Software contracts and multisite implementations

The basic units of a multisite implementation are organizations and sites. Software contracts are defined at the organization level, and you must explicitly specify the sites to which a software contract applies when you create software contract records.

An enterprise can have multiple organizations; each organization can have multiple sites. Organizations and sites are virtual entities that can accommodate many different kinds of business practices. Organizations and sites do not necessarily correspond to physical sites or facilities.

Item sets are groups of items that are shared between organizations to enable features such as inventory sharing. Company sets are groups of vendors that are shared between organizations.

When creating contracts, the site for the contract must belong to the organization in which the contract is created or to an organization that uses the same item set and company set as the organization in which the contract is created.

The fact that software contracts are defined at the organization level has the following implications for implementing software management:
  • Key fields for new records must be unique for the organization, but may duplicate record IDs used by other organizations.
  • Only users who have security permission to the organization and the application can view records.

A contract cannot be used until you use the Authorize Sites action to indicate that the contract may be used by one or more sites. You can add sites from other organizations to the contract as long as they use the same company set and item set. If your company uses a single company set and item set, all of your organizations can use software contracts.

Before you can approve a software contract, you must specify at least one authorized site.