Re: Looking for ideas

["Paul Nelson" <p_nelson-br@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe,
I know you do this stuff for a living. If I sub the job to you, how much and
how soon? This guy's in a hurry. See the excerpt of last night's note from
him:

I have a conference call scheduled for 3:30pm tomorrow with the requestor of
the Vendor Portal solution.  I will be talking in large terms with him about
the PRMS Vendor Collaboration application (more than they require, no
infrastructure to support it, and not available for 3 - 5 months), and our
other options (ie. Net.Data).  I have communicated that I think that we can
provide a more cost-effective, integrated solution within a reasonable
timeframe.

I don't want to pressure you for a quote, but it would help me to be able to
tell our "potential" client that a first-pass cost / timeframe to implement
an integrated AS/400 based solution would be in the range of -x- to -y-, or
less than -z-.  I know that this breaks every project management rule in the
book, so tell me to "bug off" if you don't have a rough idea of it yet......
But, if you do have some idea of cost / timeframe, could you please send me
whatever details you might have ? ?  A certainty factor would awesome
also.....  and before 3:00pm tomorrow would be most excellent ! ! !

Paul Nelson
Braxton-Reed, Inc.
630-327-8665 Cell
708-923-7354 Home
pnelson@braxton-reed.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com>
To: <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 11:39 AM
Subject: RE: Looking for ideas


> > From: Paul Nelson
> >
> > When a purchase order is created, or an existing one is updated,
> > send an email to the vendor telling him to go to a specified URL
> > and enter his pre-assigned ID and password, along with the P.O.
> > number assigned to him. Display a "form" showing the details of
> > the P.O. If he can ship the entire order, allow him to check a
> > box at the top that automatically checks off each line item. If
> > he cannot ship the complete order, check the ones he can ship.
> > Allow him to indicate which lines will be back ordered, and to
> > indicate the date on which he'll be able to ship. When the vendor
> > clicks the submit button, initiate a program that picks up the
> > vendor's responses and output a file that can then be sent back
> > to the acknowledgement system.
> >
> > I'm looking for any and all suggestions that can run on the
> > iSeries platform. The customer has 2 machines that are
> > under-utilized, and he wants to put one of them to use. (He's
> > trying to fight off the encroachment of ORACLE into his company).
>
> Paul, all of this can be done from the iSeries quite easily.  There are a
> number of free and shareware sendmail programs that will allow you to send
> the appropriate email.  Create an email where the body has a link to a web
> application, with the order number as a parameter in the URL.
>
> The web application itself would be a piece of cake.  I'd write it with
> servlets and JSP, but if Java or WebSphere is a problem, you can certainly
> use RPG CGI.  Include the order number in the URL, and then verify that
the
> order belongs to the user ID that logs on.  Use a validation list rather
> than OS/400 passwords and profiles; this is much more secure.  Throw up
the
> appropriate HTML, and away you go.  Oh, for the "auto-click" where
clicking
> a box at the top in turn clicks all the boxes on the page, David Gibbs did
> something like this in one of his web interfaces; if he's unable to share
> that code, I'm sure it's not that difficult.
>
> If you don't want to include the order number, you could also simply have
a
> file that cross-references user IDs to open orders.  If only one order
> exists, show it, otherwise show a selection panel.
>
> Does this help at all?
>
> Joe
>
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