Fundamentals Guide for E-Collaboration 2

Baan E-Enterprise

Fundamentals Guide forE-Collaboration 2.2

A publication of:

Baan Development B.V.P.O.Box 1433770 AC BarneveldThe Netherlands

Printed in the Netherlands

© Baan Development B.V. 2001.All rights reserved.

The information in this documentis subject to change withoutnotice. No part of this documentmay be reproduced, stored ortransmitted in any form or by anymeans, electronic or mechanical,for any purpose, without theexpress written permission ofBaan Development B.V.

Baan Development B.V.assumes no liability for anydamages incurred, directly orindirectly, from any errors,omissions or discrepanciesbetween the software and theinformation contained in thisdocument.

Document Information

Code: U7587A USGroup: User DocumentationEdition: ADate: March, 2001

i

Fundamentals Guide for E-Collaboration 2.2

1 Introduction 1-1Definitions, acronyms, and abbreviations 1-1Business perspective 1-1Architectural perspective and concepts 1-3User versus system initiated 1-3Document types 1-4Document distribution 1-5Send methods 1-8

2 General business flow 2-1Web-based publishing 2-2Event-triggered publishing 2-4Document inbound 2-7

3 Comparison 3-1Supplier communication by fax 3-1User-definable search and display fields 3-1Extend Publish screen with CC field 3-2Extended Accept functionality 3-2Send method that calls a method in dll 3-3Create/Update XML document 3-3Incoming document transformation 3-3Error Handling 3-3Upload procedure 3-3Publication list 3-4

Table of contents

Table of contents

Fundamentals Guide for E-Collaboration 2.2ii

Fundamentals Guide for E-Collaboration 2.2iii

This document provides a functional overview of E-Collaboration 2.2 andexplains its key concepts. The Administrator�s guide will describe themaintenance processes in more detail.

No detailed knowledge of the Baan software is required to understand thisdocument. However, understanding the document contents is easier if you arefamiliar with:

� The concepts of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)� The concepts of E-Commerce� Internet

Chapter 1, �Introduction,� provides an introduction on the concepts andarchitecture of E-Collaboration. This chapter describes the position ofE-Collaboration in the B2B-world.

Chapter 2, �General business flow,� describes a general business flow for B2B-communication with E-Collaboration, visually aided by specific user cases.

Chapter 3, �Comparison,� gives an overview of the differences betweenE-Collaboration 2.1 and E-Collaboration 2.2.

About this document

About this document

Fundamentals Guide for E-Collaboration 2.2iv

Fundamentals Guide for E-Collaboration 2.21-1

This chapter positions E-Collaboration in the B2B world as seen from a businessand architecture perspective. In addition, this chapter also discusses the conceptsin E-Collaboration 2.2.

Definitions, acronyms, and abbreviationsTerm DescriptionTransaction To send information, for example, a Purchase Order

from a customer to a supplierB2B Business to BusinessTransport medium What you use to send information, for example,

Internet or FaxTransaction schema A description of how a message will look

Abbreviations DescriptionEDI Electronic Data InterchangeERP Enterprise Resource PlanningFTP File Transfer ProtocolHTML Hyper Text Markup LanguageIRT Intelligent Report TaggingXML Extended Markup LanguageXSL Extended Style sheet Language

Business perspectiveIn the B2B world, E-Collaboration can be used to manage B2B documenttransfer with little interorganizational workflow. E-Collaboration manages B2Bdocument transfer from a single source to a wider variety of business partners.E-Collaboration is specifically suited to handle low-volume data transfer,although high-volume data can also be processed (see Figure 1).

1 Introduction

Introduction


Figure 1 Position of E-Collaboration in the B2B-world

E-Collaboration does not replace EDI. Traditionally, EDI has two basicdimensions: transport medium and transaction schema. E-Collaboration uses theInternet as a transport medium for any transaction that can be expressed as anXML message. Companies that continue to work through EDI due to the cost ofValue Added Networks (VANs) can view the Internet as a low-cost alternative toelectronically connect to their business partners.

