1. Administration Guide
  2. Other Settings

5 Other Settings

Notifications

From the Settings menu, you can access the Notifications option. Selecting this option will open the Notifications page in the Retail Application Administrator Console. This page will display two tables.

Figure 5-1 Notifications

This image shows the notifications Page

The top table shows the notification types that are configured in the solution, along with the number of days that the notifications are retained when they occur for a user. Existing notifications can be edited to change the type code and description, along with the retention days. Retention days must be a number greater than zero, or it can be set to -1 to keep the notification indefinitely, unless deleted by a user. However, this is not recommended.

The description is displayed in the notification displayed to the user:

Figure 5-2 Data Upload Request Notification

Data Upload Request Notification popup

You can also add one or more email addresses to have a message sent when the action occurs to trigger a notification.

New notifications can be added in on premise implementation of Merchandising solutions only. Adding new notifications also would require customization if you want the action to be triggered from an action within the application.

Deleting a notification type removes the notification type and all of the notification type's associated roles and groups. Any past notifications are also removed from user's queues.

The second table in the screen is used to create groups for the notification type selected in the top table. Click the Create iconic button create icon to create a new group. Then, associate roles or another group with the group by selecting the Add Job Role iconic button Add Job Role Icon or the Add Notification Groups iconic button add group icon. This will allow the notification to be delivered to all users assigned to the roles configured for the group. If no group is assigned, then the notification is delivered to the user who initiated the action the created the notification.

Asynchronous Tasks

Asynchronous tasks are background processes launched by users of the Merchandising solutions. For example, you may use this to troubleshoot an asynchronous task that you failed to receive a notification for. The information in this screen should be included in any SRs logged in helping resolve asynchronous issues. Note: this is not used for Merchandising or Sales Audit.

Administrators can view the latest status of asynchronous tasks through the Manage Asynchronous Task Status page, which is accessed from the Settings menu by selecting Asynchronous Tasks. To view tasks, enter search criteria and click Search. Click the View option in the Actions menu, or the View iconic button, to view more details on the task. Click the Refresh option in the Actions menu, or the Refresh iconic button, to refresh the data with the latest tasks. You can also purge asynchronous tasks present in the system, if desired. Otherwise, the tasks are purged as configured in Application Properties.

Figure 5-3 Asynchronous Tasks

This image shows the Asynchronous task status screen.

Application Properties

The Application Properties screen allows administrators to search for and modify configuration properties by deployment. There are several functions in the Merchandising cloud services that use these properties:

  • Enabling Attachments in Merchandising and Invoice Matching

  • Enabling Drill to Finance functions in Merchandising and Sales Audit

  • Enabling Slack integration in Merchandising

  • Configuring URLs for External Services

Enabling Attachments

To enable the attachments feature in Merchandising and Invoice Matching, you will need to do the following:

  1. Select Settings > Application Properties

  2. In the search criteria, enter RMS or ReIM as the Deploy Name, depending on which solution you are configuring, and type Attachments in the Key Name field. Then click Search.

  3. This should return one row, similar to what is shown below.

    Figure 5-4 Enabling Attachments

    This image shows the application properties search screen

  4. Click on the Edit iconic button or select Edit from the Actions menu. This should display a popup that looks like the below image. To enable attachments, change the Current Value to true.

    Figure 5-5 Edit Properties

    This image shows the Asynchronous task status screen.

  5. Then click OK to save your changes.

  6. Validate that the Attachments pane is visible in one of the screens that supports this function:

    • Merchandising: Item, Item Supplier, Item Supplier Sourcing Country, Item Location, Order Header, and Order Details.

    • Invoice Matching: Document Maintenance

To later disable this feature, follow similar steps, but set the Current Value to false instead.

Enabling Finance Drill to Finance and Reports

There are reports and buttons available in the Transaction Data and Fixed Deal Transaction Data screens in Merchandising, as well as in the General Ledger screen in Sales Audit, that allow users to view General Ledger details and also to drill forward into the General Ledger to view the details of how these financial transactions were posted. By default, access to these buttons and reports is disabled in both Merchandising and Sales Audit, since they are only applicable if integrating with PeopleSoft Financials. For more details on these reports and how to access once enabled, see the BI Publisher Reports section of the Merchandising Reports Guide and the Sales Audit Reports Guide. To enable the buttons and reports, log into either Merchandising or Sales Audit and follow these steps:

  1. Select Settings > Application Properties.

  2. In the search criteria, enter RMS (or RESA) as the Deploy Name and type "Drill" in the Key field. Then click Search.

  3. This should return one row, similar to what is shown below.

    Figure 5-6 Application Properties


    Application Properties Screen with Drill Forward Key Name

  4. Click on the Edit iconic button or select Edit from the Actions menu and change the Current Value to true.

  5. Then click OK to save your changes.

Note:

There may be a delay in this taking effect once the change has been made.

