Document Data for Inventory and Distribution

General Information

Document data for inventory and distribution mainly consists of basic document data. It provides a method of grouping documents, and connecting particular phrases to documents. The phrases that are connected to the documents will be printed on the documents. You can specify the validity periods of different phrases for a particular document; this allows you to print a certain phrase during a certain period of time. This feature is available only through the Document Text Administration window and should be performed by authorized personnel like a systems administrator or equivalent.

Purpose and Area of Use

Using the document data for inventory and distribution, you can achieve the following:

You can methodically categorize documents, by defining and connecting the output types.
By entering phrases for documents, and connecting documents to the phrases, you will be able to easily maintain a predefined library of standard, commonly used phrases (in different languages) to be printed on specified documents, over a given period of time.
Particular phrases can be printed on selected documents over a specific period of time. This ensures that a particular message is sent across to the customers receiving the documents.

Key Elements

Output types, phrases, and documents are the key elements involved. Documents are grouped with the use of output types. Documents that get grouped and printed, are those that are used in IFS Supply Chain only. Output types categorize the documents into separate sections, such as purchasing and customer orders. In order to print phrases on the documents, you must first enter the phrase and then connect it to the document.

Documents: Documents are system defined and new documents cannot be entered. You can attach phrases to documents in order to print them and to group the documents together under an output type. Examples of predefined documents: Customer Order Confirmation, Purchase Order, Internal Pack Note, and Inventory Count Report.
Output Types: Output types are used to methodically group the documents. It is a collective term for all the documents it contains. Sales documentation is an example of an output type, this comprises many other documents like Customer Order Confirmation, Pick List Customer Order, etc.
Phrases: A phrase is a greeting or a message that can be printed on different documents. Phrases on internal documents are printed on the first page of the document. Phrases on external documents are printed at the bottom of each side of a page.

Each key element is described in detail in the following sections.

Main Process

Defining and Connecting Output Types

The purpose of defining and connecting an output type is to group existing documents into a predefined output type or to add new output types and to categorize existing documents. When defining a new output type, any text entered against a given output type will be printed on all the documents grouped under that particular output type. You can combine predefined documents with different output types.

Examples of output types and documents grouped under them:

Output Types	Output Type Descriptions	Documents	Description
20	Sales Documentation	1	Customer Order Confirmation
		2	Pick List Customer Order
		3	Delivery Note Customer Order
10	Purchasing Documentation	45	Purchase Order Reminder
		46	Purchase Order Delivery Reminder
		6	Purchase Order
50	Quality Assurance	59	Test Instructions

Entering Phrases for Documents

A predefined set of commonly used phrases can be entered into the system in many different languages. A predefined phrase can be a greeting or a message with up to 2000 characters, which can be printed on specified documents. The language code to which the phrase is connected determines the language in which it is displayed and printed. You can enter and represent a particular phrase for every language installed in IFS Applications.

Example:

Phrase	Description	Language	Text
1200	December Greeting	en	Happy Holidays
		de	Fröhliche Weihnachten!
		es	Feliz Navidad!
		fr	Joyeux Noel!

Note: In order to get the same phrase in different languages, ISO languages must be installed in the system.

Connecting Documents to Phrases

You can connect a document to a predefined phrase for a specified time period. After performing this, you will be able to automatically print the connected documents with the defined phrase during the given time period.

To connect a document to a phrase, the following conditions must be satisfied:

The documents must be predefined in the system.
The output types must be defined.
The documents must be connected to the relevant output types.
The phrases must be created.

For example, the phrase with phrase ID 1200 can be connected to the document Customer Order Confirmation. The validity period can be set from 15/12/2005 to 30/12/2005, with the greeting Happy Holidays!