Tailoring Your Invoices with Oracle’s Bill Presentment Architecture March 7, 2005

Today’s Agenda Bill Presentment Overview Demo

Key Features Data Retrieval Template Management Interactive Preview External Template Upload Template Assignment Invoice Batch Printing Drilldown Capability Supports Multiple Languages Features included in this release are: Data Retrieval Template Management Interactive Preview External Template Upload Template Assignment Invoice Batch Printing Drilldown Capability

Data Retrieval Description Allows you to incorporate billing information from any source, not just Oracle Receivables Register Oracle applications and third-party data sources and their corresponding database views and content items Support Oracle Receivables transaction flexfields Retrieve billing data from multiple data sources at runtime Pre-defined data sources include Oracle Receivables, Oracle Service Contracts, and Oracle Order Management BPA let’s you incorporate billing information from any source, not just Oracle Receivables. These sources can be Oracle e-Business Suite applications, as well as third-party data sources.   In order for BPA to retrieve data from these sources, the sources must first be configured and enabled in BPA. This includes registering the data sources, creating or utilizing existing database views and registering these views in BPA, selecting and setting up content items that you want available for billing template design, and synchronizing Oracle Receivables transaction flexfields so that they’re also available for billing template design. BPA provides an intuitive user interface designed for your system administrator to accomplish all these tasks. Once configured, BPA is able to retrieve the billing data from multiple data sources at runtime. Out of the box, BPA is delivered with 3 registered and configured data sources, so that they’re ready for use. These data sources are Oracle Receivables, Oracle Service Contracts, and Oracle Order Management.

Template Management Provides extensive abilities & flexibility to design a bill that best suits your customer Create and manage multiple billing templates Configure bill content and layout Print summary lines with or without child lines Display itemized and summarized tax information Display custom images & messages Associate hyperlinks to content items Specify page setup for printed bills Select flexible header and footer format for printed bills BPA provides your billing personnel extensive abilities and flexibility to design an online bill that best suits your customer and your company. These bill configuration tasks are included in Template Management. Using BPA’s intuitive easy-to-use portal page, billing personnel can create multiple billing templates. With each template, you’re able to select the content items and layout design of the bill, specify whether or not to print summary lines with or without child lines, create custom images and messages for your bill, associate hyperlinks to content items on the online bill, customize tax information on your bill, or choose to use the existing Oracle Receivables defined tax formats. And for your printed bills, you can also specify the page setup, as well as choose a different header and footer option.

Applications Version Requirements Must be on at least 11.5.9 BPA was not backported Invoice batch printing was released in mini-pack 11i.BPA.B, Pre-requisites for BPA.B include the 11.5.10 release of XML Publisher (XDO.H) as well as the 11.5.10 release of OA Framework (OA 5.10K).

Invoice Batch Printing New concurrent program Invoice Print BPA Master Program Launches one or more child programs depending on the number of invoices requested for printing. Each child program generates one PDF file for each group of invoices and stores it as the output file of the concurrent program. To determine the number of child programs required, BPA divides the number of transactions by 500 to create groups of invoices. For example, if there are 1000 transactions to print, BPA launches two child programs, each with an output file of 500 invoices. If there are 1001 transactions, the master program will launch three child programs, but will balance the number of transactions in each group. Two programs will print 333 invoices, and the third will print 334 invoices.

B.P.A - Additional Details

Data Retrieval How to Set Up this Feature Required step if Oracle Service Contracts is enabled as supplementary data source: Set INTERFACE_LINE_ATTRIBUTE1 (Contract Number) as an Autoinvoice optional grouping rule attribute in Oracle Receivables Login with “Bill Presentment Super User” responsibility Navigate to “Configuration” tab If you want to retrieve data from Oracle Service Contracts, you need to set the INTERFACE_LINE_ATTRIBUTE1 column as an Autoinvoice optional grouping attribute in Oracle Receivables. Service Contracts passes the contract number to Oracle Receivables using this attribute. Data retrieval setup is done in BPA’s Configuration tab and is intended for the system administrator. In order to view and access the Configuration tab, you must log in with the “Bill Presentment Super User” responsibility.

