1. Fundamentals Acquisitions 02 – Workflow Rules Administration
Welcome to this session of the Alma Administration Fundamentals Training. In this session, we will discuss optional rules you can use in your Acquisitions workflows if you want less automation and more staff mediation.

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3. Agenda Introduction Purchasing Review Rules Invoice Review Rules
Invoice Approval Rules
Session Review
Alma supports a highly automated acquisitions workflow. Creation of purchase order lines, packaging of po lines into purchase orders, sending orders to vendors, receiving physical material, activating electronic resources, and creating, approving and paying invoices can all be automated. By configuring optional rules, you can mandate staff intervention at several points in the workflow either conditionally or unconditionally.
Alma supports three different types of rules: Purchasing Review Rules, Invoice Review Rules and Invoice Approval Rules. You can use one type or all three. Each type of rule corresponds to a different stage of the acquisitions workflow, as we will discuss shortly. But first, a few words about acquisition rules in general.

4. Acquisitions Rules - General
When a po line or invoice is created, Alma performs two types of validation checks: one check for mandatory information…

5. Acquisitions Rules - General
…and another validation check according to any rules you have configured.

6. Acquisitions Rules - General
The first validation check is not configurable. PO lines and invoices contain some mandatory information, indicated by a red asterisk, without which the po line or invoice is invalid. Alma automatically checks each po line and invoice, to ensure that mandatory information is not missing or erroneous.
For example, Alma checks that a po line has a vendor, a fund and a list price; or that an invoice has an invoice number and date. If any mandatory information is missing or erroneous, Alma stops the automatic processing for that po line or invoice and sends it to the manual review workbench for staff intervention.

7. Acquisitions Rules - General
The second type of validation check is optional and depends on any rules that you configure.

8. Acquisitions Rules - General
Rules consist of two parts: input parameters and output parameters.

9. Acquisitions Rules - General
The input parameters define when the rule should be applied. That is, the scenario or conditions under which you want the rule to take effect. For example, a purchase order line for more than a specified amount of money.

10. Acquisitions Rules - General
The output parameters define what action should be taken when the rule applies. For example, remove the po line from the automated purchasing workflow and move it to the manual review workbench.

11. Acquisitions Rules - General
You may configure multiple rules of each type. Alma will check them according to their order, beginning from the top, and apply the first rule whose input parameters fit the po line or invoice.

12. Acquisitions Rules - General
Rules applied only one time – upon creation
If mandatory information missing/erroneous, po line or invoice stays in review until missing information is provided, regardless of any rule.
Rules are applied only one time per po line or invoice, namely, when the po line or invoice is created. Once the po line or invoice has been moved to the manual review workbench, Alma will no longer check the rules.
If, however, mandatory information is missing or erroneous, the po line or invoice stays in review until the missing information is provided, regardless of any rule.
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13. Purchasing Review Rules
Purchasing Review Rules are relevant when creating a new purchase order line and are used to require staff intervention before a purchase order line is packaged into a purchase order and then sent to the vendor.

14. Purchasing Review Rules
The input parameters for Purchasing Review Rules define the conditions under which you want the rules to take effect. Purchasing Review Rules input parameters include the following…

15. Purchasing Review Rules
Assertion Code
As part of the validation process for po lines, Alma automatically generates certain informational alerts, or ‘assertions’. You can select to use any of these assertions as part of the rule.
Alerts can include, for example, checking for duplicate orders, checking for existing inventory and checking for a high price.

16. Purchasing Review Rules
A description of the assertion codes is available in the online help.

17. Purchasing Review Rules
Another input parameter is the Acquisition Method.
What method is used for acquiring the po line? For example: Approval Plan or Purchase at Vendor System.

18. Purchasing Review Rules
Another parameter is Vendor Code. You can check purchase order lines for a particular vendor or vendors

19. Purchasing Review Rules
Another input parameter is PO Line Type. What is the type of purchase order line – print or electronic?, one time or continuous?, etc.

