Considerations When Switching To External System Integration

If your implementation is currently using the field order functionality and is planning to switch to interface field activities to an external system, here are some considerations.

Field orders are not required when integrating field activities to an external system. As a result you may choose to disable the field order related functionality:

• The automatic dispatch background process ( FOD ) and download field order background processes ( FDS ) no longer need to be scheduled. In addition, the printing processes FODL and DSGPFODL no longer need to be scheduled.
• The menu items Field Order, Group Premise FAs and Field Order Search are no longer applicable. Consider disabling security for these pages.

When switching over to begin using an external system, you will undoubtedly have pending field activities that need to be interfaced to the external system. If you change the field activity's dispatch group from one that does not reference an external system to one that does, the sample field activity integration algorithm will generate an FA Creation message to the external system.

It is possible that your pending field activities are already linked to field orders. If that is the case, you will not be able to change the dispatch group on the field activity. The recommendation for switching to an external system for dispatching is to change your pending field activities to remove the link between the field activity and the field order. As mentioned above, the field order is no longer needed. Once you remove the link then you are able to change the dispatch group on the field activity.

If you prefer to leave the field order / field activity link in place then you must change the dispatch group on your field order to one that references the new external system.