Data Retrieval - How to Use this Feature In order for BPA to retrieve data from any data sources, they must first be configured and enabled in BPA. BPA provides an intuitive user interface designed for your system administrator to accomplish all the necessary tasks. These include registering the data sources, creating or utilizing existing database views and registering these views in BPA, selecting and setting up content items, from these views, that you want available for billing template design, synchronizing Oracle Receivables transaction flexfields so that they’re also available for billing template design, and enabling or disabling data sources for your particular instance. Only data sources that are completely configured and ready for use in BPA should be enabled, because only the enabled data sources are accessible in other parts of BPA. This screenshot shows you the BPA module. Here, we are on the Configuration: Data Sources tab. You can see the different configuration tasks I’ve just described, such as Register, Search, Enable, Disable, View, Update, and Delete data sources. As well as Synchronizing Flexfields of the data source and Managing its Views.  

Data Retrieval - Register Data Source This screenshot shows Data Source Registration. Enter the data source name, a description, and the Oracle Receivables Interface Context. Each data source needs to be interfaced with Oracle Receivables, and its this Interface Context that uniquely identifies each data source. Click the flashlight to the right of the box, and select the appropriate Interface Context from the list. Click the Apply button to complete registration. Once your data source is registered, you can start building on your data source by synchronizing flexfields and registering views.

Data Retrieval - Synchronize Flexfields Each data source can have transaction flexfields that can be added for use in BPA. In order to make them available, they must be synchronized. Your data source can have flexfields at 2 display areas - the Header and Footer and the Lines and Tax. These display areas represent an area on the bill template, and dictate where you can add content items. This means you can add the Header and Footer flexfields on the Header and Footer content areas of your billing template, and you can add the Lines and Tax flexfields on the Lines and Tax content area of your billing template. All available flexfields for your registered data source will be listed here, and you can select the ones you want included in BPA for billing template design. At the same time, you can also update the Item Names, which will be used throughout Template Management as the item identifier, and update the Item Display Labels, which will appear on the bill.

Data Retrieval - Register View & Select Content Items Along with the flexfields, each data source is made up of database views. It’s these views that contain the content items for your billing template. In BPA, you can register a view, access the details of an existing view, update a view, and delete a view. Each view is at one of 3 display areas – Header and Footer, Lines and Tax, and Details Page. As I mentioned earlier, these display areas represent an area on the bill template, and dictate where you can add content items. You can create multiple Header and Footer views per data source, but only one view each for the Lines and Tax and Details Page display areas. This screenshot shows view registration. You can see the data source name, display area, and display name of the view at the top of the page. These items, along with the database view name and view description, are specified in the 1st step of view registration. The 2nd step covers the parameters and content item selection. You can specify parameters to further filter the data retrieved from the view. You can enter a fixed value or a transaction attribute parameter, and specify the appropriate column name and value. The Content Items section will contain a list of the available content items in the view. Here, you can select the items you want available for billing template design. You can also modify the Item Name, which will appear throughout Template Management, and the Item Display Label, which will appear on the bill.

Data Retrieval - Enable Data Source Once you’ve registered all your views for your data source and selected the content items for billing template design, you’re ready to enable the data source for use in BPA. Only data sources with status of ‘Enabled’ are available in BPA. Find the data source, check the corresponding checkbox, select the ‘Mark as Enabled’ choice, and click ‘Go’. Your data source is now enabled.

Template Management - How to Set Up this Feature Login with “Bill Presentment Super User” or “Bill Presentment User” responsibility Navigate to “Template Management” tab Template Management is done in BPA’s Template Management tab and is intended for the billing template designer. In order to view and access the Template Management tab, you can log in with the “Bill Presentment Super User” responsibility or “Bill Presentment User” responsibility.

Template Management - How to Use this Feature This screenshot shows you the Template Management: Templates tab. Using BPA’s intuitive portal page, your template designer can create multiple billing templates, update and duplicate existing templates, interactively preview templates using real-time transaction data, and complete the templates for availability in template assignment.

Template Management - Enter General Information You’ll see from the train at the top of the page, that the Create Template process is made up of 5 major steps. The first step involves entering the template’s General Information. Enter a unique template name and an optional description. The next field displays the Primary data source. For all billing templates, the primary data source is Oracle Receivables. This means the majority of the data on your bill is retrieved from Oracle Receivables. If you want additional data from another source, select the Supplementary Data Source for this template. As we just discussed in our previous feature, your system administrator configured and registered this in the Configuration tab. Next, select the tax format of your template. You can either choose to customize the tax format, where you’ll be able to itemize and/or summarize your taxes using tax data you specify, or you can select to use the Oracle Receivables Tax Printing Option. This option will incorporate one of the 8 pre-defined Oracle Receivables tax formats to your bill, based on the customer profile of the particular transaction.