The transaction schema is dependent on the relationship between the businesspartners (BP). A BP with a large investment in EDI will not likely migrate toXML in the short term. To convince BPs to migrate to XML, you must havecompelling reasons, such as potential business improvements by adoptingRosettaNet standards. E-Collaboration can cater to both situations through thesupport of XML as the messaging format and the ability to associate XSL stylesheets for translation.

E-Collaboration at present can best be viewed as a router between the Internetand E-Enterprise, BaanERP, and other Baan products. For example, a companythat wants to open its sophisticated direct material processes to the Internet, canposition E-Collaboration as the single point of contact between the suppliers andtheir internal systems.

Introduction


Architectural perspective and conceptsE-Collaboration is a B2B document router. The documents are sent in XML-format, and can be of any type, such as purchase order, sales order, sales orderacknowledgement, invoice. (See Figure 2).

Figure 2 Architectural perspective

Note that the so-called IRT-facility (Intelligent Report Tagging) is not yetavailable in this context. IRT is used by BaanERP to print any available report inin XML format. After that, the report can be processed by E-Collaboration.

This section discusses the concepts of document types, document distribution,send methods, and user versus system initiated. For more information on theconcepts and the setup, refer to Administrator�s Guide for E-Collaboration 2.2(U7441A US).

User versus system initiatedPublishing through E-Collaboration can be initiated by a user, as well as by asystem.

User-initiated situations are:

� To use self-service lookups (E-Dashboard) and incorporate the document inE-Collaboration.

� To upload a document.� To forward a document.� To create or edit a document.

Introduction


System-initiated situations are:

� A purchase order generated by E-Procurement, which is automaticallytransferred to E-Collaboration to be sent to the supplier.

� An XML document generated by external EDI, which is automaticallyprocessed by E-Collaboration.

Document typesE-Collaboration supports various types of documents that all have a differentXML format, for example, a purchase order, an invoice, and a sales orderacknowledgement. Each document type can have an XSL style sheet, so theXML can be viewed by an Internet browser in HTML format.

The following is an example of a purchase order in XML format:

<PUR-ORDER>

<DOCTYPE-ID>po</DOCTYPE-ID>

<PO>

<ORDERNO> 100390 </ORDERNO>

<BUS-PART-S>5001</BUS-PART-S>

<ORDER-DATE> 000809 </ORDER-DATE>

<CONTACT>1234</CONTACT>

<DISCOUNT>0</DISCOUNT>

<CURRENCY> USD </CURRENCY>

<BUS-PART-C> </BUS-PART-C>

<LIN>

<POS> 10 </POS>

<ITEM> ARMADA1500 </ITEM>

<ITEM-DESC> Compaq Armada 1500 </ITEM-DESC>

<QUANTITY> 1 </QUANTITY>

<UNIT> pcs </UNIT>

<CONTAINER/>

<DEL_DATE> 000809 </DEL_DATE>

<PR-UNIT> pcs </PR-UNIT>

<VAT-CODE/>

<L-DISCOUNT> 0 </L-DISCOUNT>

<CONTRACT> 0 </CONTRACT>

</LIN>

</PO>

</PUR-ORDER>

Introduction


Document distributionTo publish documents to business partners, E-Collaboration uses the concepts ofthe Inbox and the Outbox in the application itself. A published document residesin the outbox of the user that published it, and ends up in the inbox of the userfrom the BP to which it is published.

A document can be published to one or more BPs (that is, to the inboxes of oneor more users). In the master data, you can set up the BPs to whom you want topublish your documents, by document type. E-Collaboration uses tags in thedocument to filter the business partners in the document�s distribution list towhom the document must be published. If the tag is not present, E-Collaborationuses predefined rules to route the document. If no predefined rules are available,the document is sent to all BPs that are present in the document�s distributionlist.

