External Rate Calculation
You have the ability to interface Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud to any third-party rating engine by connecting Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud as a web service client to the custom web service that adheres to the WSDL interface provided by Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud or as the REST client supporting XML as the payload.
You will need to implement a SOAP based web service or REST based web service by following the steps provides in the Web Service Implementation section and using the Rating Engine WSDL provided in the appendix. Register the newly implemented web-service with Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud by following the steps provided in Configuration section to be able to access the web service to return rate to Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud.
The ERE REST web service uses XML as payload and adheres to Rating Engine WSDL for input and output payload.
Setup
The first step is to ensure there is a valid External Rating Engine (ERE) Fieldset defined in Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud. The External Rating Engine Fieldset has to be defined with a Connection Type as “Webservice (W)”. External Rating Engine (ERE) is the main link between Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud and a custom ERE. This is required for both SOAP and REST web services.
| Field | Value | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Fieldset ID | USER_DEFINED | Identifies the fieldset. |
| Valid External Rating Engine ID | GENERIC – a predefined external rating engine ID. | Identifies the external rating engine that can utilize this particular fieldset. |
| Connection Type | Webservice(W) | Defines the type of transport mechanism used. |
| Implementing Java Class | glog.business.rate.rateengine.external. webservice.client.ExternalRatingWebServiceClient (this value is auto populated and is read only). | Specifies the fully qualified name of the java class, which will link to the external rating engine web service as a client. |
| External System ID | User Defined | External system is required for specifying the web service endpoint and the web service operations to invoke. |
The External Rating Engine Fieldset also specifies the information that will be passed from Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud into the invocation of the external engine by defining a list of one or more Rate Basis Items (RBIs). Using the lower half of the Fieldset Power Data page, you can select a set of RBIs and include them in the fieldset by clicking on one of the right-pointing arrows. These RBI references (listed below under the GID column) are stored in the external_rating_engine_fieldset_d table.
| RBI | GID |
|---|---|
| Shipment Number of Line Items | SHIPMENT.NUMLINES |
| Shipment Source Postal Code | SHIPMENT.SOURCE.POSTAL_CODE |
| Shipment Destination Postal Code | SHIPMENT.DEST.POSTAL_CODE |
| Rate Offering Service Provider | SHIPMENT.RATE.SERVPROV |
| Rate Offering Rate Service Calculator | SHIPMENT.RATE.RATE_SERVICE |
| Shipment Line Item Weight | SHIPMENT.LINES.WEIGHT |
There are two ways to invoke an external rating engine using Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud:
Rate Offering Method
This method attaches the invocation of an external rating engine to the rate offering. Current, purpose-build external rating engines are invoked using this method. An example would be the current implementation of the Oracle Transportation and Global Trade Management Cloud link to SMC’s LTL RatewareXL web service rating engine. This method requires a rate offering to specify a rate offering type that includes the EXTERNALRATINGENGINE rate attribute in its costing sequence. The following fields must be specified on the Attributes page of the Rate Manager UI:
| Field | Value | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| External Rating Engine ID | GENERIC | Select the GENERIC external rating engine. |
| External Engine Fieldset ID | USER_DEFINED | Choose the fieldset defined for the external engine that invokes the accessorial calculations. |
Rate Cost Method
It is possible to specify the invocation of an external rating engine as a rate cost during the processing of standard costs, or during the processing of accessorial costs. The rate cost UI contains a Cost Type dropdown list. Choosing the value of External allows the specification of the same external rating engine fields as found on the Rate Manager UI:
Rate Costs or Accessorial Cost Method
| Field | Value | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Cost Type | External | This is a field that explicitly defines the type of calculation described by the cost record. |
| External Rating Engine ID | GENERIC | Select the GENERIC external rating engine. |
| External Engine Fieldset ID | USER_DEFINED | Choose the fieldset defined for the external engine that invokes the calculations. |
Optional – Service Time
There is also an option to return the service time from the external rating engine. For this type of rate service, the rate engine will return the specific pickup time and delivery time for a shipment or the number of days the service would take. The rate service engine uses the pickup and delivery time or the service days to test whether it will fit into the order’s pickup and delivery windows. If not, this rate cannot be used.
There are two ways to return service time information from a rating engine:
- The external rating engine can fill in the estimated pickup and delivery times. The RATE SERVICE associated with the rate must have a service type of TIMEDEFINITESERVICE.
- The external rating engine can fill the service Days field. The RATE SERVICE associated with the rate must have a service type of EXTERNALTRANSITDAYS.
For this type of rate service, location calendar, location capacity, and carrier capacity are not considered. Pickup or delivery activity time at a stop is always 0.
The following assumptions also hold true:
- Only applies to 2-stop shipments
- It does not make sense to have HOLD AS LATE AS POSSIBLE set to TRUE regardless of the setting of the parameter HOLD AS LATE AS POSSIBLE, this type of rate service is always calculated in HOLD AS LATE AS POSSIBLE = false.
- Order’s pickup and delivery windows should be a whole day. If the orders have a narrow pickup and delivery window, the specific pickup time and delivery time will fall out of the order’s windows, so it will fail to use this rate. For example, the order’s delivery window is 10:00-11:00am, but rate engine come back with a delivery time of 4:00PM, then rate service will fail this rate.
- It only applies to single leg shipments: i.e., shipment with rate service type cannot have upstream and downstream shipment.