Disable Supplier Email Communication

• Problem Description
• Background
• Workarounds
o Option1: Disable all email communication on the
Procurement domain. Stops Approval emails as well.
o Option2: Update the Supplier email address on the
Purchasing document. Does not impact Approval emails.
• Customer Situations and Workarounds

Problem Description
On the Cloud test pods, customers need the ability to not send email to suppliers or send the email to a
common email address. Currently we do not have a good solution in Purchasing, to stop just the supplier
email communication from test instance without updating the email address/email communication method
on the purchase orders. There is no option to send all supplier email communications to a common email
address.

Background
Purchasing documents can be communicated to Supplier, manually from the Manage Orders page or by
an ESS program or when the document, with communication method set as Email, is submitted and
implemented(i.e. document status is open). This Email communication to Supplier functionality uses the
UMS (User Messaging Service) component in Oracle Fusion Middleware to send emails. The Supplier
email communication flow does not use the Human Task component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware.
So, even if you had set the Human Task Notification properties as "None", the supplier email
communication will still happen. The Supplier Email communication can be switched off by setting the
Communication method on the Purchasing document as "None" or by setting the UMS Email Driver
properties.

Human tasks also uses the UMS component to communicate via email. When you stop the supplier
communication by setting the UMS email driver property, you will end up stopping the Human Task Email
notifications as well - this means the document approver will not receive email notifications to approve the
document. Users can still approve the document from the Applications home page by clicking the bell
icon or from the Worklist task in the navigator. If customers have a requirement to stop supplier
communication but keep the approval email notifications working, then the UMS setup will not help. In this
case, customer will need the datafix scripts (provided in this page) that updates the supplier email
address to be an invalid email address
Workarounds
Purchasing Development is looking into options to stop email communication on the test pods, even if the
communication method is set as email. The following options are workarounds until we come up with a
solution to this problem.

Option1: Disable all email communication on the Procurement domain. Stops Approval emails as
well.

Log an SR to perform these steps

1. Login into EM. Navigate to 'Email Driver Properties' under 'User Messaging Service' ->
'usermessagingdriver-email'
2. Scroll through the properties under 'Driver-Specific Configuration' and update OutgoingMailServer
with a dummy (invalid) smtp server address. Refer attached (email.jpg) screenshot.
3. Bounce the SOA Server for changes to take effect.

Note: Above steps disable both Supplier Communication emails to external users and Approval (Human
Workflow) emails for the entire Procurement domain

Option2: Update the Supplier email address on the Purchasing document. Does not impact
Approval emails.

Log an SR to perform the below steps to update the supplier email address on the purchasing document
to a non-existing email address.

What we do ?

1. Run the "Select script" to create backup tables (Script attached)

2. Run the "fix script" to modify emails addresses on all Purchase Orders (Script attached)

Note: The datafix scripts appends a text to the current supplier email addresses on the purchasing
documents to stop communication to the supplier. This does not stop communication if customer
updates/creates documents with a valid email address after the datafix was run.
Customer Situations and Workarounds
There are several situations when customer would want to switch off the supplier communication on a
Test instance

Scenario Possible Options

Migration from one instance to other instance: Migration of the purchasing
documents from their on-premise/On demand instance to Cloud instance.
Migration of purchasing documents is done via FBDI(File based Data Import)
program that imports the purchasing documents. When the documents (with Option-1 (Disable
1
communication method as Email) are imported and implemented, the documents all emails)
will get communicated again. Since the purchasing documents have been already
communicated to the supplier, prior to migration to cloud, customers would not
want to communicate these documents again
Option-1 (Disable
all emails):
Approval emails
Newly provisioned Test instance: Test instance created and customer is testing will also be
the purchasing functionality on the Test instance before going production/live. disabled
2 Customer might want to test creating/editing/copying documents with different
communication method as part of the testing but do not want to send emails to
suppliers. Option-2 (Update
email address):
Approval emails
will work
Migration from Test TO Production (before going live): Customer has tested the
functionality on the test instance and is ready to migrate the documents from their
on-premise/on-demand instance to production, before going live. As part of the Option-1 (Disable
3
migration, emails should be switched off on the production instance while importing all emails)
the documents.Once the documents are migrated, request cloud ops to enable the
email communication before going live.
Option-1 (Disable
all emails):
Approval emails
P2T Usecase: Customer has gone live and has requested a P2T clone. As part of will also be
P2T, the UMS setup will also be copied as production. Customer would want the disabled
4 email communication to not happen on the test instance after P2T. As part of the
P2T refresh request, customer should request the cloud ops to disable the email
communication on the test instance immediately after P2T. Option-2 (Update
email address):
Approval emails
will work