Notification emails are sent when the document is published. E-Collaboration 2.2enables the user to enter the e-mail addresses of business partners in the CCfield. The notification email can contain an HTML attachment, so the receiverscan preview the published document. The mail sent to the TO receivers alsocontains a hyperlink to the document in the Inbox of the receiver. The mail sentto the CC receivers does not contain the hyperlink, as the CC receivers do nothave access to this document.

Figure 3 The CC field enables users to manually enter mail IDs of business partners

Introduction


The next step is to send the document, that is, the E-Collaboration send methodsare carried out. You can do this in two ways, the first one is to select the Pushcheck box. In this case, the document is automatically sent by means of thedefined send method. The second option is to clear the Push check box. Thereceiver of this document must initiate the actual sending, by clicking Downloadand Send, after which the document is sent with the defined send method.

The following figure explains the procedure in a process flow.

Determinefase

New documententers E-Collab.

Determine Document type

Business PartnerDistribution ListPublication List

PublishDocument toDistribution

List

SendNotification

e-mails

Senddocument

PushDocument ?

After this step thedocument is

available in theOutbox of the

Sender and theInbox of theReceivers

E-mailnotifications can

be sent toReceivers andSender with or

without thedocument

attached in HTMLformat

Document is sentusing Send

methods (forinstance HTTP,FTP or e-mail)

User triggers sendfrom inbox

Yes

No

Figure 4 Process for incoming documents

Send an e-mail to notify the business partner(s) about a document sent. You cannotify BPs by setting up individual users within the BP organization to whom anotification is sent. These users can then log on to E-Collaboration to check theirinbox.

You can also associate an XSL with the document on the business partner level.Consequently, the XSL can be applied before the document is transferred to thebusiness partner. Thus, the originator can convert the internal format to thestandard agreed on with the business partner. In other words, the XML documentis transformed from your XML standard to the BP�s XML standard through anXSL style sheet.

Introduction


The following figure illustrates the use of XSL:

Push Document

Evaluate Document Type

Send file

DetermineActual

DistributionList

Send Notification

E-mailtext

Doc TypeXSL

applied tocreateHTML

Send e-mail

(HTMLattached)

<tg1>AB<\tg1><tg2>1-2<\tg2><tg1>AB<\tg1><tg2>1-2<\tg2>

View Document

<tg1>AB<\tg1><tg2>12<\tg2><tg1>AB<\tg1><tg2>12<\tg2>

BP 1

<tg1>AB<\tg1><tg3>1<\tg3><tg3>2<\tg3>

<tg1>AB<\tg1><tg3>1<\tg3><tg3>2<\tg3>

BP 2

Fld1: ABFld2: 1-2Fld1: ABFld2: 1-2

HTML view(same as HTML

attachment)

Doc TypeXSL

applied tocreateHTML

DocFile

Processed

Original document in XML

DocType/

BP XSLDoc

Type/BP XSL

FindSend

Methodfor BP

FindSend

Methodfor BP

Figure 5 E-Collaboration flow and XSL

Introduction


Send methodsIn addition to notifying BPs of a new document, E-Collaboration can senddocuments to the BP�s system with different send methods.

The following table summarizes the send methods:

Send method Receiving BP (Inbox)E-mail attachment The XML file is sent as an attachment to an e-mail. Only

one recipient at the BP receives the file.FTP The XML file is sent through FTP to the destination stated

in the FTP parameter field.HTTP The XML file is posted to the specified website.CIP The XML file is sent through Microsoft Commerce

Interchange Pipeline (CIP) to the destination stated in theCIP parameter field.

File path The XML file is copied to the root directory of thedestination stated in the file directory parameter field.Note: the actual file directory must be on the samenetwork as the E-Collaboration application.

FAX Users can send a document to the BP by fax. The layoutof the HTML attachment is sent as FAX. This sendmethod uses a �third party� fax server (for example,NetSatifaction).

Method Call (dll-class-method)

The Method Call send method can be used to send thedocument to a program. This DLL must be made atimplementation time, and registered on the web server.

