Monterey Mushrooms, a JD Edwards customer, is responsible for most of the mushrooms consumed in the United States.  At BLUEPRINT 4D 2023 in Dallas, TX, Monterey Mushrooms’ Senior Business Analyst, Lisa Tran, shared that when she decided to start learning Orchestrations, she wanted to keep things simple.

Lisa began by asking herself the following questions:

• What routine things do I do that could be automated?
• What problems do people keep asking me to fix?
• How can I be proactive instead of reactive?
• How can I raise awareness of data problems before they cause an issue?
• How can I give access to users for systems we don’t want them in?

Based on these questions, Lisa came up with several simple orchestrations that make a huge impact on daily functions:

• Purchasing Advanced Pricing
• Commission Management
• EDI Setup
• Full Cost Rollup
• Deleting Stale Reservations
• Cycle Count Single Item
• Notifications Based on Watchlists

Purchasing Advanced Pricing

The first simple orchestration Lisa created was for PO advanced pricing. She created a JDE screen to capture the data and allow the purchasers to self-help. Before this orchestration, updates were several pages deep and gave exposure to programs that Monterey Mushrooms did not want purchasers to touch.

Commission Management

Another easy orchestration that Lisa created helped Monterey Mushrooms manage commissions.  Within the system, there are different screens and setups depending on the commission site (whether the commission is a simple customer and sales representative [P03013], one customer with multiple representatives [P40344], or a representative that only gets commissions on specific items [P40344]). Lisa built a process recording for commission setups and developed a screen where it can all be managed and added from one central place.

EDI Setup

Before Lisa’s orchestration, fields for setting up new EDI partners were scattered in different locations, and users skipped over essential steps. Lisa used Orchestrator to create a screen that could capture all the needed info at once and greatly reduce input errors.

Full Cost Rollup

Full cost rollup is a multi-step process with steps for validation. Everything must be done in the appropriate order, and it’s only run quarterly because the business uses standard costing.

To error proof the process, Lisa used a simple orchestration to create a screen that is basically a step-by-step guide. In some instances, there are multiple reports that need to be run, so she put them together in a single orchestration launched by a button.

Deleting Stale Reservations

After facing issues with their 3rd party system leaving reservations open on records in accounting, Lisa created a saved query that looked for reservations in P00095 that were older than today. She then completed a process recording to select and delete all reservations and set this to run in the orchestration scheduler. Now, it keeps all reservations cleaned up.

Cycle Count Single Item

Lisa created this simple orchestration for instances when shipping personnel knows that an inventory item is off for a single item, and therefore, maintenance work orders can’t be completed.  Lisa’s orchestration allows the warehouse supervisor to run a report to select a single item to input the item number, quantity, and user of measure.  The orchestration then enters the cycle count, then approves, and updates inventory.

Notifications Based on Watchlists

Another simple orchestration that Lisa implemented was to set-up notifications based on watchlists.  Sometimes there are setup and data issues that cause failures in invoicing. Lisa created watchlists to look for missing/expired pricing so it could be fixed before the EOD. These notifications help prevent issues overnight and make sure invoicing happens.

If you want to use Orchestrations, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow Lisa’s example and find simple but powerful ways to improve your daily processes.

For more details about the simple orchestrations Lisa shared, watch part two (starts at 11:13) of this BLUEPRINT 4D 2023 session recording: JD Edwards Ignite Sessions.