Product validation

Solution

The following section describes APIs, user exits, services, and other components.

Products are validated when the Add Products screen is loaded and when a user saves information on the Add Products screen.

The getCompleteItemList API retrieves the main products and the related products. When the user updates the changes, the modifyFulfillmentOptions API internally calls the changeOrder and validateItemForOrdering APIs. The validateItemForOrdering API does the following validations:

• Existence of a product in the enterprise catalog.
• The minimum and maximum quantity of a product that can be ordered, which is defined in a catalog. The quantity that is ordered for the product must not be less than the minimum order quantity and not more than the maximum order quantity that is configured for the product.
  Note: A user with appropriate permissions can override the quantity validation for a product. When the user updates the order, the changes are applied.
• If the effective start date and end date are defined for a product in the catalog, these dates are validated against the current system date. If the system date is earlier than the start date or later than the end date, the product is considered invalid.
• Products only in the "Published" status are considered valid to be added to the order.
• If the product is configured such that it cannot to be sold separately, the product is verified to ensure that it is part of a bundle.
• Customer entitlement rules and strategy that are associated with the product. If a customer is not entitled to a product and if the user attempts to add the product, the product is shown as invalid.

The validateItemForOrdering API is called when a screen loads or when the user clicks "Next" on the wizard, or "Save" on the screen. When the API is called, the complete list of error lines is retrieved. However, only the first ten records are displayed in the first page. The error lines cannot be paginated. Once the user resolves the error, the user must click 'Save' or 'Next' on the wizard to perform validation again.

Implementation

The following section describes the rules that you must configure.

To enable product validation capability, the following validation rules must be configured in the Applications Manager:

• Enable Extended Item Validation. For more information, see System administration components: defining installation rules.
• Validate Item During Order Creation/Modification. For more information, see Defining a process type's primary information.
• Validate Item. For more information about configuring this rule, see Configuring Distributed Order Management.
• Enforce Customer Entitlement Based On: For more information about configuring this rule, see Configuring Distributed Order Management.
• For more information about product substitution and managing supersessions, see Sterling Business Center Product Administration.
• You must configure and manage the customer entitlements appropriately. For more information, see Sterling Business Center Product Administration.
• Overriding the quantity validation is a permission-controlled task. For information about administering user group permissions, see Administering user group permissions.

End-user impact

If there are validation errors, the user cannot proceed to the next step. The user must correct the validation errors or override them to proceed with the order.