Enabling Slack Integration

In the Item and Purchase Orders workflows in Merchandising, you can configure on a feature called Conversations, which allows you to integrate the collaboration tool Slack with Merchandising. When this is enabled, it will allow users of these workflows to collaborate while creating or updating items or managing purchase orders.

This feature works by creating a channel in Slack when you initiate a conversation for a particular item or PO. In this way, you can reply or monitor the details both through the Merchandising application, as well as in your Slack instance. The instructions for doing this are below.

Create a Slack App

First, create a Slack App that is integrated with Merchandising. These are the basic steps for creating an app in Slack calling out the specifics needed to integrate with Merchandising, but please consult the Slack documentation for specifics.

  1. Log into the appropriate Slack Workspace and Select Create New App.

  2. Provide a name for your app - this is displayed to the user when they authenticate in Merchandising.

  3. You are brought to the Basic Information page. In the navigation bar, under Features, select the OAuth & Permissions link.

  4. Add a Redirect URL. This should have a format that matches the hostname for your Merchandising environment and ends with oauth/_callback, something like https://xxx-yyy-mfcs-mas.oracleindustry.com/Rms/oauth/_callback.

  5. Scroll down to the Scopes section on the OAuth & Permissions page. Select the Permission Scopes dropdown and select the following scopes then click Save Changes:

    • chat:write:user

    • groups:history

    • groups:read

    • groups:write

    • users:read

  6. Install the Slack App in the Workspace by scrolling back to the top of the OAuth & Permissions link and clicking the Install App to Workspace button.

Configure Slack in App Server

Next, the details of what was configured above will need to be configured in the app server. This needs to be done by the Oracle Cloud Operations team, so will require an SR. In the SR, you will need to include some of the information you set up when you created the app in step 1, including:

  • Slack Workspace URL

  • Redirect URL

  • Client-id and Client-Secrets - these can be found in your new Slack App under the Basic Information link under Settings in the section titled App Credentials. Merchandising will use these to authenticate itself to Slack.

Configure Slack in an Application

Once that step is complete, you will need to configure the related application parameters, following these steps:

  1. Select Settings > Applications Properties.

  2. In the search criteria, enter RMS as the Deploy Name and type "Conversation" in the Key field. Then click Search.

  3. You should see several items listed in the results table. For each of the Key Names listed below, highlight the appropriate row and click on the Edit iconic button to make the updates noted:

    1. Collaboration Conversations Enabled - set current value to true

    2. Collaboration Conversation Login Scheme - set current value to oauth

    3. Collaboration Conversation Provider - set current value to slack

    4. Slack URL - set current value to https://slack.com.

    5. Slack App Redirect URL - set the current value to that described above in the pre-requisites.

    6. Slack Workspace - set the current value to that described above in the pre-requisites.

These changes will take place immediately after all steps are completed.

Configuring External Services

For several Merchandising services, there is the ability to configure an external URL for the service to use. This is also done in the Application Properties workflow. The services that support this type of configuration are:

Service Name Application Property Key

General Ledger Account Validation Service

accvalidation.service.url

Drill Back Forward Service

drillforward.service.url

Customer Order Address Service

custordaddress.service.url

Customer Address Service

custaddress.service.url

  1. To configure the URLs for these functions, log into Merchandising and follow these steps:

  2. Select Settings > Application properties from the sidebar menu.

  3. Search for the appropriate key, as shown above and click Search.

  4. Click on the property and choose Edit.

  5. Enter the external URL in the Current Value field.

  6. Click on OK to save the updates.

Web Service Configuration

ReSTful web services provide the ability to query data from Merchandising solutions and the ability to create and update data within Merchandising solutions. The Web Service Configuration workflow allows you to enable or disable REST services which require data pre-processing in order to allow consuming systems to replicate the data at their end. If one of these services will not be used, disabling the service via this configuration screen will save system resources by turning off the data processing. 

To access the Web Service Configuration page from the Tasks menu, select Application Administration > Web Service Configuration. The Web Service Configuration page appears.

Check or uncheck the Enabled checkbox, to indicate whether or not the service is enabled for integration with external applications. Click on Save or Save and Close to commit the changes.

Figure 5-7 Web Service Configuration Page


Web Service Configuration Page

For more details on how to invoke a service once enabled, see the Web Service Configuration section of the Merchandising Foundation Cloud Service Operations Guide volume 2.