Configuring the Real-Time Availability Monitor

Configure the Sterling Order Management Real-Time Availability Monitor so that it synchronizes inventory updates with the HCL Commerce Inventory Cache.

Before you begin

Organizations that map to HCL Commerce should already be created in Sterling Order Management.

About this task

The Sterling Order Management Real-Time Availability Monitor (RTAM) time-triggered transaction synchronizes inventory changes with HCL Commerce as follows:

When RTAM detects inventory changes that are beyond the specified levels in Sterling Order Management, it triggers the REALTIME_AVAILABILITY_CHANGE_LIST event.
This event invokes the Sync Inventory Changes action, which calls the SCWC_SDF_synchInventoryChanges synchronous service internally.
This service puts the message in the JMS queue.
The integration server SCWC_SDF_pushInventoryMessages picks up the message from the JMS queue and uses the SCWC_SDF_pushInventoryMessages service to publish the inventory information to the HCL Commerce Inventory Cache.
When RTAM is run in OP1 mode, SCWC_SDF_syncInventoryChanges service is invoked to push inventory information to the JMS queue. When RTAM is run in OP3 mode, SCWC_SDF_syncInventoryChangesCSV service is invoked to write inventory information into a CSV file. The inventory information in the CSV file is consumed by HCL Commerce scheduler, which uploads the inventory information to HCL Commerce.

Mappings from the Sterling Order Management AvailabilityChange message to the HCL Commerce SyncInventoryAvailability service include:

The Sterling Order Management item ID mapped to the HCL Commerce part number.
An AvailabilityChange message for the default distribution group (IsDefaultDistributionGroup='Y'). For a Sterling Order Management node corresponding to the HCL Commerce store's default fulfillment center, the AvailabilityChange message is mapped to a SyncInventoryAvailability message for the online store. Otherwise, the AvailabilityChange message is mapped to the SyncInventoryAvailability message for the HCL Commerce store location corresponding to the Sterling Order Management node.

Procedure

Start the Applications Manager.
Applications > Applications Platform from the menu.
Double-click Process Modeling.
Select the General tab and double-click the General process type to open it.

Expand the Transactions tree in the left pane and double-click Real Time Availability Monitor to open it.

In the top section, under the Time Triggered tab, click Create New to create an agent criteria with the following values:

Note:

The examples are sample parameters. Your environment might be different so some of them might must change. In particular, you must update the Provider URL.
The JMS QCF and queue are new and reserved exclusively for the agent server. Any QCF and queue suffices.
If a parameter does not show in the tables below, it denotes that the field is left blank.

Runtime Properties
Parameter	Value
Agent Server	RTAMAgent Note: Click Create New to create an agent server.
JMS Queue Name	RTAMAgent_Q
No. of Threads	1
Initial Context Factory	WebSphere® MQ
QCF Lookup Connection Factory	AGENT_QCF
Provider URL	corbaloc::`your_host_name:bootstrap_port`
Enable JMS Security	Not selected
Schedule Trigger Message	Not selected

Criteria Parameters
Parameter	Value
Action	Get
Number of Records To Buffer	0
MonitorOption	3
CollectPendingJobs	Y
RaiseEventOnAllAvailabilityChanges	N

Save your changes.

Select Applications > Distributed Order Management from the menu.
1. Click the Load Rules for Organization icon and select the organization that is mapped to the HCL Commerce storefront.
2. Double-click Cross Application > Order Promising > Sourcing and Scheduling > Product Being Shipped > Distribution Group.
3. Click Create New and in the Distribution Group Details pop-up, enter a Distribution Group name and Description.
4. Click Save.
5. Under the Distribution Detail tab, click Create New to create a detail record for each Ship Node you want to be considered when calculating availability for the storefront.
6. Go back up the tree and select Sourcing and Scheduling > Basic Configuration. In the Sourcing Basic Configuration pop-up, select the Default Fulfillment Type to be used when not specified on the order. Under Products being shipped, select the radio button for Find node based on sourcing rule setup. Select Default Distribution Group to be used when no sourcing rule found. Save your changes.
  
  Note: If you do not have a default fulfillment type, create one. See Creating a fulfillment type.

Select Applications > Global Inventory Visibility from the menu.

