Automatic Sales Order Acknowledgment for SalesForce + Epicor

A SaberLogic client asked us to write an integration module with SalesForce.com and their ERP platform, Epicor® Vantage 8.03. When sales orders were submitted on SalesForce.com, they were then pushed into Vantage. By automating the sales order entry process entirely, they lost the ability to easily print and sent out Sales Order Acknowledgements to their customers. They needed to be able to utilize their new sales order entry system, but still send out SOA’s for each order.

The solution here posed two problems. First, we needed to automate the sending of a sales order acknowledgments from a designated customer e-mail account. Secondly, we had to determine how to have this process happen automatically as all of the processing for sales order entry are now server side, with no client machines involved.

The first problem was mostly straightforward. We hooked into the SalesOrderForm_Load event and utilized standard code to (1) process the sales order acknowledgement, (2) print it to a PDF, and (3) e-mail this using System.Net.Mail functionality and customer server credentials. Since this was all being done on the server, we created a timed method that will automatically close the Sales Order Entry form after 5 seconds.

The trickier part was getting the Sales Order Entry Form to load when Sales Order are created. For this, we wrote a BPM on SalesOrderEntry.Update and, pending a complete order was being updated, we called an external Progress file. This file ran a shell command calling a Vantage shortcut. The shortcut had its Target value updated to launch Sales Order Entry directly, instead of the entire Vantage client. This brings us back to the first part of our equation, SalesOrderForm_Load, which fires and sends off the SOA!

Don't assume something can't be automated! Contact us today to see how we can automate routine tasks in your Epicor® Vantage or Epicor® 9 implementation.