MONITOR-to-MONITOR

MONITOR-to-MONITOR (M2M) is a support to facilitate the communication between customers and suppliers using MONITOR G5 and/or the den previous generation of MONITOR. The different business actions supported today in MONITOR-to-MONITOR are according to the following chart:

Action at the customer's Action at the supplier's
1. Send purchase order 2. Customer order is created
4. Purchase order becomes confirmed 3. Send order confirmation
6. Supplier invoice is created 5. Send customer invoice

If the customer for example sends a purchase order via e-mail from MONITOR, then the order is attached both as PDF and XML in the e-mail message. In the e-mail message there is information saying the e-mail is a MONITOR-to-MONITOR message and also what is attached, in this case a purchase order. The supplier then uses that e-mail to create a customer order in their MONITOR system. It is the attached XML file which is used to create the customer order. The supplier then sends the order confirmation via e-mail and the customer uses that e-mail to confirm the purchase order. The supplier delivers their customer order and send the customer invoice to the customer using e-mail. The customer then uses that e-mail to create the supplier invoice in MONITOR.

If the customer needs to make changes in a purchase order already sent, the order can be sent again with e-mail as a modified purchase order. The supplier then uses that e-mail either to update their existing order or to create a new customer order. If the supplier choose to update the customer order, different checks are made during the import of the XML file. First a check is made to make sure the customer order does not have a status higher than 4 (Picking in progress). If the customer order already has been partially delivered or final delivery has been made, then it is not possible to update the customer order based on the changed purchase order. Then the supplier must create a new customer order. The next check made is for customer order row. This will check if any order row has a linked manufacturing order or purchase order. If a row has linked order, then it is not possible to update that row. Then the supplier can choose to only update order rows without order link or choose to create a new customer order.

MONITOR can monitor incoming e-mails for users if settings for the company's e-mail server and e-mail accounts have been added in the procedure Settings for incoming e-mail. For the e-mail accounts which receive MONITOR-to-MONITOR e-mails, the setting MONITOR-to-MONITOR has to be checked under Type.

In the Users procedure you can then, per user, select which E-mail accounts and which Types of MONITOR-to-MONITOR e-mail which your MONITOR system should monitor. Today these types are Customer order, Invoice, Purchase order, and Case. The e-mail accounts shown here are the ones where the MONITOR-to-MONITOR option has been activated under Type in the above mentioned procedure.

When then e-mails of any of the types for MONITOR-to- MONITOR is received by any of these e-mail accounts, that e-mail will automatically be imported and shown in the desktop component Inbox MONITOR-to-MONITOR. It is only the users who have monitoring of that e-mail account and that specific type of e-mail activated in the Users procedure, that will be able to see that e-mail in the desktop component.

If there are multiple orders/invoices to the same supplier/customer you can configure that these should be attached one order/invoice per e-mail message or attached as all orders/invoices in a single e-mail message. This is determined for the system in general using the system settings Send multiple orders in the same e-mail message (Purchase) and Send multiple orders/invoices in the same e-mail message (Sales). These settings can either be set to Yes or No.

This can also be specifically configured per e-mail address for the supplier (as recipient of purchase order) and for the customer (as recipient of order confirmation and/or invoice). These settings will in that case override the general system settings mentioned above.

This desktop component is an inbox where you see information about MONITOR-to-MONITOR e-mails which have arrived. You can see status, the time when the message was received, the name of the sender, company, subject of the message, and origin. If the e-mail has arrived via MONITOR's monitor you will see the sender's e-mail address as origin. A user can also manually import e-mail by drag and drop e-mails directly from his/her e-mail program to the inbox. Then Manual will be shown as origin.

In the inbox there is a function menu with a button you can use to import the attached XML file to the affected procedure, for processing and registration. If the e-mail for example has an attached purchase order as XML file, the Register customer order procedure will open in addition to an import window which shows information about what kind of data the XML file consists of and what the new customer order contains. It is also possible to double-click an e-mail message to start the import.

If a received e-mail for example contains multiple purchase orders (the customer has configured it to be possible to send more than one purchase order in the same e-mail message) then the e-mail will be shown on several rows in the inbox (one row per order). You can then import these orders separately for processing and registration as customer orders.

On the function menu there are also buttons you can use to update the inbox, delete e-mail messages from the inbox, and show the contents of the e-mail message.

When a user imports an attached XML file to the related procedure it means the e-mail will be locked in the inbox and a padlock is shows as status. This lock prevents other users from accidentally loading the same e-mail message and thereby create duplicates of the customer order.

In the import window the user sees information from the order header and can compare the company's customer information in MONITOR with the customer's supplier information found in the XML file, when our customer's purchase order is being imported.

The user can also see information on order rows and make adjustments of certain info before the order is created. If there are differences, or data that do not correspond, between MONITOR and the XML file, this will be shown as warnings with the cause displayed in text in the import window. These warnings remain even after the order has been created and are then shown in the validation window of the order so they can be corrected there as well.

If the order you import is a modified purchase order and the supplier chooses to update their existing customer order, then the order header will become updated and all order rows without an order link will be replaced with the rows from the imported order. Information about this will also be shown in the import window. First a check is also made to see if there are more than one customer order with the same "customer’s order number". In that case the supplier gets to choose which customer order to update in the import window.

In the import window there is also a PDF viewer which makes it possible for the user to view an image of the order. It is the attached PDF file which is used for this. Any other PDF files attached in the e-mail, if any, can also be displayed, for example drawings.

The order is created when the user saves in the procedure after the import window has been closed. Then the e-mail is logged and shown under the Activities tab on the order. From there, users can also open the e-mail and see the entire contents.

A user can also manually import orders and invoices without having configured the e-mail settings for MONITOR-to-MONITOR according to above. In this case, the user only has to add the desktop component called Inbox MONITOR-to-MONITOR and it is then possible to drag and drop the e-mail or only the attached XML file, to the inbox. MONITOR will then automatically analyze which type of XML file it is and open the affected procedure and then load the order or invoice.