Oracle Business Network - Punchouts

Punchouts let you integrate account-based stores with your procurement system.

This integration allows a buyer who is logged into a procurement system to access a Commerce storefront, view items from the assigned catalog, add items to the cart, and return to the procurement system.

Once the procurement system approves the purchase, it sends supplier a purchase order, which becomes a sales order on their end.

Traditionally, punch-outs can be configured in the Oracle iProcurement portal but this functionality can also be achieved via Oracle Business Network (OBN).


Traditional Punchouts EBS:

Traditional Setup Challenges:

- Individual certificate management for each vendor

- Connectivity handshake/errors, errors in returning carts

- Catalog Administration maintenance

Punch-out Process through OBN:

- The buyer logs on to iProcurement. 

- Buyer clicks a link to the supplier site from iProcurement. 

- OBN authenticates the requester and sends a punchout request to the supplier.

- The supplier site responds to OBN.

- OBN forwards the supplier site response to iProcurement.

- iProcurement redirects the requester’s browser to the supplier site for shopping.

- Once buyer finishes shopping, the supplier site returns the shopping cart items to iProcurement via the requester’s browser. 

- Buyer completes the checkout process, and iProcurement processes the order.

OBN Configurations:

- Navigate to PunchOut section

- Click on Add Punchout button

- This should show a pop-up containing all the available Punchouts from various vendors who have registered on OBN

- Select the desired Punchout from the list and click Add Access. Once added, it will appear in Buyer Access section

- Now, navigate to EBS and create a new Punchout Content Zone as below

Punchout URL: https://osn-prod.oracle.com/punchout/punchoutloginserver

User Name: Your OBN User
Password: Password for above user

- Save and navigate to above Content Zone entry and click below button

- This will present below page from where you need to click Download button

- This will download a file containing the Punchout definition for the configured vendors and they will be available in your catalog for use.

Oracle Business Network – Supported Transactions:

Common Transactions Types:

- Purchase Order - OAG PROCESS PO 007 and cXMLOrderRequest

- Change Purchase Order - OAG CHANGE PO 006 and cXMLOrderRequest Update

- Advance Ship Notice (ASN) - OAG SHOW SHIPMENT 005 and cXMLShipNoticeRequest

- Invoice - OAG PROCESS INVOICE 002 and cXMLInvoiceDetailRequest

Available Document Types:

Oracle Business Network – PO Transmission Setups (EBS)

Lets look at all the EBS configurations needed for PO transmission via OBN


- Certificate Management

Navigate to osn-prod URL and download the certificate as shown below:

- Download and Import above certificate into $INST_TOP/certs/Apache/cwallet.sso


- EBS XML Gateway Hub Definition:

- Trading Partner Setup:

Configure new a new entry for a given supplier using Map 'itg_process_po_007_out' as shown below.

Oracle Business Network – AP Invoice Import Setups (EBS)

- Trading Partner Setup:

Configure new a new entry for a given supplier using Map 'AP_INVOICE_INBOUND' as shown below.

With all above steps completed, you would have Supplier Punchouts, PO Transmission Outbound and AP Invoice Inbound processes configured using Oracle Business Network.

Read More

Oracle Business Network - Deep Dive

In my previous post, I shed light on basics of Oracle Business Network and it's capabilities.

Let's take a deep dive into OBN configurations as well as corresponding EBS setups and it's uses.


OBN Home Page

Once you login to OBN, here's what you see on Home Page. You'll see various tabs such as Profile, Messaging, Partners, Monitor etc.

Company Profile

Profile page let's you maintain your company's profile details. This is mainly for information purpose only.

Messaging Setup

This is one of the crucial setup pages. We can define various Communication Parameters as well as Transaction configurations here.

In below example, we are configuring two transactions:

1. Send POs from EBS to Trading Partner

2. Receives Invoices from Trading Partner to EBS

Now, let's take a look at Delivery Method configuration

We have defined two Delivery Methods:

1. Oracle XML Transport Agent - Used to specify EBS server details. This is how OBN connects to our EBS instance.
2. HTTPS URL Connection - Used to specify OBN server details. This is to make connection to our OBN account through which the messages/documents are exchanged with Trading partners.

Oracle XML Transport Agent:
As shown below, we need to specify Transport Agent URL here, one pertaining to Test Environment and another pertaining to Production Environment; along with the EBS user credentials.
Usually, the best practice is to create a dedicated user in EBS for such purposes so that we can track all incoming and outgoing transactions to and from OBN.

