Add related products

Edit online

Typically, all products are associated with certain related products. For example, A television can be associated with an HDMI cable. In such cases, the user must be able to add the related products also to the order.

Solution

This section describes APIs, user exits, services, and other components.

A user can add related products from the Add Products screen. Related products can be of different types. For example, an HDMI cable is a related product of type "cross-sell" for a television. Related products can be of type "up-sell", "alternative", and so on. If there are any provided services associated with the product, the services are displayed in the Services tab, and can be added to the order.

When the user adds a product to an order, the user can view all the associated products that belong to different association types, in their respective tabs.
Note: Sterling Call Center does not support category associations for products.
The getCompleteItemList API is called to retrieve the association types and the associated products. The API also returns a Function attribute for every association product. If the value of the attribute is RELATE, the related product is added as a new order line. If the value of the Function attribute is REPLACE, the original product is replaced by the related product.
Note: The original products are replaced by the related product only in the context of an order. However, when the user adds related product from the Product Details screen, the original products are not replaced because the context of the parent product is not available.

The getCompleteItemList API internally calls the getItemListForOrdering API to retrieve the associations for a product. The number of association items that are displayed depends on the value configured for the "Maximum number of associations to show in UI" rule in the Business Center. These association items are sorted based on priority so that the CSR can view only the important ones while interacting with the customer. When the getCompleteItemList API is called, the MaximumRecords and OrderBy attributes are passed in the API input. The value of MaximumRecords is based on the value set for the rule. The value of the OrderBy attribute is "Priority". If a provided service is associated with a product, that service can be added only in the Services tab while the CSR adds the product the service is associated with. If the CSR tries to add an associated provided service outside of the product, an appropriate error message is displayed.

When a user adds a related product to the order, a new order line is added or the original order line is replaced, with the Relationship Type configured.

Associated provided services and delivery services are added in the same quantity as the parent product.

The getCompleteItemList API also retrieves the modification permissions.
  • If the ADD_LINE modification type is allowed for an order, only then a related product can be added to the order.
  • For a draft order, if the REMOVE modification type is enabled at the order level, only then the original product can be deleted and replaced by the related product.
  • For a confirmed order, if the CANCEL modification type is enabled at the order level, only then the original product can be canceled and the related product can be included.
  • When a product with an associated provided service is removed from the order, all associated services are removed with the product.

Supersessions: When a user adds a product to an order, the original product is replaced with a superseding product if the following conditions are met:

  • The original product's effective end date has expired.
  • The original product has an associated product whose association type is configured as Supersession.
  • The Item Substitution On Order Allowed rule is set to "N".
Note: When the original product is superseded, the Associated Quantity configured for the supersession product is not considered. For example, even if the Associated Quantity of the supersession product is 5, the quantity is set to 1 in the Add Products screen, when the original product is superseded in the order.

Implementation

The following section describes the rules that you must configure.
  • To allow the users to add related products to an order, configure the following order entry rules appropriately in the Business Center.
    • You must set up the line relationship types. The values configured for a line relationship type are used to establish a relationship between the order lines in an order.
    • Show In UI: You can select this rule to display the products that belong to an association type.
    • Item Association: This rule enables users to add the related products to the order or replace the original product with the related product.
      • If you select the Item Association as "Relate Item", the related product is added to the order as a new order line.
      • If you select the Item Association as "Replace Item", the original product is replaced by the related product.
    • Relationship Type: The rule enables users to add associated products as related products.
    For more information, see the Sterling Business Center Product Administration.

  • You must configure the standard unit of measure display rules for a product. To define the unit of measure for quantity, see Defining unit of measure.

  • Enable the "Item Substitution On Order Allowed" rule. For more information, see the Catalog management configuration.
  • In "Order Entry Rules" wizard, configure the Maximum number of associations to show in UI rule appropriately. For more information, see the Configuring order entry rules topic.
  • The delivery fulfillment method and provided services are not supported with a Promising Server set up.
  • For more information about the APIs, see the Javadoc.

End-user impact

Users can either add the related products to the order or replace the original product.