Involved Parties

An involved party identifies a contact that has some interest in what happens to a business object (for example, an order) as it moves through the transportation life cycle. A contact can be defined as a person or a location; however, only a location with a primary contact can be assigned as an involved party.

Each contact that you identify can be notified when specific events take place. For example, a contact can be notified when any changes occur on the order such as modifications to line items, quantities, and so on. A contact can also be notified when an order is placed on a shipment and tendered to service provider. The involved party is also important in identifying the contact that should be billed for the transportation costs of the order.

The purpose of an involved party is to identify contacts that have something to do with a particular business object such as an order, shipment, location, invoice, or bill.

• send notifications based on specific business object events; for example, order created, order modified, shipment tendered, etc.
• tender shipments to service providers.
• identify the appropriate contact on invoices and bills.
• register interest in specific documents.

Involved parties are designated by the system as major or non-major. Major involved parties take precedence when a conflict arises, for example, when merging two shipments. There can be only one major party per involved party qualifier.

The four major involved parties are as follows:

• BILL-TO
• BILL-FROM
• REMIT-TO
• LOGISTICS

All other involved parties are considered to be non-major. Those parties may be assigned to more than one involved party qualifier.

Involved Party Attributes

An involved party is uniquely determined by a contact and/or location, a communication method, and a qualifier that provides meaning for the person or location. Most business objects support contact and location involved parties.

• Involved Party Contact identifies a specific contact or contact group with attributes such as a name, email address, phone and fax numbers, and so on. Contacts and contact groups are defined in the Communication Manager. When you perform a search in this field, contacts as well as contact groups are returned.
  
  Although contacts do not require an association with a particular location, you should create at least one contact for each location and service provider that you add. You should assign contacts to the appropriate locations so that Oracle Transportation Management can retrieve the appropriate address information for messages such as email and faxes. For example, when you tender a shipment to a service provider, Oracle Transportation Management retrieves geography information for the SHIPPER and CONSIGNEE when preparing a tender notification. If a contact without location is specified for these Involved Parties, no address information can be displayed.
• Also, if a contact with an Involved Party Qualifier of ORDEROWNER is specified without a location, the rule for itinerary corporations cannot determine a corporation for the involved party.
• Involved Party Location identifies a specific location with a primary contact defined.
• The Communication Method determines whether a contact can receive messages such as an email, a FAX, an Oracle Transportation Management Message Center message, an EDI transmission, etc.
• Since you can assign a Communication Method directly to a contact in the Communication Manager, use the Involved Party Communication Method field as an override to what you assigned to the contact. Alternatively, you can choose the BY CONTACT communication method and Oracle Transportation Management uses the communication methods assigned to the contact (in the Communication Manager).
• The Involved Party Qualifier identifies the role that a contact is playing in regard to the business object. Oracle Transportation Management provides public Involved Party Qualifiers that can be used or you can create your own in Power Data.
  
  Some Involved Party Qualifiers provide specific functionality and others that are copied from the order to other business objects such as shipments, bills, or invoices. For example, the LOGISTICS qualifier is used for tendering, see below for more information. You should use the BILL TO involved party for a location assigned to an order to determine whether the order will be released based on credit status. Orders can be held, approved, or declined based on these external statuses defined in Power Data. Credit statuses can be changed through manual or automated processes against both orders and locations.
  
  Multiple contacts can be specified as an involved party and a single contact can act as multiple involved parties. For example, contacts JSMITH and BJONES could act together as the ORDERSUPPLIER for an order while JSMITH could also act as the ORDEROWNER.

Assignment Rules for Populating Involved Party

Buy vs. Sell and Master Corporation

Oracle Transportation Management can automatically populate involved party contacts on an order if you configure a master corporation appropriately.

To accommodate the Buy versus Sell perspective of business objects, the following rules determine how Involved Parties are automatically populated on order bases and shipments when a master corporation is configured. This ensures that the appropriate contacts are copied between business objects to facilitate the buy and sell perspective.

Note: Involved Parties are populated when a shipment is created (buy and sell) or when an action occurs against the shipment which may change the service provider.

Business Object	Rule
Order Base	If contacts with BILL-TO, LOGISTICS, ORDEROWNER, ORDERSUPPLIER, SHIPPER, CONSIGNEE involved party qualifiers are not defined on the order release, they are copied from the master corporation for the domain. You must first designate one corporation as the master using Corporation power data. Then you can define the involved parties for master corporation.
Buy Shipment	Any non-major involved parties on the shipment will remain on the shipment. BILL-TO information is derived from the Intermediary Corporation defined on the itinerary that is used to build the shipment. If that information is missing from the shipment, the contact with the BILL-TO qualifier will be copied from the order release. If the order release does not have a BILL-TO contact defined, the BILL-TO contact on the itinerary (parent leg of the shipment) is used. Contacts with BILL-FROM/REMIT-TO qualifiers are copied from the shipment's service provider corporation. If that information is not available, the information will be copied from the order release. If the information is not on the order release, the information from the primary leg of the shipment will be used. Contacts with the LOGISTICS qualifier are copied from the master corporation. If that information does not exist, it is derived from order release. If it is not present on the order release, it is derived from the shipment's parent leg.
Sell Shipment	Any non-major involved parties on the shipment will remain on the shipment. BILL-TO information is derived from the order release. If the information does not exist, it will be derived from the shipment's parent leg. BILL-FROM/REMIT-TO contact information is derived from the intermediary of the shipment. If that information does not exist, it will be derived the shipment's parent leg. All other involved party qualifiers (with the exception of the LOGISTICS involved party) are copied from the order release.

 

Note: All other involved parties are considered to be non-major. Those parties may be assigned to more than one involved party qualifier.

Auto-Assign Involved Parties

You can also use the Auto Assignment Manager to configure business rules that determine when to automatically assign involved parties based on data attributes of a business object.

Involved Party Notification

The determination of the Communication Method to use for a particular notification depends on whether the user or the recipient is driving the decision. For example, a user may know that when acting as CONSIGNEE on an order, JSMITH wants to receive CONSIGNEE notifications by email. He would specify JSMITH and email when entering the CONSIGNEE involved party. On the other hand, the user may not know what types of communication methods JSMITH supports now or in the future. By leaving the Communication Method field blank, he is delegating the choice of communication method to the communication method records associated with JSMITH. Oracle Transportation Management selects the highest-ranked communication method from the supported methods at the time of notification.

For collaborative communication, such as tender, Oracle Transportation Management ignores any communication method entered with the involved party. Instead, it searches for the highest-ranked communication method supported by both the service provider and the planner. The ranking is based on the service provider so Oracle Transportation Management picks the service provider's desired communication mode which the planner can support.

The sending party, which is the Logistics IP mapped to the shipment, must be registered as a valid address.

Tender Shipments to Service Providers

If you want service providers to receive notifications when a shipment is tendered, you must enter a contact for the planner on the order and choose the LOGISTICS Involved Party Qualifier. You must also define a primary contact for the service provider.

Note: If you choose email as the primary communication method for the LOGISTICS planner and the service provider, you must ensure that both contacts have valid email addresses.

You can have OTM send notification to involved parties when a shipment is tendered. This has to be configured in Contact Notification. OTM does NOT automatically send a notification.

Copying Involved Parties

There are two agent utility actions that you can configure in agents to automate the copying of involved parties to/from related business objects.