Oracle iProcurement Made Easy Part 2

Functional Outlook on Technical Aspects of iProc urement iProcurement a web based application lets try to study the contribution of different elements that contribute in helping us achieve the desired functionality in iprocurement.

A non-negotiable part of iprocurement we need just too many patches to make it work normally, than might be required for a form based application. If you are on R12.1.3, you can consider yourself lucky to have some really good patches from Oracle Support, to fix the issues with iprocurement application. However, if you are on R12.1.1, the most you will hear from Oracle support is upgrade to R12.1.3, to get better support with patches to address given issues & you will be suggested with some roll up patches for R12.1.3 upgrade.

The message Y ou encountered an unexpected error . Contact your system administrator. will keep haunting you if you dont set the right profile options. Even before you start setups using iprocurement catalog administrator, it will be a good idea to verify that all mandatory profile options are setup .

iProcurement is the application that will take most out of your workflow consultants. In fact, I can go on saying that if one wants to learn workflo w, one should start working on iProc; & the take aways would be

Charge Account Workflow - (customized more often than not)

Confirm Receipt Workflow Very useful & I believe the most understated of all workflows used in iproc as I have seen not many clients truly using it. ( Its just so overlooked, I literally want to promote this workflow . Wait for my white paper on this. )

Create PO Workflow T his one is apple of everybodys eye (this is the next thing which people th ink, when they implement iproc. One of the clients that I worked for, even went to the extent of having custom API for creation of PO, when C reate PO w orkflow did not fit their requirements. Manual creation of PO literally gives nightmare to clients, especially when iproc is implemented.) So, I would add it in list of Non - Negotiables for iprocurement .

 Requisition Approval Workflow This one is very sober, unless you use AME. I wont say AME plays havoc on this workflow; but AME takes pride in standing for complexity. It can address the requirements of complex approvals for requisitions. Its only when requisition approval workflow is unable to address approval requirements even if customized, it looks for solace in AME .

Change Request Workflow This one has potential to give you nightmares & mostly it remains untouched . I have seen clients requesting to disable change request function for requisitions. A good number of patches may need to be applied to ensure that all is well, while using change request for requisitions. However, that also depends on R12 version being used. We have best of the patches available for R12.1.3; so if R12.1.1 is in use, you may have to make yourself habitual of issues with Change request function. Again, it differs from client to client, depending on how much emphasis is given to this workflow based on business requirements. A good deal of research & tes ting should be done while deploying it, to study its impact.

I think, a functional consultant wants more automation while doing functional setups, than client wants for end users to carry out functional tasks . I am truly biased to use this tool at every place possible while do ing the setups. Just imagine if you have to create 100+ smart forms in iproc. Thankfully, we have tools like HTML Forms Data Loader whose playback fun ctionality can easily help us to create all smart forms automatically. But this component (data loader) for iprocurement is still nice to have & it really needs good word of mouth to make it an indispensable component.

On iprocurement projects, usually there is requirement to hide some features in iprocurement application. As we start to address any such requirement, we need to figure out whether menu exclusion can be used to hide the given feature. I have seen developers using p ersonalization to hide features in iproc, most of the time; but its always a best practice to use menu exclusion over personalization, if available for given feature.

This is again a non-negotiable part of iprocurement. When you work on iprocurement, you unknowingly end up learning a good aspect of personalization. Requirements like hiding a field, changing the prompt, making a field mandatory; are very common on iprocurement projects. And as you enter About this page link, you know it all (sometimes on instinct) that what next to do.

Its when personalizations cannot address the requirements for custom features that extensions come in to picture. Again, you need to revisit JDeveloper & some such terms of OAF like controller, view objects, entity objects, application module & not to forget the MVC arch itecture, class file, xml page and all these together will make the recipe for your custom feature in iprocurement application that you want to achieve through controller extension. So, basically when we say extension, its the controller which is extended.

This is the tool which does it all when it comes to iproc technical (you even have sql editor within it, what more you want ). I wont call it a one stop shop, because we even need DBA support for frequently bouncing apache server to deploy our personalizations & extensions; and thats not all. This tool works in sync with other tools like toad, putty etc. As they say, its all team work .

I dont think we should un dermine what OAF has to contribute by limiting it with a scope. I have seen organizations implementing full-fledged subledger modules using OAF (kudos to those OAF developers who develop ed those custom modules) & then interfacing to Oracle General Ledger. Of course OAF is EBS specific, unlike ADF; but then, we EBS consultants can still take pride in that- we not only have a dedicated framework (OAF) for us, but also standard applications like iprocurement wholly built on OAF & provided by Oracle. I think, i ts truly luxury to have it both iprocurement & OAF .

Its recommended to read my previous publication Oracle iProcurement Made Easy Part 1 & my future publications, for better understanding of terms used in this white paper . This white paper is part-2 of my iprocurement series & in my future publications, I shall be discussing more on different features of iprocurement. Author Introduction Nidhi Saxena has around 5 Yrs. of experience in Oracle Apps SCM Functional & has worked on various client engagements for implementation, support & upgrade projects & handled iProcurement & Purchasing modules independently.