Acumatica introduced Business Events in Acumatica ERP 2018 R1. Business Events provide a platform to monitor data and events and create actions such as an email notification or an import scenario. Our clients have used Business Events for notifications on events such as:
- Additions of new customer locations to confirm tax settings.
- Purchase receipts created by a specific user.
- Changing of salespersons on customer or customer location records.
- Vendors being added or changed.
- Creating a task for someone to complete when an event occurs (this was shown at Acumatica Summit 2019).
An application of Business Events we will highlight today is Approval Reminders. Acumatica ERP provides a number of standard approval processes and the ability to notify approvers when a document is ready to approve. However, there is not a built-in reminder system and some users need those reminders, as they may not be in Acumatica ERP monitoring the Approvals screen on a regular basis. A Business Event provides the ability to accomplish this without programming or customization. In the sections below, we will describe the primary elements of a Business Event, share the settings for the Approval Reminders event and detail some tips and troubleshooting points.
Primary Elements of a Business Event
Business Events are generally configured with these four steps:
- Build a Generic Inquiry that defines the data to monitor
- Determine how you will monitor the data
- As records change
- On a schedule
- Define the criteria for taking action
- Define the actions to take
- Notifications
- Import scenario(s) to add or change records
The Approval Reminder Event
The Approval Reminder Event is a schedule-based event using a Generic Inquiry that monitors open approvals.
The screens below will describe the Generic Inquiry, the schedule and the notification.
The key elements of this Generic Inquiry are the condition and the calculation of pending and remaining wait times:
These times are based on the Decision Wait Time set on each approval rule.
The Schedule for this rule is set to run daily:
The result of this is that users with overdue approvals receive an email notification until the document is approved:
The format of the Email Notification is defined using the Notification Templates form:
Using this Business Event has provided sites with the less follow-up on pending approvals and improved processing of approvals in a timely manner.
Tips and Troubleshooting
As you assess where and how Business Events can help your organization consider the following tips, troubleshooting points and additional references:
Tips for Business Event Generic Inquiries
As noted above, Business Events use Generic Inquiries as the source of data to monitor. Some guidelines for these generic inquires, courtesy of Acumatica, include:
- Avoid using the primary lists for Business Events. These Generic Inquiries have links to their underlying data entry form and a Business Event to could affect performance. Use a simplified Generic Inquiry instead.
- Include only the required tables and fields in your Generic Inquiry. If no fields of a table are used on the Results Grid, you may not need the table in the Generic Inquiry.
- Do not use Grouping in your Generic Inquiry. Business Events do not support these types of Generic Inquiries.
- Include the key fields of all tables on the Results Grid.
- Remove any fields with the warning A Data Field with the name <FieldName> cannot be found from the Results Grid.
- If you plan to use Push Notifications to users of the Acumatica Mobile application, include the NoteID data field for the entity you plan to display.
- If the Generic Inquiry includes custom fields make sure these fields are added to a custom data access class (DAC) or a DAC extension in a customization.
Troubleshooting
Configuring Business Events can be a challenge for even experienced Acumatica ERP users. Some troubleshooting tips include:
- If you have created a business event and notifications are not arriving, do not leave the business event active on the production site. It still may consume resources and affect the performance of the application for all users.
- If a business event is triggered on a schedule and the schedule does not work, try to restart the application on the Apply Updates form. Use this with caution as it will affect any other user logged in.
- If a business event does not work, the cause can be another business event that has failed earlier and has not been cleared from the system. There was an issue in builds earlier than Acumatica ERP 2019 R1 Update 6 (19.106.0020) that affected Process Push Notifications (the business events that have not been triggered need to be deleted).
Additional References
- Acumatica has an example of Business Events related to customer support that provide additional examples of how Business Events can be applied
- Online help
Business Events provide a method to monitor data and events and create actions through configuration specific to your business needs and help automate unique processes as well as increase efficiency and improve communication. If you have questions or need some assistance, visit our support page for more help.
