Choosing Workflow Options
Starting the "Send Notifications for Purchasing Documents" Process
In Purchasing, a workflow called "Send Notifications for Purchasing Documents" looks for documents that are incomplete, rejected, or in need of reapproval and sends notifications to the appropriate people of the document's status. You can view and respond to these notifications through the Notifications Summary window. This workflow sends notifications for purchase order and requisition approvals, RFQs and quotations, and purchase order acceptances. In order for these notifications to be sent, you need to start the concurrent program process, Send Notifications for Purchasing Documents, and choose how frequently you want the process to run. See: Send Notifications for Purchasing Documents.
For information on the kinds of notifications sent by the Send Notifications for Purchasing Documents process, see: Viewing and Responding to Notifications.
Choosing Document Creation Options
Prerequisite
Before you can use or modify any of the workflows in Purchasing, you need to set up Oracle Workflow if you haven't done so already. See: Setting Up Oracle Workflow.
Purchasing integrates with Oracle Workflow technology to create standard purchase orders or blanket releases automatically from approved requisition lines. The workflow for creating purchasing documents automatically is called PO Create Documents. PO Create Documents consists of three attributes, the values of which you can change in the Oracle Workflow Builder:
- Is Automatic Creation Allowed? - The default value of this attribute is set to 'Y,' meaning that automatic document creation is allowed for approved requisition lines. You can prevent automatic document creation by setting the default value of this attribute in the Workflow Builder to 'N' for No.
- Should Workflow Create the Release? - The default value of this attribute is set to 'Y,' meaning that the workflow tries to create the release; if it cannot, or if the value of this attribute is set to 'N' for No, then the workflow will not create the release; you must use the AutoCreate Documents window to create the release.
- Is Automatic Approval Allowed? - The default value of this attribute is set to 'N' for No, meaning that documents are not automatically approved after they are created. If you set it to 'Y' for Yes, then the PO Approval workflow is launched to route the documents for approval.
For each of these attributes you can change their values to 'Y' for Yes or 'N' for No. You make these changes in the Oracle Workflow Builder. See Document Creation Options in: Workflow for Creating Purchase Orders and Releases.
Deciding If You Want to Use the Timeout Feature
Prerequisite
Before you can use or modify any of the workflows in Purchasing, you need to set up Oracle Workflow if you haven't done so already. See: Setting Up Oracle Workflow.
The Timeout feature in the approval workflow enables you to specify a period of time after which, if no response has yet come from an approver, a reminder is sent. You can send up to two reminders to an approver using the Timeout feature. You can also specify that after a certain period of time, the document is forwarded automatically to the next approver in the hierarchy. You can optionally setup this feature through the Oracle Workflow Builder. See Setting Up the Timeout Feature in: Approval Workflows.
If you don't set up the Timeout feature, the approval workflow will not time out; it will simply wait to receive a response from each approver.
Modifying Change Order Workflow Options
Prerequisite
Before you can use or modify any of the workflows in Purchasing, you need to set up Oracle Workflow if you haven't done so already. See: Setting Up Oracle Workflow.
Purchasing integrates with Oracle Workflow technology to let you define what changes to purchase orders or releases--for example, to amounts, suppliers, or dates--require reapproval. All of the workflow processes and functions relating to change orders can be found within the PO Approval workflow. The change order workflow process uses the same reapproval rules already defined in Purchasing to determine whether a document, depending on its document type, requires reapproval. If you want to change the reapproval rules that the change order workflow uses, you can change those reapproval rules that determine what percentage change to a unit price, quantity, or document total requires reapproval. You can optionally change these rules by modifying their attributes in the Oracle Workflow Builder. See the section Customizing the Change Order Workflow in: Workflow Processes for Approving Change Orders.
Using the Workflow Background Process
Prerequisite
Before you can use or modify any of the workflows in Purchasing, you need to set up Oracle Workflow if you haven't done so already. See: Setting Up Oracle Workflow.
The Workflow Background Process must be running if you are using the following options:
- The Background mode for Purchasing approvals. By default the profile option PO: Workflow Processing Mode is set to Background. You must start the Workflow Background Process in order for the Background mode to work. See: Profile Options in Purchasing.
- The Timeout feature in the approval workflow processes for purchase orders or requisitions. The Timeout feature is enabled only if you modify the notification(s) associated with it in the Oracle Workflow Builder. The Timeout feature sends periodic reminders to approvers or automatically forwards a notification to the next approver in the hierarchy after no response is received over a particular period of time. For information on how to set the Timeout feature in the Workflow Builder, see Setting Up the Timeout Feature in: Approval Workflows.
If you are using the Workflow Background Process for the Timeout feature, it is reasonable to schedule the process to run once or twice a day. If you are using it for Background mode approvals, you should schedule it to run much more frequently.
If you want to use the Workflow Background Process for both requisitions and purchase orders, you need to submit it twice, once for PO Approval and once for PO Requisition Approval.
Report Submission
In the Submit Requests window, in the System Administrator responsibility, select Workflow Background Process in the Name field.
See: To Schedule Background Engines.
