How the Full Circle interface works

HubSoft is updated from Full Circle so that any changes you make in Full Circle are also reflected in your portal.  The type of information that is updated and when it is updated is based on your configuration choices. Depending on your configuration, your HubSoft portal will login to your Full Circle server and upload several files that were put there by Full Circle.  Then, any orders or promotional order files would be downloaded to the Full Circle server to be imported.

What happens around each of the files

There are several files that Full Circle can interface into your portal.  And although there are not many files, its important to understand what’s going on and the logic that is applied.  Let’s go over the different files imported from Full Circle.

 Customers.txt and Addresses.txt files

There are two files that are imported to manage your customers and their stores. This process adds any new stores, customers or buyers as necessary. Any changes you make to the ‘customer master’ in Full Circle will be reflected in the portal when the update process imports the new file.

 The import checks that the account and store do not already exist by using the account id or the store id to match the records.  If there is a match, the HubSoft updates the account and store record with the data that is available from the Full Circle file.  Any other information in the portal will not be touched, so you can update buyer contact information without worrying that it will get lost.

 If an account or store does not exist in the portal and is in the Full Circle file, a new account and store are created.  Then, using the sales rep code, the import will determine if the store should be added to an existing buyer record or a new one should be created.   Lastly, if the account or store is in the portal and not in the Full Circle file, it will be removed.

 We realized that you do not always want a store in the portal just because it is in Full Circle, so we added controls to the ‘Store Type’ in the ‘Setup’ screen to allow you to control this.  If a store type is indicated as ‘synchronized’, then the accounts and stores will be added, updated or removed.  If the store type is not set to synchronize, then the records are not updated or removed.  So if there are stores you do not want added to the portal, then uncheck the flag on the Store Type screen and that’s it.

 If you import a store record and then set it to a store type that is ‘not synchronized’, it will no longer be updated or removed.  If the store id stays the same, when the import runs again, it will see that the record is there and not touch it.  This is how you can keep the interface from updating records you do not want changed.  If there are stores on an account that are indicated as ‘not synchronized’, then the account will not be removed by the interface.  All ll the stores must be able to be removed before the account will be removed.

 If the portal drives your web site dealer locater, than the ‘store type’ and determines how the store records are displayed.  So, if you have a store record that was imported that you do not want to have shown on your web site, you will need to create a separate store type that does not display the records and move the store record to it.

All the other account and store fields values, such as status, territory, warehouse, priority and others on the account and store records will use the default value you specify in the configuration. So be sure that is set up properly before you enable your interface.

Rep assignments to buyers and stores are made from the Addresses.txt file.  The import process first looks to see if there is aleady a buyer established for the rep.  If one exists, the store is added to that buyer and by extension added to the rep.  If a buyer for that rep does not exist, a buyer record is created with the store assigned to them.  This new buyer is then assigned to the rep so that they show up for the rep when they log in.  If the rep code is not defined in the User screen, then the buyer record is created and assigned to the 'default' buyer that you indicated on the Full Circle interface controls screen.  This import process insures that reps only see their buyers, orders, accounts and stores.  Since the assignment is to the 'lowest' rep in Full Circle, this is who will see the buyer when they log in.  You can expand this visibility by defining the rep relationships and hierarchies in the Setup-User screen.  This is how you can manage rep firms, sub reps and customer service rep relationships and account sharing.

The Rep is identified using the 'Rep Code' from Full Circle and matching that value to the 'User' record in HubSoft.  If the rep code from Full Circle is not defined in HubSoft, the buyer and their stores will be assigned to the 'default' rep that is indicated on the 'Full Circle Controls' screen.  You will not receive any error notifications on buyers and stores that are assigned to a rep that is not defined in HubSoft.  You can manage the rep's code in HubSoft on the 'Setup -> Company -> Users' screen.

 Remember that you can export to Excel, make all the changes you need to in the spreadsheet. When you are done, you can import the spreadsheet and apply all changes to your systems at once.  So it is easy to clean up for records should you need to.

 Products.txt file

The products file from Full Circle will manage the seasons the products in them This means that any changes to styles, colors and sizes in Full Circle will be reflected on the portal for the same season.  Each time the products.txt file is uploaded, the  assignment  of  the products to a season is reapplied.  So if you make any updates to any products in a season, this will be overwritten the next time the products.txt file is imported.

 To set this up, you only need to add the Full Circle season code into the appropriate season records in your portal. This is the code that the interface will use to match the product to a season.

 Inventory.txt file

The inventory process runs on an hourly basis and provides the latest availability from Fill Circle. You can additionally apply the portal inventory controls so that HubSoft will keep available inventory calculating properly on the portal, even when the Full Circle file is not available.  Please be sure to use the same product codes in your portal as Full Circle so that the inventory can properly match them.

 While HubSoft supports multiple warehouses, the Full Circle import will put all the inventory into your ‘At Once’ or ‘On Hand’ inventory for your default warehouse record. This way the buyers, accounts and inventory are all applied to the default so everything matches. You should also have a look at the inventory control screen in the set up to make sure the calculations are setup properly.

 Dealer.txt and Promotional Orders.txt files

The dealer and promotional orders are exported to your Full Circle server from the portal based on your configuration. This process will download two files, one for regular orders and the other for promotional orders. These files contain several orders within them and Full Circle will determine which orders are already present in the application when the order file is imported. The import process does not change the status on the order in the portal, so its probably a good idea to update the order status for any orders that are successfully imported.

