1 Feature Summary
Oracle Retail Merchandising Cloud Services 22.1.401.0 is a Critical Update. This chapter describes the feature enhancements in this release.
Noteworthy Enhancements
This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in the Oracle Retail Merchandising Cloud Services update and describes any tasks you might need to perform for the update. Each section includes a brief description of the feature, the steps you need to take to enable or begin using the feature, any tips or considerations that you should keep in mind, and the resources available to help you.
Column Definitions
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Feature: Provides a description of the feature being delivered.
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Module Impacted: Identifies the module associated with the feature, if any.
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Scale: Identifies the size of the feature. Options are:
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Small: These UI or process-based features are typically comprised of minor field, validation, or program changes. Therefore, the potential impact to users is minimal.
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Large: These UI or process-based features have more complex designs. Therefore, the potential impact to users is higher.
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Delivered: Is the new feature available for use immediately after upgrade or must the feature be enabled or configured? If no, the feature is non-disruptive to end users and action is required (detailed steps below) to make the feature ready to use.
- Customer Action Required: You must take action before these features can be used. These features are delivered disabled and you choose if and when to enable them.
Table 1-1 Noteworthy Enhancements
| Feature | Module Impacted | Scale | Delivered | Customer Action Required? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supplier Evaluation Inbound Integration, Reporting, and Usage |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| Franchise Cost Management Extended to Item Level |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| Allocations to Non-Stockholding Stores through XAlloc API |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| Supplier Distribution for Warehouse Orders |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| Ti-Hi Item Attributes in WMS Cloud Integration |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| Get Next Allocation Number Service |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| Franchise Order Webservice |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| Virtual Warehouses as Source Location for Franchise Orders |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
| New Inbound REST Services |
Merchandising |
Small |
Enabled |
No |
Supplier Evaluation Inbound Integration, Reporting, and Usage
This cloud service update includes a new contextual report that displays attributes interfaced from the Supplier Evaluation Cloud Service within the Supplier Site Maintenance UI based on the selected Supplier Site ID and the Purchase Order Maintenance header UI in case of any purchase order raised for a Supplier Site. This report is in a ‘read only’ format and the user is expected to review this on a regular basis, take the data points into consideration and select an appropriate supplier based on this. This Supplier assessment data is also made available in the Custom Validation Rules module to support the creation of custom rules using the parameters.
Franchise Cost Management Extended to Item Level
This cloud service update allows for franchise costing relationships to be defined at an item-location level for Cost templates based on Margin and Percentage off Retail. Definition of such relationships are permitted both via the user interface as well as using the Upload Cost Buildup Template (fcosttmplupld) batch. This allows for easier exception management while using these cost template types. Existing costing relationships is not impacted by this change.
Allocations to Non-Stockholding Stores through XAlloc API
The Allocation Subscription API (XAlloc) has been enhanced in this update to handle both stockholding and non-stockholding company as well as franchise stores as destination locations for allocations, irrespective of the inventory source type. While the user is able to allocate to non-stockholding franchise stores having the same or different transfer entity compared to the source warehouse, only the non-stockholding company stores having a different transfer entity identifier are considered as valid.
Supplier Distribution for Warehouse Orders
The supplier distribution functionality provides flexibility to split replenishment orders among different suppliers based on the supplier distribution ratio setup for an item/location on replenishment. This cloud service update extends the supplier distribution functionality to support warehouse locations. This change has no impact on the any pre-existing supplier distribution data.
Ti-Hi Item Attributes in WMS Cloud Integration
The item integration from Merchandising to WMS Cloud has been enhanced to include the pallet tier (TI) and height (HI) attributes. These attributes are loaded into WMS Cloud via the Item Supplier Pack Size. The values published from Merchandising are those that are defined for an item’s primary supplier and primary country of origin.
Get Next Allocation Number Service
A new REST service has been introduced that can be used to return the next available Allocation Number, similar to the previously existing services for retrieving the next transfer number or next purchase order number.
Franchise Order Webservice
This new service can be used from an external source, usually an order management system, to create franchise orders in Merchandising. This service accepts a collection of franchise orders and will return success or failure through the service response object. The franchise order uploaded through this service will be created with an order type of 'EDI'. A linked transfer, PO or store order will be created for the approved franchise orders. Franchise orders created via this service will be systematically approved if the customer is setup for auto approval, provided the customer has valid credit. If the order does not meet the criteria for auto-approval, Merchandising will create the franchise order in ‘Input’ or ‘Require Credit Approval’ status and will provide the reason of approval failure in the response object. Franchise orders from customers that are not identified for 'Auto Approval' are uploaded into Merchandising in Input status. Such orders will need to be manually approved in Merchandising to be considered active. The service allows upload of one or more franchise orders in a single service call. Each request is treated as a single unit of work and if there are no validation errors or business validation errors, all the franchise orders in the message will be created and the service will return success through the service response object. In case of one or more validation errors, the service call will be rejected, and the error response will contain the details of the validation errors.
Virtual Warehouses as Source Location for Franchise Orders
The Franchise Order service (new) and batch upload flows have been enhanced to support the usage of virtual warehouses as the source location of an order. Previously, franchise orders were limited to physical warehouses when being sourced from a warehouse.
New Inbound REST Services
This cloud service update contains several new REST services that support Create, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations for specific entities and transactions. These new services are documented in the Merchandising Foundation Cloud Service Operations Guide volume 2. These inbound services can be used as an alternative to the inbound RIB interfaces for third party integrations.