability.

• Set up supplier-related BOMs and engineering changes functionality with Documentum.

  If you have installed Documentum, the suppliers view documents associated with BOMs, ECOs, and ECRs within PeopleSoft Manufacturing and PeopleSoft Engineering.

  See Understanding Document Management in PeopleSoft Engineering.

• Be aware of the ways in which supplier-related BOMs and engineering changes are reflected in PeopleSoft Manufacturing and PeopleSoft Engineering.

  See Attachments and Email Capability, Functionality Reflected in PeopleSoft Manufacturing and PeopleSoft Engineering.

• Determine whether you'll implement workflow and whether the supplier is included as an approval step in workflows defined by ECO type.

• (Recommended) Define procedures regarding timing of supplier access (controlled for each ECO).