Workflow WSH

Oracle has offered many new features in R12.In this post I will talk about the Introduction of the workflow in Oracle Application Shipping Module offered in R12. In R12 Oracle Shipping (WSH) is utilizing the workflow, with the introduction of the workflow now user can

• Automate the Shipping business process by adding them in the Shipping workflow.
• Routing based on the business rules.
• Send the Notification to user about some Important event, e.g sending notification about
  • Backorder delivery
  • Dollar Amount or Volume in Delivery etc
• Best of all now with workflow user can visualize the Shipping process, by means of workflow monitor and thus improve our visibility.
• Integration with the 3^rd party APIs will be easy , we can just add them where every they requited by customizing the workflow.
• In case we want to Print the documents at some point in the shipping flow, just add the Print document activity in the flow and it will get printed when workflow reaches to that activity.

In R12 Oracle has offered workflow for

• Delivery
• Trip
• Ship Confirm Process

These workflow shows the High-level overview of the delivery and Trip process and can be accessible from the

• Shipping Transaction Form
• Quick ship user Interface.

Other advantages of the workflow are that we can access the History of the workflow events and all the workflow events /activities got captured in the History table and thus Audit – Trail will ne easy.  Another Advantage that we always expect from the Oracle Corp. is this workflow is optional, if our business need them enable them other wise keep them disable. With out Workflow your application behaves just like the previous releases.This make it Pick and User process, Pick the process /events that we want to use in our business and enable them Limitations   - Some of the limitation of shipping workflow as of now are – As of now this workflow is subject to limited extensions

• You can’t add an activity in this workflow that required response from user. For example, you can inform your manager /user about the status etc of delivery /trip by notification, but response for the notification as of now not supported.
• Also extension of a workflow Defer activity not supported in this workflow.
• These workflows are available for Individual delivery and not for the consolidated delivery.

Purging  - Oracle has provide program to purge the Obsolete workflows, also Shipping has it’s own program to purge workflow that are obsolete or delivery is already closed. 

Delivery Workflow

Delivery Workflow has following Activities – Start Pick InitiatedShip-To-Delivery (Sub process for Ship Conform).

End.

Please Note that Shipping workflow as of now available for outbound activities  

Delivery Workflow Triggering Events

1. This workflow will triggered as soon as an order line required picking is assign to a delivery.
2. When we initiated the pick release process with Auto Created Delivery = Y.

Trip Workflow

It has following activitiesOpenSet in Transit Close

 

If a Trip has multiple stops, then Initial and finial stop will taken into consideration. Please Note that Order line and Shipping workflow are 2 different things and not related to each other and it is not possible to drill down one flow from another. 

Line Flow –

It started as soon as you save the line, and it then go throwBookingSchedulingShip Line Manual Process After then data from OM got interfaced to Shipping, Order line mark as status ‘Awaiting Shipping’ and workflow for line will be at SHIP_LINE Notified status, and remain here till the Ship Confirms activity executed. 

Shipping Workflow –

It got triggered when a Delivery got created and First delivery assigned to it. Shipping workflow then triggered the Ship Confirm Sub process and executes the OM Interfaced and Inventory Interface. Once Delivery closed shipping workflow comes to end (Line flow then progress further from SHIP_LINE activity). 

Ship To Delivery Workflow  -

This workflow models the Ship Confirm Process, one of advantages of Ship Confirm workflow Process is, it supports extensions that included

• You can add an activity where you are expecting the response, e.g Response base notification. Let’s say as per business Rule if shipment exceed some volume or dollar amount then shipper need an approval from Manager , to handle that, you can add Approval Notification in the Ship Confirm workflow and manager can approve or reject that. Another example is if you want to add some 3^rd Party APIs in your ship confirm process.

• This Sub Process is again Optional, If you want to enable it or Disable it, you can do that from the Global /Shipping Parameter window. Please Note that you can still use Delivery Workflow even if you don’t want to use Ship confirm flow.

As stated earlier advantages of the Oracle is everything is pick and choose , you can enable /disable this workflow as per your requirement , If you don’t want this workflow , just disable It. That means if you are interested in the Delivery and Trip workflow and you don’t want Ship Confirm (Ship To Delivery) flow you can just disable the Ship Confirm flow and keep other flow. 

Business Events

Shipping workflow has introduced lots of the business events, which when raised/received take the required actions (like calling of other workflows etc). These too again are optional and can be enable / disabled. If we look closely all these workflow , we can notice that we have lots of business events in all the flows.

Please note that once we select any type of the workflow

1. Delivery
2. Trip
3. Ship –To-Delivery

Some of events become core and system will not allow us to disable them. It is the business events that made the shipping flow flexible and we pick and choose what ever we like.

Shipping workflow Setup

Shipping flow can be setup by means of Selecting the workflow from the Global ParametersShipping parameters 

Global Parameters

 

Shipping Parameters

Shipping Parameters will do the setup only for the Organization level, where as Global Parameter will do the setup at the Application level. Auto Sync between Global and Shipping parameters has been provided. Customer can customized any shipping workflow. Please do not customize/extend the Seeded workflow, rather take a copy of seed workflow as extend as per your requirement. Shipping has provided Lookup setup to assign your custom workflow. We have flexibility to assign custom workflow to all or few of the organizations.  

Profile options

Override Ship To Deliver Workflow – Oracle is Provide this profile option and if mark Yes this will Process the Ship Confirm workflow , In case it got stuck because of some Technical reason.