Oracle R12 eBS Item Templates

When creating items in Oracle E-Business Suite R12 there are a lot of options you can set for a item. Numerous of attributes can be set for a item and also numerous of items can be set incorrect for a item which can result in problems later in the process.

because you are able to control so much attributes from a item Oracle has some controls in place, for example some attributes of a item can only be controlled at "Item Master" level and some can be controlled at organization level. This makes is so that some people, the people maintaing all the items, can control some parts of the item and some can be controlled by the organization who is using the item. When a item attribute is controlled on item master level the settings are applied for all organizations. When a attribute is controlled at organization level this attribute is only set for the current organization so you can have some localization on your item settings. This can come in handy when you for example would like to provide the option to change the way it is stocked or the min/max planning settings.

however, even do we have this security in place we still have a issue on the moment that a item is entered. As in many cases the initial creation of a item is still done by humans we do have a weak link. Humans are making mistakes and when setting up a item you can make lots and lots of mistakes. When you start thinking about your items you will be able to create a couple of standard groups in which most settings are the same, for example, purchase items, service items, digital items, internal items, etc etc etc. all having their own basic setup. Because of this Oracle created Item Templates. You can create Item templates and use them every time you create a new item to make the number of human error's decrease.

As shown above I am trying to create a new item in Oracle Inventory by using a item template. you can do this by simply start creating a new Item and before you do anything click "tools" from the menu bar and select "Copy From" from the dropdown menu. When you select this you will be able to pick the Item template you would like to use.

You can setup your item templates in Oracle Inventory and navigate to "Setup", "Items", "Templates". Here you will have the ability to search for existing templates or create a new template when needed.

When you start with the setup of your instance and blueprinting you will notice that creating the blueprint for your Item Templates will take some time. However, when it is in place you will know for sure that the people who have to create and maintain the items will be so happy with this option and it will save them so much time, effort and money that it will make up for the initial time you have to spend on it.

When you look at the screen where you can create a new Item Template you will notice that you can select the values of every tab which is shown in the Item screen so for the easy of setup this can really help you. You can also see that it states where a attribute is controlled, on master level or on organization level which we have been discussing a couple of posts ago. Also you can set it enabled or disabled and you can set the default value. When you set a default value a user can set a other value so it is only a guideline in the template and it is not fixed. However this guideline will improve the productivity of users because they do not have to set all the attributes for a item but they can simply apply a template to a new item.