Tips for Leveraging UDOs and Orchestrator with E1 9.2
Tip #4 - Now Oracle has withdrawn support for UPK, there is an alternative product that can replace UPK and can even import your UPK scripts. With over 5 million users worldwide, this new product can replace UPK moving forward; and it is very cost-effective. Here’s how……
Support from Oracle for UPK has now ended. What next?
Many companies were left disappointed by Oracle’s decision to stop developing and supporting UPK thus leaving them unsupported after spending time developing their content. SpringboardUX, our partner, offers an E-Learning system that does everything that UPK did and much more. And you won’t lose your existing work and content. With over 5 million users worldwide, this is a mature and trusted product.
Many E1 customers have already switched from Oracle UPK to find this new product has a significantly better cost and benefit ratio of purchase, operation and maintenance.
End users will get what they always wanted: Any content relevant for their actual working context at the tip of their fingers without leaving their productive application. You won’t lose any of your existing content and you can choose to convert your existing UPK content over to the new system. Like UPK, there is an intuitive recorder and editor.
No other authoring tool comes even close to so elegantly combining the functions of a professional documentation system with those of a powerful e-learning production tool. This allows you to efficiently document complex software applications for the rollout of IT applications and create interactive tutorials with stunning graphics for your blended learning concept. The basic functions for creating and designing content include:
Users can collaborate on content and content can be versioned using the versioning engine. Manuals can be generated at the touch of a button. You can even have a centralized glossary for technical terms.
If you would like to know more about our work or would like to implement promise management then contact us.
Personal Workspace
Content Editor
Content Updater
Effects Editor
Dubbing Editor
Path Editor
Configuration Distributor
Universal Application Recorder Language Pack
Overview of all documents that are currently being worked on.
Editing tools for documents and interactive knowledge media.
For updating software recordings via ReRecording.
For creating animation effects.
For the dubbing of interactive knowledge media.
For adding parallel navigation paths to e-learning units.
For transporting and distributing configuration and customizing packages.
Facilitates the creation, management and publication of content in over 35 content languages, please refer to the "tts performance suite – Available Content Languages" attachment. These include the AutoTexts for recording IT applications, for example (such as "Click the 'OK' button.").
Tip #3 - The Accounts Receivable team is a vital part of every business. Many customers struggle to pay on time. UDOs can be used to record payment promises and proactively monitor these promises alerting the AR team when to chase the revised payment dates. Take a look at our new bespoke Promise Management pages here…..
Accounts Receivable - Implementing Promise Management with UDOs
Collecting monies from businesses is a real focus in these difficult economic times. But UDOs can be used to help in this important area removing the need for any development activities. UDOs can keep a track of who has promised to pay and when. These revised promise dates can then be fully managed. SpringboardUX has designed and built some Composed Pages to illustrate how promise management could be implemented in any business. Whilst UX One has AR pages, these use standard functionality and offer nothing in the way of promised payments.
The screenshots below show bespoke collections management pages. This is done by using the “standard functionality” to record promised dates and use a watchlist to highlight when these promises are due for payment and when the promised payment date is missed. This information means that your AR team can chase payments at exactly the right time whilst improving cash flow and maintaining the customer relationship.
Having accurate information at your fingertips when talking to customers is vital and an enhanced E1 search can also help provide additional personalized information to the collections team including invoices due, sales orders placed, credit limits etc. This enables better choices when collecting monies whilst maintaining good relationships with the customers experiencing difficulties with paying on time.
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If you would like to know more about our work or would like to implement promise management then contact us.
Tip #2 - Lot handling is increasingly important, particularly with the introduction of new EU regulations like country of origin etc. But how do you handle your stock and manage expiration dates? UDOs can provide graphical displays of lots, improving clarity, ensuring compliance and improving efficiency - here’s how……
Lot Management & Shop Floor Planning
E1 as discussed holds a wealth of data which is related to the fundamental processes, work orders sales orders purchase orders locations and lots etc. This information can be collated and displayed in Graphical screens in real-time using a combination of UDOs.
Unlocking this data is the “Holy Grail” for the E1 system, as it allows all the relevant data to be readily evaluated and informed business decisions to be taken. To utilize UDOs you need to have a good understanding of the business requirements as well as a detailed knowledge of the UDOs and how they can be incorporated to help deliver the “big picture” for the business.