20. Purchasing Review Rules
The last input parameter is Source Type. How was the po line created? Only po lines created via the New Order Import Profile (that is, Import EOD) or via the API will be checked by the rules.

21. Purchasing Review Rules
You may select more than one value in any of these parameters and more than one parameter in any rule.

22. Purchasing Review Rules
If the po line matches the input parameters defined in the rule, Alma will apply the output parameter of that rule to the po line – either True: moving it to Review, or False: allowing it to continue automatically to the packaging stage.

23. Invoice Review Rules
Invoice Review Rules are relevant when creating a new invoice and are used to require staff intervention before an invoice moves to the Approval stage of the workflow. If no rules are configured, invoices will continue to the Approval stage automatically (assuming no mandatory information is missing or erroneous).

24. Invoice Review Rules
The Invoice Review Rules can check for the following conditions…

25. Invoice Review Rules
Assertion Code. As in the case of po lines, Alma automatically generates certain informational alerts, or ‘assertions’ for Invoices. You can use any of these assertions as part of the rule.
Alerts include, for example, checking the invoice for cancelled po lines; po lines already associated with another invoice; or po lines linked to different vendor accounts.

26. Invoice Review Rules
Another input parameter is Vendor Code. You can include one or more vendors as part of the input parameters.

27. Invoice Review Rules
If you know the invoice line number or numbers, you can use that as one of the input parameters in the rule. Otherwise use an asterisk (*) to designate any invoice line number.

28. Invoice Review Rules
The last input parameter is Invoice Creation Form. How was the invoice created? Invoice Review rules are functionally relevant only for invoices created via EDI, or via upload of an Excel or EDI file.

29. Invoice Review Rules
The output parameter is either True: moving the invoice to Review, or False: allowing the invoice to continue automatically to the approval stage.

30. Invoice Approval Rules
Invoice Approval Rules are used to require staff intervention before an invoice can be sent for payment. If no Invoice Approval Rules are configured, invoices will be approved automatically and continue to the next stage of the workflow, which is either payment handling or closed.

31. Invoice Approval Rules
The input parameters available for the Invoice Approval Rules are the same as those available for the Invoice Review Rules.

32. Invoice Approval Rules
The only output of an Invoice Approval Rule is to move the invoice to the manual approval workbench.

33. Agenda Introduction Purchasing Review Rules Invoice Review Rules
Invoice Approval Rules
Session Review
In this session, we discussed three types of rules which can be used to require staff intervention in the otherwise-automated purchasing and invoicing workflows:
Purchasing review rules, which are used to require staff intervention before a purchase order line is packaged into a purchase order and sent to the vendor. Purchasing review rules are functionally relevant only for po lines created via import of an EOD file or via the API.
Invoice review rules are used to require staff intervention before an invoice can be approved. Invoice Review rules are functionally relevant for invoices created via EDI, or via upload of an Excel or EDI file.
Invoice approval rules are used to require staff approval before an invoice can be sent for payment.
To summarize, all rules have similar input parameters and behave in similar fashion:
Rules are checked in order, starting from the top. When Alma finds a rule which fits the scenario, the outcome of the rule is applied (i.e. to move the po line or invoice to the review or approval workbench) and no further rules are checked. If no rule fits, Alma applies the Default rule.
Rules are not checked for po lines and invoices already in review. In other words, if the po line or invoice was sent to review or approval because of a rule, and the operator clicks ‘save and continue’ (or clicks ‘set back to review’ in the case of an invoice in approval) without having resolved the issue for which the rule sent the po line or invoice to review or approval, Alma treats this as though the operator has chosen to override the rule.
If mandatory information is missing, the po line or invoice stays in review until the missing information is provided, regardless of any rule.

34. Thank you!
Thanks for listening today. If you have any questions about anything covered in this session, please contact your Ex Libris project team. We look forward to seeing you in our next session of the Alma Administration Fundamentals training.