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"AventX Attachment Printer for Oracle provides you with the ability to print
and collate any Oracle E-Business Suite document (Work Orders, POs, SOAs, Statements etc.) with corresponding
database attachments."
Source : STR Software
Oracle eAM’s Best Friend: Automated Work Order and Attachment Printing
Work Order is also known as :
Work Order Accounting,
Work Order Agreement,
Work Order Application,
Work Order Checklist,
Work Order Control,
Work Order Database,
Work Order Definition,
Work Order Disclaimer,
Work Order Documents,
Work Order Examples,
Work Order Form,
Work Order Format,
Work Order Freeware,
Work Order Holder,
Work Order Icon,
Work Order Invoices,
Work Order List,
Work Order Management,
Work Order Manager,
Work Order Module,
Work Order Network,
Work Order Planning,
Work Order Priorities,
Work Order Process,
Work Order Programs,
Work Order Release,
Work Order Reports,
Work Order Samples,
Work Order Scheduling,
Work Order Software,
Work Order Solutions,
Work Order System,
Work Order Templates,
Work Order Terms,
Work Order Tracking,
Work Order Types,
Blank Work Order,
Building Work Order,
Business Work Order,
Change Work Order,
Cleaning Work Order,
Custom Work Order,
Customer Work Order.
This paper is intended to educate users, developers, managers, and executives of companies using Oracle
Enterprise Asset Management (eAM) to successfully automate the printing of Oracle eAM
documents such as work orders and accompanying attachments into their business processes.
A company is only as good as its infrastructure. Regardless of size or purpose, business processes and services
within a company rely heavily upon the dependability of assets — from high-tech manufacturing equipment to the
phone on someone's desk — all are vital for successful day-to-day operations within any company. An increasing
number of companies realize the impact these assets have on their everyday business processes, and have implemented
asset management software, such as the Oracle E-Business Suite module Enterprise Asset Management (eAM),
to monitor
their assets. eAM creates an efficient way for companies to track and schedule ongoing maintenance of their assets.
Maintenance staffs use Oracle eAM to create work orders as a way to report problems with assets or
to assign routine maintenance on them. As an added feature, Oracle eAM provides users the option to attach
one or more documents to a work order. This ensures that detailed information relating to a specific work order
request is available for reference. For example, a work order for routine maintenance of a vehicle may have
instructions on how to balance the tires (as a Microsoft Word document), a part diagram (as a gif image), and
a picture of the actual equipment itself (as a jpeg image).
Oracle eAM provides two user interface methods to create work orders and view attachments: Oracle Forms and Self
Service/Web/Oracle Application Framework (OAF). Both of these methods provide access to
work orders, however, neither interface method fully addresses the need for printing of the work order and its
accompanying attachment(s), thus increasing the amount of time and resources in order to process each work order.
Oracle Forms
While the forms based method allows you to print a work order report in 11i and R12 it lacks the capability to
print associated attachments with work order print requests. Instead, the file attachments are merely referenced in
the work order report that is run as a concurrent request.
Oracle Application Framework
With the launch of R12, Oracle added the ability to print work order reports within the OAF/Self Service/Web method.
Previous eAM versions (11i) required users to exit OAF and enter Oracle Forms in order to print a work order. This created
inefficiencies for eAM users and limited companies in their ability to manage user responsiblilities within Oracle Forms.
This new functionality allows a user to view the work order(s) in PDF format within Self Service. From this point a user
can use Adobe Acrobat to print the work order(s). However, like the forms-based method, the PDF document only references
work order attachments — it does not actually include each attachment as part of the PDF document.
Summary of Out-of-the-Box eAM Printing Functionality in 11i and R12
For both the Oracle Forms and Self Service methods in Oracle EBS - eAM 11i and R12 the work order is printed and the
maintenance staff is required to go back into Oracle EBS, pull up the work order, open each individual attachment using
the proper source application on their desktop to view and print the attachment document. Once printed, the output is
gathered, matched to an appropriate work order and finally collated into the actual work order packet
In an environment where a high volume of work orders are generated daily or weekly, this seemingly "minor
inconvenience" can cause a major disruption in business processes as it quickly erodes time and resources and
lends itself to costly collating mistakes that ultimately result in higher operating costs.
Role of a Third Party Vendor in Printing Work Orders and Related Attachments
To remedy these common printing challenges, a software solution is needed in order to print and collate work orders
and any accompanying attachments with one request from either the forms or OAF interface. Ideally this would be accomplished
by submitting a standard print request to the Concurrent Manager, Oracle's report generator module.