Once the production plan is in place then the next stage of the process is to plan the shop floor to meet the production schedule. The shop floor planner has to take into account the availability of the components, the release of the components from the warehouse to the shop floor, consumption areas, the availability of the Machines (Breakdowns and unscheduled maintenance) and the effect of overtime (labor) on the overall costs for the production.
The situation is dynamic and working with individual work orders which lack any form of graphical representation is challenging. The biggest issue often encountered is the lack of component availability. The challenge is further complicated with the use of Lots, and potency as well as defreezing some special components.
The practical use of UDOs can make a lot of difference by bringing together the requisite information and intrroducing graphics to better display the information. Whilst all cutomers will have differing requirements, a calendar Graphic showing all the scheduled Jobs and the Routing that are involved would be extremely beneficial. E1 can explode the BOM for the components “on the fly” but this needs to be done at an individual work order level. By using an Orchestration we can explode each WO and display shortages for the work order using colour coding. This can then be used to alert the shop floor planner to potential issues with the proposed schedule. These issues often require the cooperation of quality control (expediting the testing of component batches and releasing them for use) and possibly the Buyer who may be able to get the supplier to expedite the component situation etc.
Here are some screenshots incorporating the following UDO graphic : -
We would use the above powerful graphic within composed pages like the following: -
Lot Management Page
For further information please contact us. We’d be happy to speak about this and any other aspect of UDOs or automation.
Tip #1 - When migrating from World to E1 or upgrading E1 to 9.2, UDOs offer huge efficiencies both in replacing customizations with personalizations and introducing automation. Redeploy some of your valuable resources from customizing to personalizing - here’s how……
EnterpriseOne Upgrades
Where customers have written customizations based on standard JDE objects then these are replaced during an upgrade and the work needs to be repeated after each upgrade. This is a costly exercise in terms of development time, testing time and ongoing training of users on this non-standard functionality. But customizations come at a cost. In recent years there has been a trend for customers to try and reduce their customization estate to make upgrades quicker, smoother and cheaper. Personalizations sit on top of the JDE code and require no retrofitting and minimal testing.
World to EnterpriseOne Migrations
Customers migrating from World Software to EnterpriseOne can benefit from UDOs and Orchestrations at go live adding even more value to the business case for upgrading. SpringboardUX can work on writing functional specs and building UDOs and Orchestrations even before the customer has the new servers in place by leveraging their own systems and porting the work over at a later date.
Customization Estate Review
By completing a Customization Analysis, SpringboardUX can identify and categorize customizations as follows: -
· No longer required
· Redundant due to new features or functionality
· Can be replaced with UDOs
· Can be replaced with Orchestrations
· Still required
Once the above has been completed the customer can prioritize which customizations are to be replaced and delivered. SpringboardUX can write functional specs and build these new personalizations. Alternatively, the specs can be passed to your incumbent onshore or offshore partner to build and test.
By doing this preliminary analysis prior to a migration or upgrade, a lot of time can be saved from the upgrade or migration project reducing the involvement requirements of both internal and external resources offering huge savings. It also makes the scope of the project clearer and easier to plan and deliver reducing risk.
Business Process Automation
The Orchestrator, itself an UDO, allows many aspects of EnterpriseOne to be automated. It also opens the door to entering data into E1 without the E1 application or screens by leveraging email or WhatsApp and other social media tools by leveraging a third-party application that SpringboardUX offers.
By automating processes, it can save a great deal of time and improve accuracy by reducing human error. It also relieves users of boring, repetitive tasks freeing them up to do more useful tasks. Orchestrator can also be used to bring information in from third-party systems and other areas of E1 and can replace existing interfaces.
Leveraging New Features & Functionality
With each new release of EnterpriseOne and Tools, new features and functionality is introduced. Please see the Appendices for further details and links to the Oracle site for further information. SpringboardUX recommends always installing the latest tools releases as they refine existing tools, fix errors and bring in new performance improvements, efficiencies and features.
Risks Associated with Remaining on an Older Release
Apart from not being able to benefit from new features and functions, it will prevent you from using the latest version of operating systems, database and even hardware. Support for newer releases is not ported back to older releases so, at some point, a given older release will dictate available compatible updates. This will have a knock-on effect to the supportability of the operating system, database and hardware.
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