Template Management - Design Primary Page The next step of template creation involves the designing of the primary page. Here you will see the template is made up of 3 distinct content areas - Header, Lines and Tax, and Footer. The data in the header section typically includes the company logo, invoice number, data, customer name, addresses, and terms. The lines and tax area contains the billing and tax items, including the line number, item description, quantities, unit price, tax, and cost amounts. The footer area can include information such as the bill totals and any additional messages to the customer. As the template designer, you decide what information you want to include as well as how you want it presented. Each content area has a set of icons that I’ll discuss.

Template Management - Select Content and Layout In each content area, the first icon will take you to the Select Content and Layout page. Here, you can select the content items for that particular content area. The content items available for selection are based on the data sources of the template - You can choose items from only their available views. Select the Data Source View, click Go, and move the items you want from the left to the right shuttle box. Use the reordering icons on the right of the right shuttle box to move items into the desired order. After making your selections, choose the layout in which you want those items to appear on your template. The items will appear in the layout you choose, in the order you’ve specified.

Template Management - Update Properties The next icon of the content area will take you to the Update Properties page. Here you can define the content area properties, such as the area name, the space between the content items and content area border, as well as the width of the area. You can also modify the content item properties. You can specify a content group display label as well as the item display labels that will appear on the bill. You can choose to display the items and labels in regular or bold styles. And finally, you can associate hyperlinks to your content items. You can associate any hyperlink sharing the same data source view as the item.

Template Management - Move Content For the Header and Footer content areas, there is a third icon which will take you to the Move Content page. Here, you can actually move, swap, or duplicate content areas to other areas. Simply select the target content area, in this example, the Footer content area, and select the desired action, in this example, Move. When you do this, the content items, layout, and styles will be moved, duplicated, or swapped to the selected target content area. This is a great time saver, eliminating a lot of re-work.

Template Management - Split Content Areas For the Header and Footer content areas, there is a fourth icon which will Split the content area horizontally. In this example, the Header content area is split into 2 horizontal areas – Header (1) and Header (2). The fifth icon will split the content area Vertically. In this example, the Header (2) content area is split into 2 vertical areas – Header (2) and Header (3). Use these two icons to create multiple content areas on your billing template. Each content area you create will contain the icons I’ve just described. The last icon allows you to delete content areas. Content areas along with their items and layout will be deleted.

Template Management - Design Details Page The third train step of template creation involves designing the Details Page of the template. Depending on your supplementary data source, you can set up details that can be accessed via the billing lines of the bill’s primary page. The icons for the details page take you to the Select Content page and the Update Properties page. The functions on these pages are similar to those on the primary page. You can select the content items for this area, as well as specify their display labels, and associate hyperlinks.

Template Management - Specify Print Setup The fourth train step of Template Creation is dedicated to the printed bills. Start by selecting a page setup, which includes the paper dimensions, margins, page number location, and font specifications. BPA comes with three seeded page setups, but you can create custom page setups in the Print Management: Print Setup tab. Next, you select the header for your printed bill. You can choose to display the header designed for your primary page on the first page only, you can repeat the primary page header on every page, or you can display the primary page on the first page, while creating and displaying a secondary header on all subsequent pages. For the footer, you can select to display the footer from the primary page on the last page only, or have it repeated on every page.

Template Management - Preview Template The fifth and last train step of template creation is the Preview page. Here, you get a static preview of your designed template. The X’s indicate where actual data will appear on the bill. If you notice any changes that need to be made, you can easily go back through the previous train steps and make the appropriate updates. If not, you’re done.

Template Management - Content Items Now we move to the Template Management: Content Items subtab. Here, as the template designer, you can view all pre-defined and user-defined content items that are available for billing template design. When viewing, you can also see a list of the templates currently using a particular content item. Along with the content items from data sources, you can also create your own content items, specifically, custom images and messages that can be included on the bill - and you can associate hyperlinks to these items.

Template Management - Create Content Item Here we’re creating a custom content item to be included on a billing template. Custom items can be images or messages. In creating a content item, specify a unique item name and an optional description. You can enter a label for the item that will be displayed on the bill template, and you can also associate a hyperlink to the item. If you create an image item, enter the image file name. If you create a message item, enter the message text.