Introduction


Another dimension exists for sending methods, namely push versus pull.Figure 6 contrasts push versus pull. In both cases, the XML file is sent to thedestination, but in the push situation, the file is sent automatically, whereas in thepull situation, a user at the business partner side must initiate the send method.

Sender(user)

E-Collaboration

Sender(system)

HTTP,FTP

File Upload,SSL

ASPpage

Outbox

DocumentType

BP #1(user)

BP #1(system)

DistributionList BP #2

SendMethod

DistributionList�s BP#1

SendMethod

Inbox

Push*

Pull*(user initiated push)

e-mailnotification

BP #2(system)

Figure 6 E-Collaboration architecture and concepts

Introduction



This chapter provides an overview of the general business processes thatE-Collaboration supports for the following user cases:

� Web-based publishing.� Event-triggered publishing.� Document inbound.

In each user case, the integration with other (E-Enterprise) applications is shownas well as the various user roles (hosting organization (the organization that hasinstalled E-Collaboration), supplier, and customer).

2 General business flow

General business flow


Web-based publishingIn this user case, two roles are involved: an employee of the organization thathosts E-Collaboration (Customer), and a supplier. The employee carries out alltasks related to the Send information, and the supplier carries out all tasks relatedto the Receive information. In addition to E-Collaboration, no other E-Enterpriseapplication is used in this user case, which is shown in Figure 7.

6.Email notification

received

Documentpush?

7.Get document

from HTTP site,FTP or Email

8.Click hyperlink innotification email

Yes

No

9.Log on to E-

Collaboration on siteof hosting

organization

10.Open E-

CollaborationInbox

Downloaddocument?

11.Downloadeddocument

12.Send document

13.Open document

1.Contact hosting

organization

2b.Update XML

document

2a.Create XMLdocument

2c.Find information in

Self ServiceLookup

2d.Upload XMLdocument

3.Document in E-Collaboration

Outbox

4.Publish Document

Documentpush?

Document in receiversE-Collaboration inbox

and send methodexecuted.

Yes

Document in E-Collaboration

Inbox

No

5. SendNotification Email

Customer Supplier

Figure 7 Web-based publishing



Send information

1 A customer who wants to send (for instance PO) information to his supplierstarts an Explorer session to the E-Collaboration server.

2 The employee uses the self-service lookups of E-Dashboard to find therequired information in the backend (for example, BaanERP). Or theemployee uploads, creates, or updates a (new) document.

3 The employee then sends this information as a document in XML format tothe E-Collaboration outbox.

4 In the E-Collaboration outbox, the employee prepares the document, whichincludes selecting the correct addressee(s) and attaching other documents,and then publishes the document. The document is copied to the supplier�s E-Collaboration inbox, who also receives an e-mail notification. The documentremains in the outbox of the employee, until it is deleted. While the documentis in the outbox, the employee can monitor the receiving process by checkingthe status of the document. From the outbox, the employee can view theoriginal document, start a NetMeeting with an addressee to discuss certainmatters, share files, and send an e-mail message to the addressee(s), or deletethe document.

5 The system sends an e-mail notification to the supplier. This notificationemail contains a hyperlink and, optionally, an HTML attachment.

Receive information

6 The supplier receives a notification e-mail.

7 If the document was pushed (that is, explicitly sent to the supplier) as ane-mail attachment, the customer receives the document as an attachment in asecond e-mail message and can open it and process it directly. Note that othersend methods are applicable, such as CIP pipelines, HTTP-posting, FTP-posting, and directory posting. For more information on send methods, referto the Administrator�s Guide (U7586A US).

8 If the document was not pushed, the e-mail to the customer contains ahyperlink to E-Collaboration on the site of the hosting organization. In ourexample this is the customer site.