How Reps are assigned to buyers and stores

HubSoft determines the stores a Sales Rep covers through the Sales Rep’s assignment to a Store Buyer.  The stores for an account are assigned to the Store Buyer so that it simplifies the process of writing an order when both the Sales Rep and buyer are writing them in your HubSoft portal.  This also allows any number of Sales Reps, sub-Sales Reps and CSR’s to cover any combination of buyers and stores.

The Sales Rep assignment in Full Circle is at the ‘store-level’ where you can specify up to three Sales Reps on a store.  If there are Sales Reps assigned, their ‘Sales Rep Code’ is entered into positions one, two or three depending on the relationship of the Sales Reps.  If in any of these three positions there is not a Sales Rep assigned, a value of ‘NA’ is entered and passed to your portal through the interface.

When a store is imported into HubSoft from Full Circle, HubSoft uses the three ‘Sales Rep Codes’ to identify the Store Buyer.  For example, if a rep ‘Mike Smith’ has a code of ‘SMTH’ in Full Circle, the values passed on the Mike’s Stores would be ‘SMTH NA NA’.  The import process will match the ‘Sales Rep Code’ from the user records to match ‘SMTH’ to Mike Smith.  Then create a new Store Buyer, assigned to Mike Smith and associate the store to this new Store Buyer.  Any stores for the same account that have a ‘SMTH NA NA’ value will be assigned to this buyer and therefore become one of Mike Smith’s stores.

If the Mike Smith has a ‘sub-rep’ from Full Circle, their use code would change this ‘key’. For example, ‘Sally Jones’ with a rep code of ‘JNES’, would cause the ‘key’ to be ‘SMTH JNES NA’.  In this case, the import would create a new buyer with this key and assign it to ‘Sally Jones’.  If the ‘buyer name’ is the default name created in the import, then HubSoft will append a number counter to the name so you can tell them apart..  If you want ‘Mike Smith’ to be able to see this buyer, you would need to add ‘Sally’ to ‘Mike’s’ permissions on the user screen.

If the import process encounters a sales rep code from Full Circle that it does not have defined, it will still create the buyer and assign it to the next highest rep in the list that it can identify.  In this example, if ‘Sally Jones’ were not defined, the import process would create a new buyer with a  ‘key’ of  ‘SMTH JNES NA’ and assign it to ‘Mike Smith’.  If there was already a buyer on the account assigned to ‘Mike Smith’, you would now see two buyers on the account assigned to ‘Mike Smith’.  This is because the underlying rep ‘keys’ are different.  You can correct this by adding ‘Sally Jones’ to your portal and using the ‘Rep to Buyer Setup’ screen to move the relationships.

Note: If the import can not match to any of the rep codes coming from Full Circle, it will assign the buyer to the ‘default’ rep defined on the ‘Full Circle Controls Setup’ screen.

The easiest way to have these relationships properly managed if to add the new rep to your HubSoft portal before you first run the ‘address.txt’ file import from Full Circle.  This will insure that all the relationships are properly managed.

If you are ‘adding’ a rep to a store that is already in your portal, then the import will create a new buyer record.  Any ‘old’ buyer records would then need to be removed, depending on how the portal is used.  This allows you to have more than one rep have ‘different relationships’ with the same buyer.  For example, ‘Mike Smith’ could write for stores A,B,C,D with a buyer, and ‘Sally Jones’ could write for A,C,E,F stores.

Emails, logs and errors

If there are any issues with the file imports, you will receive an email of the error so that you can correct them. This means that if you do not receive an email from your portal, then the expected file was present when the import process ran and all the values in the file were proper.

 If you do get an email with an error, this also means that the source file was not removed from your server and can be processed ‘on-demand’. You should go ahead and correct the issues in the file and click ‘Process Now’ on the Full Circle controls screen. The email will be sent to the address provided on the controls screen.

 You can also go to the ‘Full Circle logs’ screen and see the previous 200 imports that were processed. By clicking on the link on each row, you will be able to see the source file that was process to view the data that was imported. If there were any errors, there will be a second link next to the file name that you can click to view the errors. This is the same information that was sent to you in the email. By opening this, you can work down the list in the portal to correct any mistakes. When you are done, click ‘Process Now’ to be sure you have clean data in your portal and to remove any files on your server.

 Exclusions

Often companies put products in Full Circle that they do not want to show externally or to sales reps on the portal. This is commonly special make-up products or point of purchase displays. You can exclude these from being imported into the portal by adding them to the ‘Full Circle Exclusions’ screen. We encourage you to use the description field as well so that it is clear to everyone why that product is not being imported. Also because the import process does not produce an error for products on the exclusions list. You do not need to build a product in the product tables to then add it to the exclusions list, you only need to add the product code to the exclusions list.

 The connectivity HubSoft offers you is the most complete integration between Full Circle and another application we have encountered. The additional configuration controls provided by HubSoft makes the interface easy to manage and a great help at keeping your portal data current and accurate.

While this is a long article, the Full Circle interface is very easy to get going.  You not only get the interface, but all the logic around the interface to be sure that your online users do not get confused over back office information.  Once you have the interface running, your entire company can be connected, from Full Circle to the dealer locator on your web site, extremely efficient and simplifying.

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Posted by Lee Decker on April 8, 2008 11:31:00 AM PDT #