GNM_SLM_Customer_Search_TS

• 1. .Introduction

     1. Purpose

The document GNM_SLM_Customer_Management_FS.docx is the functional specification that describes what features RCS has in relation to syndication customers.

This document is one of a set of technical specifications that provide details of how those functions are implemented in RCS.

• 1. Scope

This document focusses on the Customer search capabilities within SLM. Other documents describe how customer data is maintained as well as customer reporting.

This document is intended as a high-level technical document outlining how the relevant business functions are implemented in terms of software modules.

Importantly, this document does not aim to provide the level of detail that would be required in a programming specification in areas such as program structure, detailed business rules, data integrity, validation, locking considerations, data security, and calls to/from other software modules, performance considerations, and so forth.

For details of program logic and coding, the reader should refer to the program files themselves.

• 1. .Customer search

SLM has search capabilities to help users find the details of an existing Customer. This is useful for finding contact details, and is also necessary in order to create a new contract or to record a new request for an existing customer.

The Find a customer screen provides this search facility and is accessible from the following 2 menu options:

Syndication → Find a Customer

and

Syndication → New request

Both options open the Oracle Form named rcs_ordr_010_pc.fmb

• 1. Search criteria

As shown above the user can search using the customer’s name, a contact name, an address location, or with a unique reference associated with the customer (such as their customer reference, a licence reference, a contract reference, or an invoice reference).

Pressing the “Find” button alongside the entered search field brings up the search results.

.

• 1. Search results

The Search results are displayed in a list format with the main contact details visible, as shown below:

A new licence request can be initiated by pressing the “New request” button, or by pressing the Return key on the keyboard as that button is the default button, or by double-clicking on the customer’s entry in the list.

Customers highlighted in a magenta font are being monitored in some way by the Accounts department. These customers can be licenced but the user will get a warning about their status. Customers highlighted with a red font cannot be sold to at the present time. This is for an Accounts related reason, such as a backlog of unpaid invoices.

• 1. Search complexities

Depending on the criteria entered the default where clause is changed programmatically in the results list block. Searches are not case sensitive and “*” is the wild card.

When searching for a customer name the search will compare the search string with the customer name and also the name of any linked publishing group.

• 1. Highlighting of results

The magenta and red highlighting in the results list is based on status codes applied to customers in Oracle. SLM maintains a list of valid codes, and flags alongside each indicate whether further sales are allowed, or if a user warning is required.

The grayed out customer data is marketing data supplied by Cision. These customers need to be imported into SLM using the “Import marketing data…” button before they can have requests of contracts processed against them.

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• 1. Actions

From this screen the user has the following options with SLM customers:

• • Show the customer details in a popup window;

  • Edit the customer’s details or enter a new customer;

  • Review existing requests for the highlighted customer;

  • Enter a new request for the customer; or

  • Enter / review a redistribution contract for the customer.

Each of these features if described elsewhere in this documentation set.

End of Document