Implementation of quote approval

A quote must be approved by all the required approvers defined in the approval plan before it can be presented to a customer. An approver can also assign a delegate user, who can approve or reject quotes for a specified period of time.

Sometimes a quote may be placed on hold for various reasons. In such a scenario, the quote must be approved by all the approvers defined in the approval plan to enable a Field Sales Representative to present the quote to a customer. For example, if the adjustments applied to a quote exceed the maximum limit that has been configured, a Field Sales Representative can present the quote to a customer only after it has been approved by all the required approvers.

Solution

In IBM® Sterling™ Field Sales, a quote requires approval if any or all of the following conditions are met:

Any of the items in the quote violates an approval rule.
The adjustments applied to a quote or any of the items in a quote under a manual pricing rule exceed the maximum discount limit configured under the rule.

The quote approval process involves the following steps:

Setting a Delegate User
Requesting Approval
Viewing the Approval Summary
Accepting or Rejecting an Approval Request

Solution for setting a delegate user

From time-to-time, a user with permissions to approve or reject a quote, may be unavailable for reasons such as vacation, out-sick, traveling for extended periods, and so forth. Or, a user may want to assign another user to approve or reject a quote on his or her behalf. Such users can set up a delegate user.

This delegate user can approve or reject quotes using the Preferences link. When Preferences dialog box is displayed, the user can search and assign a delegate user. The getUserList API is called to retrieve a list of users when the user performs the user search and the getUserUiStateList API, getUserHierarchy are called to display the delegate user.

Note: The getUserHierarchy API does not return any record if there is no existing delegate for the quote.

Solution for requesting approval

IBM Sterling Field Sales enables a user to request approval for a quote.

The following table describes the APIs that are called when a user requests approval for a quote:

API: Purpose
validateItemsForOrdering: To validate whether the items or the item quantity in the quote is valid for the quote.
getCompleteOrderDetails: To retrieve the quote header information.
sendOrderForApproval: To place a request for approval of the quote.

IBM Sterling Field Sales provides the capability to apply a hold to a quote that is pending approval. The hold type that is applied to the quote is determined by the Hold Type To Be Applied When Order Needs Approval rule.

Solution for viewing the approval summary

A user can view the summary of all the approvals that have been obtained or are required for a quote. The getCompleteOrderDetails API is called to display the Approvals screen. In the Approvals screen, along with the quote's header-level information, you can view the list of approvers who are involved in the approval process and the status of the approval for each approver, the pricing summary, and notes that have been added to the quote.

A user can view the list of header-level and line-level rule violations that require approval in the Violations That Require Approval panel. Additionally, for line-level rule violations, a user can view the details of the lines that have violated the corresponding rule in the Violations For Approver dialog box. The getCompleteOrderDetails API is called to retrieve the details of the lines that have violated the rule.

When viewing the approval summary of a quote, a user can view the rating of the customer for which the quote has been created. The getCustomerDetails API is called to retrieve the customer's rating based on whether the YSCGetAdditionalCustomerInformationUE user exit is implemented or not.

If an image exists with the same name as the value of the GradeCode attribute in the output XML of the getCustomerDetails API, the image is used to display the customer's rating. The image is displayed only if a CSS entry has been defined in the sfs-cust-grade-<Grade_Code> format. If an image does not exist, the description of the customer grade is displayed.

The following table describes the attributes that must be passed as request parameters to the getfusionchart.jsp file:

Field: Description
chartHeight: The height of the FusionCharts chart.
chartWidth: The width of the FusionCharts chart.
Customer_Org_Code: The Organization Code of the customer for which the quote was created.
Document_Type_Code: The document type of the quote.
CustomerId: The identifier of the customer for which the quote was created.

Solution for accepting or rejecting an approval request

A user can either accept or reject the request for approval of a quote. The recordOrderApproval API is called to save the changes to a quote after the request for approval is accepted or rejected.

End-user impact

Implementation

This section explains the configurations for this functionality:

You must configure the approval rules appropriately in the IBM Sterling Business Center application to determine the conditions under which approvals are required for quotes. For more information about creating an approval rule, refer to the Sterling Business Center pricing administration.
You must configure approval plans in the IBM Sterling Business Center to determine who must approve a quote, and the sequence, if any, in which the approvals must occur. For more information about how to configure approval plans, refer to the Sterling Business Center pricing administration.
To enable IBM Sterling Field Sales to apply a hold to a quote that is pending approval, you must enable the Hold Type To Be Applied When Order Needs Approval rule in the Applications Manager.
You must configure the customer grades that you want to assign to customers using the Channel Applications Manager.
If you are implementing a custom logic to calculate the customer's rating that is displayed when a user adjusts the price for a line item, you must implement the YSCGetAdditionalCustomerInformationUE user exit. For more information about the YSCGetAdditionalCustomerInformationUE user exit, refer to the IBM Sterling® Order Management: Javadoc.
To display the customer's rating as an image, you must define a CSS entry in the sfs-cust-grade-<Grade_Code> format in the sfs-images.css file located in the <INSTALL-DIR>/repository/eardata/sfs/war/sfs/resources/default/css directory. The size of the image should be 16 X 120 pixels for ideal display.
The notes entered when a user sends a quote for approval are saved in the quote using the SAA_SENT_FOR_APPROVALS note type.