9 To actually retrieve the document, the customer logs on to E-Collaborationon the site of the hosting organization.



10 The supplier finds the document in the inbox. The customer can now decidewhether to download the document or to send it directly to his/her ownsystem (through a preset send method, such as HTTP-posting). The customercan also view the document, accept it (status changes from New toAccepted), or delete it (status changes to Accepted and Deleted or New andDeleted, depending on whether the customer accepted the document beforedeleting it). Like the sender, the customer can also start a NetMeeting withthe sender or send an e-mail message to the sender. The supplier can alsoreject the document.

11 The customer then actually downloads the document.

12 Next, the customer sends the document directly to their own system. This canbe carried out if a send method was defined for the document type andbusiness partner.

13 The customer opens the document and further processes it.

Event-triggered publishingThe event-triggered publishing user case differs from Web-based publishing inthe following respects:

� The Send information part is not carried out manually by the employee role,but automatically by, for example, a backend system.

� Tasks in the Receive information part are carried out by the two human rolesinvolved: the actual receiver and the employee who is notified that adocument is sent. This only applies to a pull situation; a push situation doesnot require any human intervention.



Figure 8 depicts the user case for sending a purchase order (PO).

PO send toE-Collaboration

And deliverd to outboxof Hosting

organization and Inbox ofSupplier

1.Open message in

Email Inbox

2.Open Hyperlink

3.View PO in E-Collaboration

Outbox

4.Open message in

Email Inbox

PO Pushed?

5.Open PO on

HTTP site, FTP orEmail

6.Open Hyperlink

7.Log on to E-

Collaboration on siteof hosting

organization

8.Open E-

CollaborationInbox

Download PO?

9.Download PO

10.Send PO

11.Open PO

Yes

No

No

Yes

InformationReceived

InformationReceived

InformationReceived

Email notification sent tosender and receiver

Purchase Orderprinted in BAAN

Send information Receive information

Hosting Organization Supplier

View PO

Figure 8 Event-triggered publishing



Send information (system)

This process part is carried out by the backend system, although it is triggered bymanual printing of, for example, a purchase order. Periodically, the BaanEDImodule generates XML files and sends those files to E-Collaboration. Such apurchase order is then published as an XML document in the employee�s outboxand in the supplier�s inbox. If set up accordingly, both receive an e-mailnotification.

Receive information � hosting organization role

1 The employee receives an e-mail notification and opens the message in thee-mail inbox.

2 The employee finds a hyperlink to this particular PO in the E-Collaborationoutbox.

3 When the employee opens the hyperlink, he/she can view the PO. The POremains in the outbox of the employee, until it is deleted. While the PO is inthe outbox, the employee can monitor the receiving process by checking thePO status. From his outbox, the employee can start a NetMeeting with areceiver of the document to discuss certain matters, share files, send an e-mailmessage to the addressee(s), or remove the document.

Receive information � supplier role

4 The supplier receives an e-mail notification.

5 If the PO was pushed, the supplier receives the document as an attachment inanother e-mail message and can open it and further process it directly. Again,this assumes that the active send method is By e-mail with HTML-attachment, although other send methods are also possible, such as HTTP orFTP.

6 If the PO was not pushed, the supplier finds a hyperlink to E-Collaborationon the site of the hosting organization.

7 To actually retrieve the PO, the supplier logs on to E-Collaboration on thesite of the hosting organization.



8 The supplier opens the inbox, where he/she finds the PO. The supplier cannow decide whether to download the PO or to send it directly to their ownsystem (through the preset send method). The supplier can also view the PO,accept it (status changes from New to Accepted) or delete it (status changesto Accepted and Deleted or New and Deleted, depending on whether thesupplier accepted the PO before deleting it). Like the sender, the supplier canalso start a NetMeeting with the sender or send an e-mail message to thesender. The supplier can also reject the document.

9 The supplier then actually downloads the PO, or (see 10):

10 The supplier then actually sends the PO directly to their own system.

11 The supplier opens the PO and processes it.

Document inboundE-Collaboration can also be used by an organization to get documents to thebackend. Therefore, the organization must have E-Collaboration installed, andmust use the EDI sessions in Baan. In general, the scenario is as follows:

� A business partner sends an XML-document to E-Collaboration of thehosting organization.

