I’ve been researching ways to potentially implement shipping notifications in the system. We do not actually do the shipment, so we don’t use manifest or any product like it.
The quote is well designed to store contacts, but the sales order is not. Because the shipment is based on the sales order, I am not sure how to design a system to allow for multiple shipping contacts to flow from sales order to shipment. Ideally, these contacts would be linked to the sales order customer and be maintained at the customer level.
I know the CRM has a “primary” ship contact, but this looks poorly implemented in our system and I’m not sure if I can tackle that overhaul. It also poses a problem of if there are multiple contacts on the customer but only one primary shipping, how do I know which ones to send shipment notifications to.
Has anyone else ran into this scenario and if so, how did you approach?
We’ve run in to it, and unfortunately (or may fortunately) the best way to address this is during Order Entry.
As you pointed out, there are so many potential sources for a “customer’s” email address.
Customer.EMailAddress (one per customer)
CustCnt.EMailAddress (where contact is Primary Billing)
CustCnt.EMailAddress (where contact is Primary Purchasing)
CustCnt.EMailAddress (where contact is Primary Shipping)
CustCnt.EMailAddress (where contact is Primary contact for ShipTo)
etc…
We pondered setting a UD field to contain all of the Email Addresses of contacts (on the customer side) that need to get the notice. There didn’t end up being any easy way to allow the Order Entry person to select from existing contacts, and build the list for storage into the UD field.
We settled with making the customer choose a single contact, and it would be up to the customer to forward it through their organization. But we always copy our Account / Proj Manager, so he/she has the opportunity to pass on to people on the customers side, as well.
So storing multiple “Shipment” contacts on the sales order in a UD field by creating a delimited list? I’ve definitely thought of doing that too, I was just concerned about the maintainability of doing so. The bad part is that it’s still not tied back to the customer and thus relies on the order entry person to define the list via tribal knowledge.
In my case, the shipment notifications would need to go to a hospital logistics person as well as a medical device rep (as an example), so we would be unable to make the single contact approach work.
It still goes back to where is the source of truth (Customer vs CustCnt vs ShipContact, etc) and how to maintain it moving forward. It’s more of an architecture question rather than a UI design question
Does anyone here know how the email address is derived on the sales order acknowledgement when nobody selects an Attn contact on the sales order Sold To?
I’m guessing you’re using whoever was defined in the sales order attention to for that?
I fear I’m going to have to go custom on this, which I just get tired of because of maintenance
Yes, but you can leave the attention blank and you will see that an email address will still pull through. I am wondering where THAT email address comes from.
In any case, thanks for your help and good luck with the customization.