Overview

You find that various Contracts that you have entered in the Open Windows (OWS) Contracts Management System (CMS) are not uploading to Computron's Procurement Portal.

Solution

<supportagent>

The solution is applicable to customer environments having this integration with Open Windows, like, Whitehorse City Council, Knox City Council, Darebin City Council, and Brimbank City Council.

Support agents do not have access to customer environments.

The solution steps can be performed by the customer's IT department or a member of the Professional Services team.

</supportagent>

It is likely that the long description field for one or more contracts in the Open Windows source system has not been populated with a value. This can result in a NULL value being stored in the corresponding long description field for these contract(s) in the openwin_contracts table. When this NULL value is attempted to be imported into Computron during the Vendor Contract Genex process, the process fails because Computron requires a non-null description. Computron does not recognize NULL and special characters except the dash.

Approach 1

You can reach out to the third-party OWS support for them to modify the export script to strip/replace any NULL value. Inform OWS that all special characters and NULL must be removed before a contract record is written into the openwin_contracts table.

Approach 2

Pre-requisites

•  The credentials for the user account displayed under General -> Security Options -> "When running the task, use the following user account" in Task Scheduler on the Computron application server (for running the mentioned scheduled task below).
• Access to the source Open Windows system/application

Steps

1. Open the ASCII dump file from dbo.openwin_contract table in your environment ( a typical path may be /CtronEnv/Data/openwin) using a text editor like Notepad++. This dump file is typically named gnvct.new and is pipe-delimited.
Look for NULL values for the second description for a contract (located at the 6th position in a pipe-delimited row).
 Note these occurrences and the corresponding contract number (located at the 2nd position in a pipe-delimited row).

2. If NULL values are found for a contract, these NULL descriptions need to be replaced with a non-NULL, valid value in the source Open Windows system/application. 
A user with valid access to the OWS source system needs to edit the contract(s) noted in step 1 and populate the corresponding long description field with a valid description.

3. Open Windows Task Scheduler on the Computron application server. 
Find the Open Windows scheduled task (typically named Upload Open Windows Vendor Contracts), right-click on the name, and click on Run to re-run the process.

In case you need assistance, please raise a support ticket with us mentioning the contract numbers that did not get uploaded and a Professional Services team member will guide you.

<supportagent>

In case a customer requests assistance, please refer to Elevating or Escalating to External Teams for escalating to the Professional Services team.

</supportagent>

Testing

When a contract is created/edited in the Open Windows application, and the interface (scheduled task) runs successfully, the corresponding contract is visible in the Procurement Portal.

• Log into the Procurement Portal. On the dashboard, click on the option Place Order.
• On the resultant screen, from the Express Menu on the left side of the screen, under Search, enter the supplier or vendor name in the text field for Vendor. Click on Go.
  (This vendor should correspond to the contract you edited in the Solution steps or entered a new contract for in OWS with a valid long description).
• In the search result, you will find an entry/row for the vendor with the field Contract populated with the contract information and you can click on it to view the details.