Understanding Oracle iStore in a Multi-Operating Unit Environment

1. Merchant Admin Setup

Oracle iStore requires one or more inventory organizations that contain the definitions for all the items that the merchant (implementing organization) deals with and wants to be sold through iStore. The first step is to ensure that inventory organizations exist. These inventory organizations are used by iStore on the merchant admin side for defining the item hierarchy. Please note that iStore supports only one hierarchy for the entire store. You can always have independent sub-hierarchies within this hierarchy, if they do not share a node. On the merchant side, the value of the inventory organization should be specified in the iStore profile, 'IBE:Item Validation Organization'. If there are two different inventory organizations tied to each operating unit, then this profile should be set to the respective inventory organization at the responsibility level for the appropriate responsibility. In this case, an admin user U1 logged in with responsibility R1 can add only the items belonging to the inventory organization set in the profile IBE:Item Validation Organization for R1 and another admin user U2 logged in with resp R2 can add only the items belonging to the inventory org set in the profile option 'IBE:Item Validation Organization' for R2. So, the hierarchy management can be done by more than admin user. However, if there is only one item validation organization, then this profile should be set at the application level. As an example, let us assume that there are two inventory organizations IO1 and IO2. IO1 contains five items (I1, I2, I3, I4 and I5) and IO2 contains another 5 items (I6 through I10). The hierarchy can then be defined as follows : Root Section

Main Section for IO1 Main Section for IO2 Items I1 thru I5 Items I6 thru I10 As shown, each inventory organization has a main section and within the main hierarchy, there are two sub-hierarchies, one for each inventory organization. Setting up the hierarchy this way will enable merchants to separate out the inventory organizations within the hierarchy.

2. Customer Setup 2.1 Creating Responsibilities

In a multi-Operating Unit environment, separate IBE responsibilities should be created for each operating unit and they should be tied to the respective operating units through the profile MO : Operating Unit. Please note that iStore comes with a seeded customer responsibility called IBE_CUSTOMER. As an example, let us assume that there are 2 customer side responsibilities, say R1 and R2 and there are two Operating Units OU1 and OU2. Please note that the seeded responsibility IBE_CUSTOMER can be used as one of these (i.e. R1 or R2), in which case only one new responsibility is required to be created. The profile MO:Operating Unit should then be set as follows : Profile Site Appl Resp User R1 MO : Operating Unit OU1 Profile Site Appl Resp User R2 MO : Operating Unit OU2

2.2 Assigning Responsibilities

Whenever a user registers in iStore, the seeded responsibility IBE_CUSTOMER is assigned to the user. Also, the guest user IBEGUEST is also assigned this responsibility. So, in a multi-operating unit environment, the appropriate

responsibility should be assigned to the user at the time of the approval process. For example, if user U1 needs to be given access only to OU1, then he should be assigned the responsibility R1 and if user U2 needs to be given access only to OU2, he should be assigned the resp R2. While doing this, the seeded resp IBE_CUSTOMER (if different than R1 or R2) should be end-dated (made ineffective) so that only one IBE responsibility is effective at any point in time.

2.3 Restricting Items Based on Operating Unit

iStore uses the inventory organization associated to each operating unit to restrict each end user to the items in the inventory organization. The oe_system_parameters_all table is used to determine the inventory organization associated with the current operating unit. Please note that earlier, the profile ASO : Product Organization was used, but now iStore uses oe_system_parameters_all in order to be consistent with Order Management and Order Capture. So, if there are two operating units and if the requirement is to have two different inventory organizations associated to each operating unit, then this association should be setup through Order Management. Note that each of these inventory organizations will be a subset of the main inventory organization used in the merchant side, as mentioned in Section 1.Let us assume that we have M1 (main inventory org) and IO1 (with Items I1 thru I5) and IO2 (with items from I6 thru I10) as mentioned in Section 1. Also, let us assume that there are 2 operating units OU1 and OU2 with the responsibilities R1 and R2 tied to OU1 and OU2 respectively. The values for the columns ORG_ID and MASTER_ORGANIZATION_ID in the table oe_system_parameters will then be as follows :ORG_ID MASTER_ORGANIZATION_IDOU1 IO1OU2 IO2With this setup, when an end user (say U1) with responsibility R1 logs into iStore, he will see only the items that are defined in IO1.I.E. he will see only items I1 thru I5 and when a user (U2) with responsibility R2 logs into iStore, he will see only the items that are defined in IO2 i.e. items I6 thru I10.

3. Known Issues

Issue 1: When try to place order receive an error message "Error messages from Order Management The item specified is invalid or does not exist in the warehouse you specified. Please enter a valid item-warehouse combination. There is an error in order submission." All items that need to be purchased in iStore have to be present in the organization set in the "IBE: Item Validation Organization" inventory organization (warehouse). To validate the item in iStore you have to create the items in the Master organization assigned at the profile option "IBE: Item Validation Organization" at application/responsibility level and assign this item to the Inventory Organization as defined in the Order Management parameter "Item Validation Organization". The iStore Merchant UI looks at the "IBE: Item Validation Organization" profile. While the iStore Customer Facing UI (storefront) looks at both the "IBE: Item Validation Organization" profile and the setting in the Order Management parameter "Item Validation Organization". Confirm setups are as outlined in article id NOTE 265772.1 - How set up for a new Operating Unit and Item Master in a Multi Org environment Issue 2: iStore does not have the ability for the user to choose from a list of responsibilities, if he has been assigned more than one IBE responsibility. Currently, this is not supported. iStore assumes that each user has only one effective responsibility at any point in time.