By Larry Newby
Every company has employees that spend part of their day working on Exception Management. This typically involves running reports and then carefully reviewing those reports for conditions that they have learned to spot as requiring action. Once identified, they then take some action to address that condition. In many cases this action is as simple as notifying one or more people of the situation with an email message.
Most companies also have employees that spend a large part of their day doing repetitive tasks such as communicating order status to your business partners (i.e. customers, vendors, distributors, etc.). Examples of this type of work are sending out Order Acknowledgements, Shipment Notices, Invoices, Customer Statements, etc.
KnowledgeSync is a product that can automate a good deal of this work, thereby improving communication with your business partners and improving efficiency. KnowledgeSync is an application that automates the detection of (and response to) critical, time-sensitive business activities. It uniquely combines data mining, alerts, and workflow to automate “if – then” business processes.
So how does KnowledgeSync work? Let’s use the process of sending out Intuitive ERP Invoices as an example. It typically runs a SQL query on your Intuitive database on a schedule that you set. That query is designed to identify new Invoice records that are ready to send out along with the info needed to create the desired message (i.e. customer email addresses, contact name, company name, Invoice Number, etc.).
When the KnowledgeSync process finds that there are records to be processed, it submits a request to the Intuitive Report Export Service to create a copy of the Intuitive Invoice report (in PDF format) that should be sent to the customer, and then it generates an email message and sends it to the customer (with that Invoice report PDF file attachment) through your email system. The KnowledgeSync system can maintain a list of Invoices already processed, or it can set a flag in one of the Intuitive UserDef fields to ensure that each Invoice is only processed once. This same basic process can be used to automate many types of communications with your business partners.
Here are some examples of how other Intuitive ERP customers are utilizing KnowledgeSync:
- When a new Sales Order is entered, automatically send the customer a copy of the Sales Order Acknowledgement report with an email message asking them to carefully review it to ensure it is as expected.
- When a Sales Order is shipped, automatically send the customer a shipment notice with the associated Tracking Number.
- When an Invoice is processed following a shipment, automatically send it to the customer.
- Send a list of past due Sales Orders to an expeditor to get them resolved.
- Automate the process of sending out monthly Customer Statement reports.
- When customers have past due balances, automatically generate email messages to be sent to these customers. These can either be sent out automatically or sent to your Accounts Receivable personnel for review prior to being sent to the customer.
- When a Purchase Order requires approval, send a notice to the appropriate approvers.
- When a Purchase Order is approved, send a copy of the Purchase Order to the Vendor.
- If an item on a Purchase Order is not received by the required date, automatically send a message to the Vendor asking for a status update (with a copy to your Purchasing Expediter).
- When a Purchase Order is entered, send a copy of that Purchase Order to the Vendor along with the drawing files needed to build each of the ordered items.
- When a Sales Order is generated in the Intuitive ERP system as the result of a purchase order that was submitted through EDI, automatically create a Sales Order Acknowledgement EDI file and send it back to the customer.
So what is involved in setting up a new process in KnowledgeSync? When designing a new process, I like to start by getting a good understanding of what the output of this process should be.
- Under what conditions should this process be triggered?
- What will the output of this process be?
- Email or Text message?
- Who is it to be sent to?
- Who should be copied?
- Sample wording of message?
- Attachments to be sent?
- How often should the message be sent?
The answers to these questions should provide a good understanding of the information that will be needed by this process. With this in hand, we can use the tools built into KnowledgeSync to build a query that will be used to trigger this process and supply the info it needs.
So, let’s look at an example: Sales Order Acknowledgements to Email (Ver. 9.0.12). This is an example of a process that is designed to automatically send out a Sales Order Acknowledgement message to the customer when a new Sales Order has been entered.
I first put together a Trigger Query using the tools provided by KnowledgeSync. I simply select the Tables and Fields that contain the info that I want, then Link the tables together, and add a Filter to limit the records to just the ones that meet my criteria. I also need to select a field that can be used to uniquely identify each record to be processed.
The Intuitive database provides a number of places to store email addresses, so I also added a “Calculated Field” that specifies the best email address to send to.
Once I have the Trigger Query working properly, I can then set up the Event. After providing an appropriate name for this Event, I then select the Trigger Query to be used to trigger this event.
At this point I want to point out the option to Repeat Notification for Triggered Items. This option provides a convenient way for KnowledgeSync to track the whether this record has been previously processed by this Event. For instance, we could use this tool to ensure that we only send out an Acknowledgement one time for this Sales Order. If we did this, you can easily use the associated button to edit the list of Sales Orders that were previously processed in the event that you wanted it to send one out again. In this case I have decided that if the order is later modified, I want it to go ahead and send out another Acknowledgement, so this option is checked to disable it.
I can then specify the Deliverables for this Event. In this case I want to send out an Email message, so I select that and use the built-in HTML Editor to create the message I want to send out. When I come to a place where I want a variable to be filled in from the query, I can just double-click on the field name.
I also want to send out a copy of the standard Sales Order Acknowledgement report from the Intuitive ERP system, so I specify that a File Deliverable is to be attached to the email message, and in order to have the Intuitive ERP system generate that report, I am also Submitting a SQL command. This command will write a record into the table named ReportExportRequest located in the Intuitive database. This is how we can ask the Intuitive Report Export service to generate a copy of the Intuitive Sales Order Acknowledgement report in a PDF file format.
Finally, we need to tell KnowledgeSync where to send this message, so we use the Advanced Subscribers settings to specify that it should use the BestEmail field from the Trigger Query to find out where to send the message.
Once we have this Event ready to use, we can set up a Schedule to specify how often we want it to run. Here is an example of the output from this process and the associated attached report:
KnowledgeSync also provides a set of tools that can be used to Monitor and troubleshoot your processes. Here you can see what is scheduled to occur and you can also see what has occurred.
Since 2003, PeopleSense has established itself as the definitive ERP and single source workforce management solution provider for businesses of all sizes throughout the U.S. and Canada, offering consulting for M2M® and Intuitive®, Sage HRMS, time and attendance solutions, Acumatica, and related services and products. PeopleSense provides clients with the peace of mind that comes from working with experienced consultants dedicated to customer service, who are affordably priced with no annual contracts. Reach out to get your business software questions answered.