Datafile Home \| KB Home \| Advanced Search

Linking to POP Document Layouts

Article Number: 1795 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 5:03 PM

Datafile Software

Linking to POP Document Layouts

There are three levels at which you may wish to link XML processes to POP documents:

To make sure the POP order header is marked so that subsequent processes can recognise which orders to process.

To chain to the document process itself as a separate step after the whole of the XML file has been processed.

To chain to the document process as each discrete document within an XML batch is processed — almost certainly required for purchase invoices.

POP Data Items

For any of the above to work, there must be some data items defined, and entries made in Database Profiles:

There must be an N-type (not Y-type) field in the POH database to hold the document identity code of the POP document to be used for any of these processes. This item must be noted in the POH Database Profiles under Header Optional 4 as Batch Document Id.

If processing incoming purchase invoices, there must be a K- or L-type data item in the POH to hold the total VAT amount from the purchase invoice. It too must be noted in the POH Database Profiles under Header Optional 4 as Batch Document Tax. The document process will adjust its calculated VAT to match that given in the purchase invoice.

An item that represents the quantity of goods received must be present in the POD database, and also noted in Database Profiles, this time under Detail Optional 5 as the Batch Document Qty. This can be a calculated data item, for example the original order quantity less any quantities back-ordered.

Marking Orders Only

This option requires you to note the particular document process that will be used for the data. The document ID (for example, 5003 for the third POP invoice document) is written to the Batch Document ID field of the order header, to note which orders were processed from the XML file. Subsequently you may want to use ProFiler options to process the orders, and following that to chain to the document process itself.

Note

A new menu call option allows you to call a POP document to process only those orders marked with that document’s parameter in Batch Document ID. To set up this option, add a "B” to the menu parameter concerned, as in the example shown here. You can add to this a call back to a ProFiler option too — e.g. "5003BXYZ/4/5” to launch the 5th option on the 4th menu of ProFiler application XYZ.

Chain To Document Processing

If you tick the Auto-Run option in the XML transaction definition, then immediately after all the XML documents have been processed, the relevant POP document process is called. It will process only the orders where the Batch Document ID is set to the document value, and resets this to zero once it has finished processing the order. Typically you’d use this option to process (say) supplier order responses, where you expect these to match one-to-one your orders.

Real-Time Processing

This is a refinement of document processing, whereby it is invoked after each incoming XML document, before returning to process the next document. It is necessary where XML documents are sent in batches, and any one batch could contain more than one document that addresses the same order.

For example, one supplier never sends invoices with more than twenty detail lines, so if you place an order with more than that number, more than one invoice results. Again, if a single order has to be satisfied from more than one of the supplier’s depots, then multiple invoices for the same order may result in the same batch.

Without real-time processing, the details from all these invoices would be written to the single order, and when the document process kicked in — driven at order level — then only one invoice would be created in your own purchase ledger, whereas the supplier had in fact sent more than one invoice.

Custom Fields