Using this proposed solution, a single or batch of work orders are submitted as a concurrent print request where a
third-party application, such as AventX Attachment Printer, processes each work order with its associated attachments and
directs the complete package to the designated printer. Attachments reside in virtually any format, so it is important that
the third party application be capable of converting the attachments from their native format to a "printable"
format. For example, AventX supports the following "native" formats for attachments:
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- HTML
- PDF
- Lotus 123
- Lotus WordPro
- Lotus FreeLance
- Corel WordPerfect
- Visio
- TIFF
- RTF
- JPEG, GIF, PNG
The following examples use AventX Attachment Printer (hereafter referred to as AventX) as the third party software
solution for the printing of work orders and attachments in an Oracle EBS R12 environment. It is important to note that
this functionality is available in other Oracle EBS versions (e.g., 11i10, etc.) as well.
Using AventX with the forms-based method, printing work orders and accompanying attachments is accomplished by simply
submitting a request to run the work order report as the user normally would. The user need only select a style on
the "Upon Completion" form that is associated with AventX, then select a printer and submit the request.
When the request is submitted, AventX automatically pulls the attachments associated with the work order, converts them
to a printable format, and forwards the work order and its attachments to the designated printer.
Using AventX with the OAF method, printing work orders and accompanying attachments is accomplished by taking advantage
of forms personalization in OAF to add a "Print Work Order and Attachment(s)" button that, when clicked, will
allow the user to submit the work order to AventX using a concurrent request. For 11i users the addition of a print work
order button adds incremental benefit above and beyond printing attachments in that they can now print work orders directly
from OAF.
Once the "Print Work Order and Attachment(s)" button has been added, the user clicks the "Print Work
Order and Attachment(s)" button, specifies the name of the concurrent report to be generated, selects the appropriate
AventX style and printer, and submits the request. When the request is submitted, AventX automatically pulls the attachments
associated with the work order, translates them to a "printable" format, and forwards the actual work order and
all of the attachments to the designated printer.
After generating a concurrent request, the user may then check the status of the printed documents by searching for the
request ID using the AventX Delivery Status form. The status of each work order document and its accompanying attachments
are displayed here.
Value of Printing Work Orders with Attachments
The inability to automatically print work orders and accompanying attachments from eAM is a significant pain for users.
Companies waste thousands of personnel hours annually by printing work orders and then manually locating, printing and
collating attachments with work orders. Not only is this multi-step process inefficient, but also increases the chances
for users to make costly printing and collating mistakes. Imagine the costs your company would incur by sending a
maintenance worker to the field with a work order requesting a tire change on a tractor, yet the work order attachments
detail the repair of an air-conditioning unit.
By combining Oracle's eAM asset management tools with STR Software's AventX Attachment Printer, you can eliminate a
very manual and mistake prone process and enable your maintenance staff to spend more time on productive exercises and
less time on clerical work.
What to look for in a Vendor
When considering a document printing solution, try to obtain the following information from each vendor as it pertains
to their automated document delivery system:
- Product documentation rather than marketing collateral
- Live demonstration of the vendor's product operating within Oracle EBS — eAM rather than a slide
presentation
- Installed customer references
- Annual support agreement — what is included
- Source of Support — is it provided by the vendor or an outsourced company
- Customizations — does the vendor document product customizations and support them
- Implementation — ask for a detailed outline and list of tasks and ask if you can do it yourself
- ROI — can the solution create an ROI in less than a year
Summary
As evidenced, Oracle eAM does a good job of allowing you to attach documents to a work order, yet they do not provide
the necessary technology that allows you to print a work order and accompanying attachments in the same print request.
A third-party solution like STR Software's AventX Attachment Printer must be present in order to
"print" a work order with related attachments.
To learn more about how STR Software can help save your company time and money,
please visit us online at
www.strsoftware.com
or call us at 804-897-1600 x.2 (toll free 800-897-7097).
STR Software Product Demonstrations
Experience STR Software's AventX product live within an Oracle EBS - eAM production
environment.
Visit www.strsoftware.com/webcast.htm
and sign up for our next live product demonstration.
About STR Software
Founded in 1986, STR Software, an enterprise software company, is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.
Providing a single point of contact for its AventX Product Suite, the company develops, markets, and supports automated
document delivery solutions for email, fax, internet fax and print for host ERP applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite,
PeopleSoft, and SAP in Unix, Linux, MPE, and Windows environments. STR Software, an Oracle PartnerNetwork Certified Partner,
has been recognized for engineering reliable "Solutions That Run."
AventX is a registered trademark and the property of STR Software. All products and companies herein may be registered
or unregistered trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.