Click the Load Rules for Organization icon and select the inventory organization for the enterprise that maps to the HCL Commerce storefront.
Click OK.
Double-click Inventory Rules from the left pane to open it and select the Monitor Rules tab.
Select Use Activity-Based Mode for Real-Time Availability Monitor, if using monitor option 1.

(and later)

Note: Integration is supported for only one distribution group or the default distribution group. Node Level Inventory monitoring is is not supported.
If you want the Real-Time Availability Monitor to compute and publish a matrix of available quantities and corresponding maximum ship dates, check Compute Availability Information with Ship Dates for Real-Time Availability Monitor. You can specify a time for the maximum ship date and the number of days to offset the maximum ship date.

Under the ATP Monitor Rules section, click Create New to create an ATP monitor rule. The following values are only for an example:

ATP Monitor Rule Details
Parameter	Value and Notes®
ATP Monitor Rule	test
ATP Monitor Rule Name	test rule
Lead Time Override (Days)	0
Disabled	Not selected
Event Based ATP Monitor Rule	Selected
High Quantity Boundary	100 The available inventory level above which an inventory item is considered to be in high quantity. Until inventory falls below this level, the web shopper user interface can convey that the item is In Stock.
Medium Quantity Boundary	10 The available inventory level above which an inventory item is considered to be in medium quantity. The available inventory level can mean that an item is Available in Limited Quantity until the level rises to High or drops to Low.
Low Quantity Boundary	1 The available inventory level above which an inventory item is considered to be in low quantity. At this level, the web shopper user interface can provide specific availability information, such as Only 2 Items in Stock. It is important to set the Low threshold in Sterling Order Management to a similar level as the low threshold in HCL Commerce. If inventory falls below this threshold, Sterling Order Management informs HCL Commerce. HCL Commerce sends synchronous requests to get inventory availability until the inventory level rises above this threshold. If the Low threshold in Sterling Order Management is much lower than the threshold in HCL Commerce, inventory information is not published to HCL Commerce. HCL Commerce does not make synchronous findInventory calls until other trigger criteria are met. Similarly, if a Low threshold in Sterling Order Management is much higher than in the Low threshold in HCL Commerce, inventory information gets published too soon and HCL Commerce is not be able to determine when it should make synchronous findInventory calls based on its low threshold.

Click Save to save your changes.
You might need to configure additional ATP monitor rules, depending on your scenario complexity.

In Sterling Business Center, modify the ATP monitor rules as follows.
1. Log into Sterling Business Center as an Item Administrator.
2. At the home page, click the Products tab.
3. From the Products home page, click Find Item in the Catalog dashlet.
4. In the Item Search screen, enter the search criteria and then click Search to view a list of all the available items. Alternatively, use either the Basic Search or the Advanced Search option to narrow down the list of items displayed.
5. In the Items panel that is displayed, click the Item ID hyperlink. Alternatively, double-click the row containing the Item ID.
6. Click Manage Primary Information.
7. The Primary Information screen is displayed. In the Related Tasks panel, click Manage Inventory Information.
8. In the Inventory Information screen, change the ATP Monitor Rule and the node-level ATP monitor rule to one of the appropriate ATP monitor rules created in this task. Click Save to save your changes, and repeat for other necessary items.
Install the HCL Commerce JMS (MQ) client jar files. For information, see Installing third party JAR.
Start the RTAM agent defined earlier in this task:
1. Go to the Sterling Order Management bin directory. For example, /usr/Sterling/Foundation/bin/
2. Start the RTAM agent:
```
./agentserver.sh <RTAMAgent> ../logs/<RTAMAgent>.log
```
3. Monitor the RTAM agent:
```
tail -f ../logs/RTAMAgent.log
```
  Optionally, use the System Management Console to enable verbose logging.
4. Trigger the agent:
```
./triggeragent.sh TEST_RTAM_CRITERIA_OP3
```
5. Start the integration server from the Sterling Order Management bin directory so that it will consume JMS messages. For example:
```
./startIntegrationServer.sh SCWC_SDF_pushInventoryMessages -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 
```

What to do next

With RTAM set up correctly, you can see AvailabilityChange messages in the JMS queue.

To verify that inventory cache push synchronization is working, confirm that the INVAVL table is updated.