About Documents

In order to understand the concept of documents in Oracle Transportation Management, a few key concepts first must be made clear:

Document Content: The physical text or data defining a document. For example a PDF, text from an invoice, or a graphic.
Document: A container for document content that defines the source of the content and optionally associates it with a business object.
Document Type: A template for documents defining the content source, storage, and associated business object type.
Standard Document: A container for multiple document revisions for a document type associated with a business object. Standard documents are designed to streamline the document generation, review, and finalization process.
Additional Document: All documents that are not standard documents. Additional documents do not have versions and are not part of a review process. They are generated data (from the Generate Document action) or information uploaded into the system by the Attach Document or Document File Upload actions.

A document in Oracle Transportation Management is more than just a report or Word document file. It is a container that holds content, such as a Word document or report. For example, a shipment may have a document named "Proof of Delivery" associated with it. The content of "Proof of Delivery" may change over the lifespan of the shipment, but document name remains the same.

Based on how Document Content is shared across multiple business objects, the documents are classified as below:

Individual Document: Any document created which is not linked/related to any existing document are individual documents.
Consolidated Document: Document whose document content is shared across multiple objects is a Consolidated document. A consolidated document is created when the Add Document action is performed and the document type selected supports consolidated documents. When a document is set as "consolidated", there is one copy shared across multiple objects. For example, you attach a consolidated document to several shipments. If that document is updated, then it is updated on each of the shipments to which it is associated.
Link Document: Any document which is linked to other document is a link document. A Link document is created in these scenarios:
- When the Add Document action is performed and Create As is set to “Link”, the document selected will be linked to the selected business objects.
- When a single document content is uploaded against multiple objects, link documents are created for each business object which are linked to the consolidated document.

Documents can be associated with a business object, such as a shipment, or be stand alone. Documents associated with a business object are generated by actions, such as Generate Document or Upload Document, on that business object. You can also create a document directly through the Document Manager and link it with a business object which it will be shown as an Additional Document on the business object's Document tab. In most cases, documents are created on the business object. To view or edit Additional Documents across business managers, access the Document Manager directly.

Standard Documents

A standard document is a container for multiple revisions (i.e. documents) for a document type associated with a business object, such as a shipment or a trade transaction. New versions of the document may be created and stored as revisions of the same standard document. A process of reviewing and approving standard documents exists. Standard documents are designed to streamline the document generation, review, and finalization process. Document reviewers approve the latest revision of a standard document. When all the revision is approved by all reviewers, the document is finalized. Contacts who are subscribed to the document will see the finalized version. Document revisions are generated by actions on the Document tab of the business object, such as shipments, where the standard documents are located.

When a business object is created, the document determination engine associates standard documents with it. These standard documents initially have no revisions. To create revisions you can manually upload content to a new revision, generate report-backed content to a new revision, or rely on agent triggers to generate report-backed content. For example, a bill of lading can be a standard document for a shipment. The bill of lading is a standard document, and therefore just an empty container. In order to populate the standard document with content, you must run the Generate Document or Upload Document actions, or configure agent actions to generate the content for you. Then your bill of lading standard document will have one revision, the content you just placed in it.

Standard documents have the following attributes:

Document Type: This represents external content uploaded into the system, or content generated from a user or agent request.
Instructions: A field denoting the behavior of the document type with respect to the transaction. This field can be used to distinguish between documents where their generation is necessary to complete a transaction, and those which are optional to generate.
Text Templates: A standard document can be associated with one or more text templates, based on the document type and transaction. For example, a hazardous materials warning may be required on a bill of lading if the shipment has hazardous materials in it.
Reviewers: A review process can be established to review each standard document. All reviewers associated with a document must approve the document before the document can be finalized.
Review State: Whether the document is being previewed, reviewed, or is finalized.
External Status: A set of user-defined status types and values for use in document workflows and validation.
Revisions: A standard document can be previewed, based on current data. If the document has saved revisions, the content of those revisions can be retrieved for viewing. Review history is stored within a revision.
Subscribers: A list of parties to receive finalized content for the standard document.

Document Determination:

Oracle Transportation Management use a document determination engine based on auto assign rules to determine what standard documents are attached to shipments. For each standard document attached to a shipment, the engine associates text templates, reviewers, and subscribers. The auto assign rules are applied at shipment creation.

For Oracle Global Trade Management, document determination is handled by trade compliance rules.

Document Validation:

Before generating content for a standard document, the system validates the transaction for the specific document type.

Document Generation:

The content for standard documents can be manually uploaded, or it can be prepared by a report system. User actions allow you to work with standard documents:

When generating a document, the system checks to see if it is a standard document on the business object. If it matches a standard document, the content will be added to the standard document as a new revision. If the document is attached to a business object that does not support standard documents, the document will be added as an Additional Document.

Document Revisions:

A standard document may have multiple revisions. Each revision has its own record in the system, and is associated with reviewers, review dates, statuses, and annotations. An example of how this is handled, is the Document tab on a shipment containing standard documents. Shipment document revisions appear for standard documents if you drill down into the standard documents. Setting the glog.reqdoc.supportRevisions property controls if revisions are used or not.

Document Reviews:

Anyone with edit rights to the business object can act on behalf of a reviewer to accept or deny a document. Reviewer contacts may be associated with an Oracle Transportation Management user. Special users can be added with the user role of DOCUMENT_REVIEW. That role limits the user's access to business objects and documents. Such a user can only query and respond to documents on which he is a reviewer.

When a standard document revision is created or modified, the system resets to a PENDING state. Reviewer responses are cleared. The glog.reqdoc.supportAutoReviewerNotification property can suppress the automatic notification that is sent to reviewers when a document has changed. If you turn off that property, you can configure the Notify Document Reviewers agent action to send the notification instead.

All support for document review can be suppressed by setting the glog.reqdoc.supportReview property to false.

Document Distribution:

After a document is reviewed and finalized, a required document is distributed to all subscribers, which are defined as Oracle Transportation Management contacts.

All support for document finalization may be suppressed by setting the glog.reqdoc.supportFinalization property to false. If you suppress finalization, agents must be written to forward document information to subscribers.

If you wish to prevent notification of finalized documents from being sent, set the glog.reqdoc.supportAutoSubscriberNotification property to false. Additionally, you may configure agents to send the notification when that property is false. In that scenario, set an agent listening to one of the standard document lifetime events, such as MODIFIED, and configure the Finalize Standard Document and Notify Document Subscribers agent actions to determine when to finalize and notify subscribers.

Additional Documents

Most documents are not standard documents. Standard documents only exist when working with specific transactions, such as shipments and trade transactions. If you create a document through the document manager and the document type is not a standard document, it will be added as an additional document. Revisions will not be tracked, and reviewers will not be added for the document.