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Allocating your FoD inventory to your customers

Here you can keep track of the FoD purchases you’ve made and which authorization codes you have allocated to your customers.

The steps to manage your inventory of FoD authorization codes is as follows:

  1. From the navigation menu (see Figure 3) select Inventory management. Figure 1 appears.

  2. Choose one of the four search methods to search for an FoD part number, then click the blue arrow icon adjacent that field:

    • Enter a sales order number.

      If you get the error message No data found!, that means either the sales order number is invalid, or is contain no electronic FoD parts in it. Sales orders of paper-based FoD authorization codes must first be converted to electronic (see Converting a paper authorization code to electronic) before they can be used here.

    • Enter the part number.

      Using this method will only return authorization code inventory that hasn’t already been redeemed for activation keys. You can enter multiple part numbers here, separated by a semicolon.

      If you get the error message No data found!, that means you do not have any unredeemed authorization codes available.

    • Enter a valid customer number.

      It is possible to enter a customer number that you are not an administrator for, however, you will only have a Limited view of this data. This means that you will be able to view the information but not perform any actions on the data. The view type is visible in Figure 1.

    • Select a customer number from the pulldown.

    For our example, we entered a sales order number and clicked the adjacent blue arrow icon .

  3. If you chose to use one of the customer number searches, you are next prompted to select one or more sales orders.

    Note
    Searching with a customer number: If you search using a customer number, you will be presented with all sales orders for that customer number, and you will be able to then select more than one sales order. This allows you to perform inventory actions across multiple orders and part numbers at the same time, thereby saving you time and effort.

    Scroll bars: If you do select multiple sales orders, a vertical scroll bar will allow you to see all entries. Depending on the width of your browser window, there may also be a horizontal scroll bar to display all columns of data, however you won’t see the horizontal scroll bar until you scroll to the very bottom of the list.

  4. You are then shown the available inventories. The columns displayed depend on the search you performed in step 2.

    • If you searched on a sales order or customer number, you will see the inventory similar to Figure 1.

      Note that the view type highlighted in Figure 1 is FULL. The view type can be one of the following:

      • View type FULL: This is data associated with a customer number that you are an administrator for. You can view and manage this data.

      • View type LIMITED: This is data associated with a customer number that you are not an administrator for. You can only view this data. The Ship, Update and Integrate buttons will not be available with the view type is LIMITED.

        Figure 1. Inventory management of one sales order
        Inventory management of one sales order

    • If you searched on a part number, you will see the inventory similar to Figure 2.

      Figure 2. Inventory management on one part number
      Inventory management on one part number
  5. If you wish to perform actions on this entire order or your entire inventory of a part number, you can skip this step, however if you wish to only perform inventory actions on a portion of the order, click the show link to expand the sales order to show the part numbers as shown in Figure 3.
    Note
    When you click a show link in the table, additional rows are displayed and the show link changes to a hide link.
    Figure 3. Inventory management - showing the FoD part numbers of an order
    Inventory management - showing the FoD part numbers of an order

  6. Again, since we want to only manage a single instance of a part number on our order, we further expand the order clicking show next to that part number. Additional data rows appear, as shown in Figure 4.

    Figure 4. Inventory management - expanding to show individual
    Inventory management - expanding to show individual

  7. The instance rows (the rows with plant orders in Figure 4) correspond to individual authorization codes you have in your inventory (available codes as well as codes you have already redeemed for activation keys).

    Select the rows you want to manage, then click one of three available action buttons:

    • Ship: Deliver these select FoD authorization codes to your customer via email. See Ship below.

    • Update: Add additional information to authorization codes you have already shipped. See Update.

    • Integrate: Redeem the selected FoD authorization codes for activation keys. See Integrate.

    Note
    No buttons? If you don’t see the Ship, Update and Integrate buttons, it is likely that you are looking at data for a customer number that you are not an administrator for. Check the view type at the top of the window -- a LIMITED view type means you can only view the data shown.

Ship​

If you click Ship in step 7, continue as follows:

  1. You are prompted to enter the details of your own customer’s order, Figure 5.

    Figure 5. Enter the details for to Ship an authorization code to your customer
    Enter the details for to Ship an authorization code to your customer

  2. Enter any details you wish to record regarding this order, such as your own order number or your customer’s purchase order. Considering entering the customer name in the Additional comments field and adding your own email address to the CC field.

    By default, the following fields will be included in the subject line of the email:

    • Sales order number(s)

    • Local order

    • Purchase order

    By default, the following fields will be included in the body of the email:

    • Additional comments

    By default, this action will generate one email. If you prefer, you can change it so that separate emails will be sent for sales order number in the selected authorization codes.
    Note
    Change the defaults: You can change these defaults in the User Preferences function, described in User preferences.
    The email address to deliver the Features on Demand Activation Instructions PDF to must be specified but other fields are optional.

  3. Click Continue when ready to send the email.

  4. You will then receive a confirmation message, Figure 6.

    Figure 6. Ship confirmation
    Ship confirmation

  5. The recipients will then receive an email with a ZIP containing PDFs of all the authorization codes you allocated to them. The email will contain the authorization codes. The email also lists the Additional comments field, however the PDFs do not.

    Example 3–1 Email received

    Inventory Authorization Code as below :
    Auth Code                    Sales order         Part           Plant order     QTY
    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX     XXXXXXXXXX         90Y3901        K5SCRR          1

    Additional comments
    David Watts

  6. The Select inventories page is then updated to indicate that those authorization codes have now been allocated to one of your customers as shown in Figure 7. The Additional information field is also displayed.

    Figure 7. Inventory now shows the authorization code allocated to a customer
    Inventory now shows the authorization code allocated to a customer
Note
Reshipping: The Inventory Management system allows you to ship the same items to different email addresses. Each time, the information displayed in the Ship to and other columns is updated. Be aware of this, and don’t ship the same authorization codes to different customers!

Update​

If you click Update in step 7, continue as follows:

  1. You are shown the Inventory update page shown in Figure 8.

    Figure 8. Updating an inventory entry
    Updating an inventory entry

  2. Here you enter new data for this FoD order. You must enter all data again as all fields will be replaced by the data here, including blank fields. You must enter the ship-to email address again, however, an email is not resent to the customer.

  3. Click Continue to execute the update. You will then see a confirmation message, Figure 9.

    Figure 9. Update completed
    Update completed

Integrate​

If you click Integrate in step 7, continue as follows:

  1. You are prompted to specify the unique ID (serial number or UID) that the authorization codes are going to be applied to, as shown in Figure 10. For some FoD upgrades, the model field will be greyed out once you select the machine type. Click Confirm when ready.

    Figure 10. Activating an authorization code out of inventory
    Activating an authorization code out of inventory

  2. Provided the authorization code hasn’t already been redeemed for an activation key, you will then see the following message as shown in Figure 11.

    Integrate finished successfully

    If the authorization code has already been redeemed, you will see the following message:

    No remained keys for this authorization code

    Figure 11. Integration successful
    Integration successful