RE: Real-time link between Mapics and UPS World Ship

Lisa,

I've implemented this kind of integration several times for various clients
of mine using various Software Packages.    One of them was a Mapics shop.
Worldship utilizes an ODBC connection to get at your AS400 data.    You can
setup the ODBC connection, then use the "Key Entry" feature of Worldship to
allow the person in Shipping to key an Order# or Shipment Number or other
identifying information that will be used to retrieve the shipping name,
address, etc from your Mapics files.    In my case, I used the Order number.
So, the user enters the order number in Worldship and the shipping
information is automatically populated from Mapics.   I was able to do this
part without any programming per se.    All I did was create a join logical
file containing the appropriate information needed by Worldship.    I had to
create a JLF because Worldship can only look at one file for its information
and the required information in Mapics was in a couple of different files.
NOTE!   When setting up your ODBC connection, you will be very disappointed
with the performance if you try to point to files in your AMFLIBx.    In
fact, you'll be lucky if it will even work.    This is because when you
connect with ODBC it wants to build a table of all the files in AMFLIBx
before it lets you attach to the required file.   Since AMFLIBx has so many
files, this is a VERY long process.    Usually Worldship times out without
even establishing a connection.    I got around this by building a special
library called SHIPINFO and I put my JLF in that library and had it point
back to the data in AMFLIBx.   Doing it in this way makes the ODBC
connection very fast.  You just setup ODBC to look at the SHIPINFO library.
If you are using multiple company numbers you will have to deal with another
problem presented by Worldship.    The key field used to retrieve
information can only be 1 (one) field, therefore you can't use Company# and
Order# together to pull the information.   In our case, we only had one
company, so this was not a problem.    If you have multiple companies you
will need to do one of two things;  either ensure the field you are using to
pull up the data is unique across companies or create the file in SHIPINFO
with a concatenated key field.

As far as getting the shipping cost, weight, etc back into Mapics, this is
where some programming needs to come into play.    Worldship cannot update
files, it can only add records (append) so that eliminates the possibility
of updating Mapics files directly (which isn't a good idea anyway).    I
created a special file which I placed in library SHIPINFO as well.
Worldship writes records to this file and an RPG program updates Mapics from
the transactions in this file.    You'll have to deal with the peculiarities
of the data that Worldship gives you.     For example, amount fields will
contain the decimal point (ouch!), therefore, you have to make the amount
field a character field and then parse out the amount with your program.
Also, be careful with your field names in your DDS.   Worldship doesn't like
any #'s in the field names (Ord# for example will not work).    Worldship
gives you 2 options for writing the data to this shipment file.   It can
write the data in real time or at the end of day process in a batch mode.
In our case, we chose the latter option.    If you pick real time, you could
use a db trigger on the file to process the data.    Keep in mind though
that sometimes mistakes are made in shipping and they go back and correct
the shipment.   If this happens, you will get 2 more transactions from
Worldship, a void transaction and the new shipment transaction.   Your
program will have to be smart enough to handle this situation.

Good luck!

Bud Roble
Charles Roble Consulting
broble@CharlesRobleConsulting.com
(805)990-2707


 -----Original Message-----
From:   mapics-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:mapics-l-admin@midrange.com]  On
Behalf Of lisa.thomas@Hayssen.com
Sent:   Friday, August 24, 2001 7:48 AM
To:     mapics-l@midrange.com
Subject:        Real-time link between Mapics and UPS World Ship

Is anyone doing a real-time link between Mapics and UPS World Ship?  I am
wanting to: 1.Create a shipment 2.Export Ship to and shipping method data to
UPS World Ship.  3.Create the Shipment in UPS World Ship  4.Send the data
back to Mapics  5.Update Tracking # and Cost in COM.  6.Print the packing
list.

I am looking at using the Exit:  Process shipment to Export the data to UPS
and possibly the Exit: Enter ship spc chrg to Import the UPS data.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Lisa  A. Thomas
HAYSSEN
a Barry-Wehmiller Company
lisa.thomas@hayssen.com
864-486-4449

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