iProcurement Made Easy!!

Part 1

From view point of a Functional Consultant iProcurement A self service application wholly based on OAF pages. Before going in to functionality of iProcurement, lets have technical treat first & see if we can create self-service application of our choice i.e. custom application

Start with JDeveloper 10g for Oracle EBS 12.1.3

Imagine every OAF page to be created using an integrated development environment (IDEs); some examples of IDEs are Visual Basic, Visual C++, Windows Programming, even Oracle Forms Developer. JDeveloper 10g is one such IDE which I would call a front end(user friendly) approach to backend programming. Absence of Drag & Drop option is probably the first difference pointed out in JDeveloper 10g, when compared to other IDEs. To start with, imagine every OAF page to be .XML page (xml programming skills not mandatory, but nice to have ). A full-fledged XML page can be created in Jdeveloper with knowledge of Basic Java & Pl/SQL. Running this xml page using JDeveloper reminds me of running programs in VB; the pre-defined classes used in JDev remind of Visual C++ programming ; not to forget Windows programming which gave birth to all IDE components menu, button, text box, label, cursor etc. I am still biased to compare JDev with Oracle Forms Developer more often as I learnt the other IDEs ages back (okay.. a decade back )

To start with, components or items in JDev can be called WebBeans. In Oracle Forms Developer, these can be easily created using drag & drop option, but in JDev, its code-based programming everywhere. However, in JDev, we can find wizards at just too many places, which make things easy for us to good extent.
Again, we cannot get away from EBS file system & different directories, as we venture in to EBS technical realm. Lets pick COMMON_TOP, which gives shelter to our OAF (XML) pages

Now, here if FYI

FYI Contd..

Hope this gives some idea of developing OAF based application. One such self-service application is iProcurement which is standard product of Oracle. Now lets see, what prompted huge demand of this product. If we call Oracle Purchasing a cake, oracle iprocurement can be called icing on cake or cherry on icing. Oracle iprocurement is never a cake in itself. Its because iprocurement has to be used in conjunction with Purchasing module. We can give cake (Purchasing module) to some procurement users and icing or cherry (iprocurement module) to others procurement users. And of course, there can be users who

will enjoy the cake with icing & cherry all together. Such users are usually the Purchasing administrators in any organization. Now lets just focus on icing & cherry i.e. iprocurement module. We can have two types of role for iprocurement users Iprocurement Administrators (icing on cake) Iprocurement Requesters (cherry on the icing)

So, its the cherry that is floated most. End-users are the ones enjoying only cherry here.
We will have huge number of iProcurement Requesters in any organization, as compared to iProcurement Administrators or Core Purchasing users. These iProcurement requesters can carry out functions defined by 3Rs: R1 -> Requisition R2 -> Receiving R3 -> Return Requisition: 1. Can be internal requisition or purchase requisition 2. Can be for pre-defined items or non-catalog items Receiving: 1. Destination type can be inventory, expense or outside processing 2. Receipt qty can be corrected 3. Receipt routing has to be mandatorily Direct Delivery for receiving in iProc.

Return:
1. Received goods can be returned to supplier. Role of iproc administrators is to handle setups to activate certain features for iproc requesters. For example: Creation of Stores & Smart Forms. iProcurement gives ability to create Non-catalog requisition, which means the requesters can raise requisitions even when the items are not pre-defined in inventory. Smart forms are used to facilitate creation of such non-catalog requisition. Iprocurement administrator can create smart forms template & make it available for use of iprocurement requesters.

These smart forms are added to store, which is again made accessible to iprocurement requesters. iProcurement requesters can work even without making use of stores & smart forms, but depending on business requirements- some such features can be activated by iproc catalog administrator. In our discussion so far, we did not discuss on the core feature of Procurement i.e., Purchase Order creation; because iprocurement does not handle creation of Purchasing Orders. As soon as the requisition is approved, control is taken over by purchasing module for PO creation. Once the purchase Order is created & approved; the receiving can be done in iprocurement depending on receiving criterion we discussed earlier. This white paper is meant to give background of iProcurement. This is Part-1 of my iprocurement Series & I shall be discussing more on functionalities in iprocurement in my future publications.

Author Introduction: Nidhi Saxena has around 5 yrs of experience in Oracle Apps SCM Functional & has worked on various client engagements for implemetation, support & upgrade projects & handled iprocurement & Purchasing modules independently.