1. Implementing Procurement
  2. User-Defined Attributes

User-Defined Attributes

Organizations have varied and diverse requirements around document approvals. Some of these requirements may include the need to perform currency conversions for amount based attributes, or derive approvers based on roll-up amounts across lines within a document with common attributes.

Oracle Fusion Cloud Procurement provides the ability to define user-defined attributes that you can use to author document approval rule conditions. These user-defined attributes are managed and used within a specific approval task. There are two types of user-defined attributes that can be created for cloud implementations, namely Currency Based and Summation.

Currency Based User-Defined Attributes

Organizations commonly operate in multiple geographic locations and need to create transactions in different currencies. If your organization has a standard set of approval rules that apply across these locations, you can simplify rule maintenance by setting up rules in a common currency instead of maintain currency specific rules. You can define currency based attributes such that amounts in different currencies are converted to a specific currency for rule evaluation.

For example, Acme Corp. creates an attribute USD Requisition Amount and uses the attribute for rule conditions, such as if USD Requisition Amount is less than 500, approvals from the preparer's manager is required and so forth. If a requisition created in Mexico is submitted, where the functional currency is pesos, the requisition amount will first be converted to USD before rules are evaluated.

To create a currency based user-defined attribute, you will need to provide these information:

  • Name of the attribute.

  • Type of attribute to perform the currency conversion.

    It can be an amount based attribute that's seeded for an approval task or a summation user-defined attribute.

  • The attribute to convert.

  • The target currency to convert to.

  • The rate type to apply for the conversion.

The conversion rate will always be based on the date on which the transaction was submitted for approvals.

Summation User-Defined Attributes

Customers who need to perform approval routings based on data aggregated across one or more attributes when a document contains more than one line, schedule or distribution can create summation user-defined attributes to achieve this requirement.

Example

For example, Acme Corporation's approval policy requires the number of IT approvers to be based on the total amount of IT requests within a requisition. If the total IT amount is less than 1200 USD, then the IT manager needs to approve. If the IT amount exceeds 1200 USD, then the IT manager, director and VP need to approve the document.

An employee submits this requisition:

Line

Description

Category

Amount

1

Dell computer

IT.Desktop

599.00

2

LCD monitor

IT.Desktop

450.00

3

Samsung Galaxy

Telephony.Cellphones

299.99

Lines 1 and 2 both roll up to the IT category, and therefore for this requisition, the total of these two lines will drive the number of IT approvers needed to be included. Based on the sum of the two lines (1049.00), only the IT manager needs to approve. If the approval rule is set up to look at the requisition's total amount, this would be routed up to more approvers than required.

Summation attributes can be set up to filter objects based on specific attribute values, such as Item is XYZ001 or based on a hierarchy roll up, such as Category rolls up to IT. Hierarchical based summation will include objects with attribute values that belong to the sub-hierarchy under the specified filter value. For example:

IT includes Software, Hardware, and Peripherals, and Hardware, includes Desktops, Laptops, and Monitors.

If a summation attribute has been created with filters based on the Category hierarchy that rolls up to IT, any lines with Desktops, Laptops or Monitors categories will be included in the summation.

To create a summation user-defined attribute, you will need to provide the following information:

  • Name of the attribute.

  • Attribute that you want to sum across the objects.

  • Up to three filters.

  • Match using specific attribute value or based on hierarchical roll-up.

    • If specific attribute, specify the attribute and value to match.

    • If hierarchical based, specify the hierarchy to use and the attribute value in the hierarchy to rollup to.

      Hierarchies supported are:

      • Balancing Segment

      • Category

        This is based on the Procurement Category Hierarchy.

      • Cost Center

      • Management Segment

      • Natural Account

Deploy Approval Rules

Any changes made to the rules or any rules that have been newly added have to be deployed for them to be effective. Deploying approval rules will require users to click on the Deploy button on the Edit Rules and on the Manage Approval Rules page. If users don't intend to deploy the changes that were made to the rules, they can choose to click on the Discard button to revert the rules to the last deployed state.

The ability to configure and save rules without deploying them allows users to iterate the rules until a final version is reached without affecting the existing approval rules.

The operations that a user will see at the header level of the page are as follows:

  • Save: Save or Save and Close will save the updated rules to the database without deploying them. Users can edit and save rules across multiple participants before deploying them.

  • Deploy: Deploy updates the rules engine and makes all the rule changes across all participants effective. It is displayed on both the Manage Approval Rules page and the Edit Rules page. The Deploy button is disabled by default and is enabled when there are rules that have been updated and saved. In cases where there are 100 or more rules across all participants, Deploy triggers an ESS job that updates the rules engine with all the rules across all the participants.

  • Discard: Discard is displayed on both the Manage Approval Rules page and the Edit Rules page. It is disabled by default and is enabled when there are rules that have been updated and saved. Discard removes any rule changes that were saved and the rules will go back to the last deployed state.

View Rules Deployment Job Status

Oracle Fusion Cloud Procurement uses ESS jobs to deploy rules to the rules engine if the number of rules across all the participants is greater than 100. In cases where the number of rules is large in number, the deployment may take some time to complete. The Manage Approval Rules page displays the Approval Rules Deployment Job Status link to provide users visibility. These statuses are displayed based on the state of the job.

  • Completed: Rules have been successfully deployed to the rules engine. This status isn't linked.

  • Pending: The deployment job is in the queue and is pending deployment.

  • Running: The deployment job is in progress but hasn't yet completed.

  • Error: The deployment job has failed to deploy the rules to the rules engine.

Users can't make any changes to the rules while the deploy job is either in pending or in the running state.

Edit Rules in BPM

The Manage Approval Rules page supports commonly used configurations for approval rules. Alternatively, the BPM Worklist application could be used for more complex rules. In the event that you authored some rules in the Manage Approval Rules page and later decide to use the BPM Worklist application, you should first use the Edit Rules in BPM option. The Edit Rules in BPM only applies to the task you have opened: requisition approvals, purchase order approvals, external registration, internal registration, spend authorization, and so on. When you use this option, the following will happen to the active task:

  • All saved rule changes that aren't deployed will be discarded.

  • All user-defined attributes will be deleted. All rules with user-defined attributes will need to be updated in BPM Worklist.

  • The approval rules for all participants won't be available in the Manage Approval Rules page.

In case you later decide to use the Manage Approval Rules page, you can upgrade the rules from BPM Worklist by following the upgrade warning message when you open the Manage Approval Rules page.

You must have this privilege in order to use the feature:

  • Name: Edit Approval Rules in Oracle BPM Worklist

  • Code: POR_EDIT_APPROVAL_RULES_IN_BPM_WORKLIST_PRIV