� An employee of the hosting organization receives the document and sends itto a directory on his own server. This can also be performed by setting up adocument push method for the inbound document. You can also transformthe document to another format or, for example, to an internal standard.

� The hosting organization transfers the XML-document to the backendthrough a Baan EDI session.



Send information Receive information

Hosting OrganizationSupplier

Need to send informationto E-Collaboration

1a.Upload a prepared

XML document

1b.Update an existing

document

1c.Create a new

document on theweb

Document in BP's Outboxand in hosting

organizations InboxAlso Email notifications

are sent

Email notification received

2.Open E-

CollaborationsInbox

3.View document

4.Send document to

Backend

Figure 9 Inbound processing

Send document

1 A supplier can send out an invoice to the customer by putting the invoice asan XML-document in the E-Collaboration outbox. The supplier can do thisby uploading an exiting document, updating the received PO, or creating aninvoice from scratch on a Web interface.

Receive document in back end

2 The employee finds the invoice in the inbox.

3 The employee can view the invoice and if he/she agrees, Step 4 is carried out.

4 The employee clicks Send and the document is converted to EDI and sent tothe backend. The backend can import the message with the session directnetwork communication from the EDI module.


This chapter provides an overview of the new functionality inE-Collaboration 2.2 compared to E-Collaboration 2.1:

Supplier communication by faxIn E-Collaboration 2.1 users can send the purchase orders to the business partneras an e-mail attachment, FTP, HTTP, CIP, and file directory. The new versionenables users to send it by fax.

User-definable search and display fieldsUsers can use filters to locate the required documents in their outbox. All thefields that are used in the XML document can be used as filters. In the followingfigure, the PO Number is read from the XML file.

Figure 10 Screendump of filters and preview fields in Outbox

3 Comparison

Comparison


These fields can be added by the E-Collaboration manager.

Extend Publish screen with CC fieldUsers can manually enter the e-mail addresses of the business partner to whomthey want to send an e-mail notification. While the business partners listed in theTO field can see the link to the document in their E-Collaboration inbox, those inthe CC field do not receive the hyperlink. All recipients (optionally) receive theHTML attachment.

Extended Accept functionalityIn the earlier version, users can only Accept a published document. In the presentversion, this functionality is extended to include a Reject, View, and Downloadstatus. See the buttons in the following figure.

Figure 11 The Inbox with the Reject, Viewed, and Download buttons

Comparison


Send method that calls a method in dllE-Collaboration administrators can add the dll-class-method to the send methodsfor a business partner, which enables users to send a document with a program.

Create/Update XML documentThis feature enables a user to create XML documents. First, an XML templateand XSL template must be defined per document type by the E-Collaborationadministrator. An XML template contains all fields (with default settings) for acertain document type. The XSL template filters out the fields that a user doesnot have to fill or is not authorized to see. You can also edit a document in theoutbox.

Incoming document transformationThis feature enables the transformation of incoming XML documents to aninternal standard. The document is transformed with an XSL sheet before it isstored in the database.

Error HandlingE-Collaboration 2.2 has better error handling procedures. These procedures areembedded in the procedure of publishing. In the previous versions ofE-Collaboration, if one error occurred, the system did not continue and thedocument was not published. With E-Collaboration 2.2, the system continues andsends the document to the recipients that were without error and logs the errorsthat occurred.

Upload procedureThe Upload procedure changed slightly. In previous versions, the user had toselect the document type and the receivers of the document. WithE-Collaboration 2.2, the system checks the document and reads the documenttype and the receivers from the uploaded document. If the system cannot find thedocument type and receivers, the system asks the user.

Comparison


Publication listThe publication list is introduced in E-Collaboration 2.2. This list is used forauthorizing users to publish a document and when users want to get an e-mailnotification when they publish this document.

The publication list is also used to determine whether users are authorized toupload, create, or update a document.

Documents

Fundamentals Guide for E-Collaboration 2