HTTPS URL Connection:

As shown below, we need to specify OBN specific URLs here, one pertaining to Test Environment and another pertaining to Production Environment; along with our OBN user credentials.

The URLs are usually fixed for Test and Production Hubs:

OBN Test Hub HTTPS URL: https://osn.oracle.com:443/HTTPService/Receiver OR https://osn.oracle.com/HTTPService/Receiver

OBN Production Hub HTTPS URL: https://osn-prod.oracle.com:443/HTTPService/Receiver OR https://osn-prod.oracle.com/HTTPService/Receiver

Let's take a look at Transaction Management configuration

For Invoice transaction, we use below parameters:

Document Format: OAG
Format Version: 002

Document Type: PROCESS_INVOICE_002
Action: Receive

And, we choose Oracle XML Transport Agent for both Test and Prod instances:

For, Purchase Order transaction, we use below parameters:

Document Format: OAG
Format Version: 007

Document Type: PROCESS_PO_007
Action: Send

And, we choose Oracle XML Transport Agent for both Test and Prod instances:

We can test our configuration by sending a dummy/test document by accessing Send Document tab as shown below.

Here, we can use Test Hub and Document Type from above steps (PROCESS_PO_007) and upload the test payload/file to test out configuration.

Trading Partner Setup

Now, let's take a look at how we can add new Trading Partners and maintain the current ones.

Under Partners tab, we can see Add Trading Partners option. This lets you Search the desired Trading partner from the list and add them to our OBN account.

Note: The trading partner must have registered on OBN for you to search and add them; or else you won't see them in the list of registered OBN partners.

Under Pending Approval tab, we will be able to see all the trading partners we added to our account but are still pending approval from their end.

Once we add a trading partner in our OBN account, the corresponding partner admin gets a notification asking to approve this request. Only once they approve your request, they will appear as Approved under your trading partners list.

All the Trading Partners that you added in your OBN account will appear under Your Trading Partners tab. This includes the ones that are Approved as well as the ones that are Pending Approval.

Monitoring the inbound and Outbound Transactions

Navigate to Monitor tab and we'll see two options: Sent Messages and Received Messages

Sent Messages:
If we click on download button against any Sent Message, it will let us download Pre-Transform or Post-Transform document. I've explained about these in my previous post.

If we wish to Resend any message, then we can click on Resend button and click OK. This will Resend that particular message to Trading Partner.
This is useful especially when there's a transmission failure which may happen for a number of reasons one of which could be that Trading partner server was down or was under maintenance and now you need to resend all pending/failed messages; this feature comes handy in such cases.
You can also use Resend All option to Resend all the desired messages to Trading Partner.

Received Messages:
Similarly, we can monitor all Incoming messages under Received Messaged tab. Here also, we have similar options either to download the Pre and Post transform documents and also to Resend the message to EBS server.

Supported Transaction Types

Below are some of the Common Transactions Types supported by OBN:

Purchase Order - OAG PROCESS PO 007 and cXMLOrderRequest

Change Purchase Order - OAG CHANGE PO 006 and cXMLOrderRequest Update

Advance Ship Notice (ASN) - OAG SHOW SHIPMENT 005 and cXMLShipNoticeRequest

Invoice - OAG PROCESS INVOICE 002 and cXMLInvoiceDetailRequest

Available Document Types:





EBS Configurations for OBN

Now, let's see what all configurations we need to do in EBS in order to connect to OBN and exchange the messages.


Certificate Management

Navigate to OBN Test or Prod URLs and download the certificate for the same.



Import the certificate into $INST_TOP/certs/Apache/cwallet.sso


Hub Definition in EBS

We need to define a new Hub in EBS using either Test or Prod URL of OBN as shown below:





PO Transmission (Outbound) Setup

Navigate to Trading Partner Setup and create a new entry using itg_process_po_007_out Map as shown below:







AP Invoice (Inbound) Setup

Navigate to Trading Partner Setup and create a new entry using AP_INVOICE_INBOUND Map as shown below:






Voila ! We have finished all the setups in OBN as well as EBS. With this in place, all the Outbound POs and Inbound Invoices for this Trading Partner will be exchanged via Oracle Business Network.

Read More