Overview: Document Management System
You can tailor the Document Management System to your business needs and to the output preferences of customers and vendors. The system supports many types of documents. You can choose the documents that are appropriate for your customers and your business operation.
Beyond outputting documents, advanced features of the Document Management System take you toward a paperless office by enabling you to import and attach external documents and archived copies of PowerShift documents to items, orders and invoices. A comprehensive document search function is available as well. The processes required by these advanced functions may require additional software components to be installed (e.g., SQL, ODBC, Solr).
This topic has these subtopics:
Set Up
Document Output Parameters Maintenance (TDOC) determines when and how you output each document for your branch or your entire enterprise. You can set up:
Whether to print copies of a document immediately or queue them so that you can output a batch of documents at one time. Creating a batch has the advantage of sending out a single email if the customer has multiple orders, for instance.
Multiple copies of each document, each to be output to a different output device.
An attachment (e.g., return policy document) to be output with each document copy/
Automatic retrieval of email addresses and fax numbers for copies sent to recipients (for example, customer contact, ship-to address, buyer, sales rep) as well as copied (cc, bcc) recipients
Whether to always print a copy or to print only if the customer, vendor, or branch does not have a profile for this document.
Customer, vendor, or branch profiles for the document.
Formatting options, including printing your company's logo in the document's header, your ISO number for the document, boiler plate text from a file, and a standard text page footer.
Sort options by recipient or order number for filing/mailing.
Notes and user fields to be printed on designated copies of documents.
Address or shipping labels to print at the same time that you print a document with the option to output to a third-party label program.
Overlays to eliminate pre-printed forms.
Whether you want to track print history for copies.
A standardized text message to be included on documents, which can include the insertion of data specific to the order or line item.
Archived PDF copies of documents.
Document Profiles
You can send a document by the output methods that your customer, vendor, and another branch prefers. For example, customer A wants sales documents sent by fax and invoices as PDF attachments to email, customer B wants all documents sent by EDI, and customer C wants a document sent via email with an "official" printed document to follow via regular mail.
You can enter document profiles with the Document Output Parameters Maintenance program or with a profile maintenance program:
For copies output via email or by fax, the profile contains specific email addresses and fax cover page information.
Queue Documents
If you selected Q for Print new orders immediately? in Document Output Parameters Maintenance (TDOC), the system places copies of the document for a new order in its queue. You do not need to remember to print the document; you do not have to spend time figuring out which documents you need to print.
You can output multiple documents when you enter a sales order. For example, you can output a sales order acknowledgment for the customer and your files. You can also print the sales order to use as a picking list. The system puts the acknowledgment in one queue and the sales order picking list in another.
The system can put multiple copies of a document into the same queue. This occurs when the Document Output Parameters Maintenance and/or customer or vendor profile specifies copies to different devices or recipients.
If you select Q for Print changed orders immediately?, the system places copies of the new document for a changed order in its queue or replaces existing copies in the queue with the changed order.
If you select Y for either new or changed orders, the system will print/send all copies of the document immediately (for example, when you exit a sales order, the order acknowledgment can be sent immediately).
If you select A for either new or changed orders, the system prompts Process now? and Queue?
Process the Queue
Use a queue program to output the documents in a queue. For example, use the PO Print Queue (VOPPM) program to output purchase orders or Acknowledgment Print Queue (OPSPM) to output acknowledgments for sales orders.
When you click Process queue in these programs, the system outputs the documents to the devices specified in the customer, vendor, or branch profile and in the Document Output Parameters Maintenance program.
Click the Form options button in the queue program to set program options that control what prints on the document. You can also set these options in the print program associated with this queue program. For example, you can set and save program options in PO Print (VOP) for the PO Print Queue (VOPPM) program. Alternatively, your system administrator can use Program Options Maintenance (XROPT) to set program options for individual users, all users at a branch, or all users in the enterprise.
The system processes the queue by output method: emailed copies are processed together, faxes are processed together, etc. If one of the output devices is unavailable, the system skips it and moves to the next output method. When the program prompts Clear printed documents from the queue? and you click Yes, the program removes the documents it has output from the queue and retains those that could not be output.
For faxes, the system checks fax numbers so that it can process faxes efficiently. If you have multiple POs for a vendor, the system dials the fax number only once and prints only one cover page.
Email output is processed similarly: a customer can receive an email with a number of invoices attached. If you prefer to have separate email messages sent with each invoice/order, you can use an email output device that specifies 'single document' and there will be only one attachment per email.
You can clear the queue of documents that you have processed, or clear the queue of all processed documents. You can also delete from the queue documents that you no longer want to output.
Print or Reprint a Document
You may need to print or reprint a document for a specific customer, vendor, or in-house user. If you want to reprint or resend a document copy, it is recommended that you use the Add function in the print queue maintenance program to ensure that print options specified for each copy are respected and that document history is updated. You can opt to process just one copy or all of them.
If you instead print from a print program (e.g., run OPS from the menu and select the order you want to print), you receive a standard printout that considers your basic setup, but does not observe specific properties for copies. Printing directly from the program will use some options from the document level in Document Output Parameters Maintenance (TDOC), such as a header logo, but will not include notes, overlays, footers, etc. that may be specified at the copy level. Also, document history is not updated when documents are processed this way.
If you need to reprint a number of orders, especially for a specific output device or single customer (e.g. recreate EDI files for the past week for one customer who did not receive them), use the Rebuild Print Queue (PADM) program to create a temporary queue that can be processed and then deleted. It is separate from the actual document print queue so will not affect other orders that are pending.
Print History
By default, all documents printed or sent have their history tracked and displayed in the Document Print History Inquiry (DOCQ) program. If you do not want to track or display history for a document, leave the Track document history? option blank for document copies when you set it up in Document Output Parameters Maintenance (TDOC).
If you opt not to track history, the detail information for each document is not retained (date/time it was printed, what print device was used, who the document was emailed to, etc.) but the document header record is retained so the system can track the number of times a document was printed/sent and whether or not a copy is the original document or a reprint.