Set up an external catalog for PunchOut e-procurement

Article
06/03/2022

By using the external catalog, you can ensure that the product and price information that you subsequently process in Supply Chain Management is accurate and up to date. The requisition can then be approved and converted to a purchase order and an order can be placed at the vendor.

When the external catalog is set up and an employee is preparing a requisition, there will be an option to redirect to an external site, the external catalog, and return the shopping basket that was created at the external site. This communication is based on the cXML protocol and it has to be set up between the systems of the buying and the selling organization.

To set up the communication, your vendor has to provide pieces of information for you to use in the configuration of the external catalog such as Identity, domain of the buyers company, for example, "DUNS" and "DUNS number", credentials, and the URL to reach the vendors catalog.

Setting up an external catalog

The external catalog should enable an employee who enters a purchase requisition to be redirected to an external site to select products. The products that the employee selects from the external catalog are returned with up-to-date price information and from here, they can be added to the purchase requisition. The intention is not to enable employees to place an order on the external site. When setting up the external catalog, you need to make sure that the purpose of the site that can be accessed by the external catalog is to collect quote information and not to place a real order.

To set up an external vendor catalog, complete the following tasks:

Set up a procurement category hierarchy. For more information, see Set up policies for procurement category hierarchies.
Register the vendor in Supply Chain Management. Before you can set up configurations to access an external vendor's catalog, you must set up the vendor and the vendor contact in Microsoft Dynamics 365. The external catalog's vendor must also be added to the selected procurement category. For more information about registering vendors, see Manage vendor collaboration users. For information about how to assign vendors to a procurement category, see Approve vendors for specific procurement categories.
Make sure that the units of measure and the currency that the vendor uses are set up. For information about how to create a unit of measure, see Manage units of measure.
Configure the external vendor catalog by using the requirements for your vendor's external catalog site. For more details about this task, see Configure the external vendor catalog.
Test the vendor's external catalog configurations to verify that the settings are valid and that you can access the vendor's external catalog. Use the Validate settings action to validate the request setup message that you've defined. This message should cause the vendors external catalog site to be opened in a browser window. During validation, you can't order items and services from the vendor. To order items and services, you must access the vendor's catalog from a purchase requisition.
Activate the external catalog by using the Activate catalog button on the External catalogs page. The external catalog must be activated before employees can use it. You can inactivate the external catalog at any time.

Configure the external vendor catalog

This section gives more details about task 4 in the preceding section.

Enter a name and description for the vendor's external catalog. The name that you enter will appear on the cart that represents the external catalog that is shown to employees who creates a requisition. Employees can click on the cart to open the catalog on the vendor's external catalog site.
Add an image by using the External catalog image action. The image will appear on the cart that represents the external catalog that is shown to employees who create a requisition. Note that the image's width and height must be equal. Otherwise the image won't be displayed correctly.
Select whether the vendor's external catalog website should appear in the same browser window as the one where the employee has created the requisition, or if it should open in a new window.
Select the vendor for the catalog. In the Legal entities list, there is a row for each legal entity where the vendor is set up. To allow users to request products directly from the vendor's catalog in some legal entities but not others, you can use the Prevent access or Allow access button for each legal entity where you want the catalog to be or not to be available.
In the Default expiration (Days) field, enter the number of days that a quotation received from the external catalog is valid and can be used to purchase from the external vendor. When a quotation is created and retrieved from the vendor's external catalog site, the quotation is valid as of the current system date and remains valid for the number of days that you enter in this field.
Click the Add button to start mapping the procurement categories to the external catalog. Then, in the Category name list, select a category. The list of categories is a superset of procurement categories that the vendor has been mapped to in all the legal entities that are set up for the vendor.

Note

Procurement policies are used to allow or restrict access to categories for the buying legal entity or receiving operating unit. Punchout to an external catalog requires that access be allowed to at least one of the procurement categories that is mapped to the catalog.
Set up the cXML setup request message that will be sent to the vendor. The automatically generated message format is the minimal template that is required in order to start a session. Fill in values for the tags.

At any time, you can reload the system-generated message template by clicking Restore message format. Note that if you restore the message format, the current message will be replaced by the automatically generated message format, which has empty tags.

cXML setup message

Below you can find a description of the tags that are included in the template:

Field	Description
< Header >< From >< Credential domain=”” >	The domain of the buyer's company.
< Header >< From >< Credential>< Identity >< /Identity >	The identity of the buyer's company.
< Header >< To >< Credential domain=”” >	The domain of the vendor's company.
< Header >< To >< Credential>< Identity >< /Identity>	The identity of the vendor's company.
< Header >< Sender >< Credential domain=”” >	The domain of the buyer's company.
< Header >< Sender >< Credential >< Identity >< /Identity>	The identity of the buyer's company.
< Header >< Sender >< Credential >< SharedSecret >< /SharedSecret >	The shared secret for the buyer's company.
< Request deploymentMode=”” >	The test or production deployment.
< Request >< PunchOutSetupRequest >< SupplierSetup >< URL >< /URL>	The URL of the vendor's PunchOut endpoint.

Extrinsic elements

An extrinsic element is additional information, such as a user name that is based on a user that punches out. The extrinsic element is set when the PunchOut occurs and it can be sent in the request setup message. Your vendor could have a requirement for receiving an extrinsic element in the setup request. In that case, you should add the extrinsic element to the list of extrinsic elements in the Message format section of the External catalog page. Specify a name for the extrinsic element that the vendor can recognize and map it to a value. The options for values are: User name, User email, or Random value. For more information about the cXML protocol, see the cXML.org website.

Post back message

The post back message is the message that is received from the vendor when the user checks out from the external site and returns to Supply Chain Management. Post back messages can't be configured. The messages are based on the cXML protocol definition. Here is the information that can be part of the post back message that is received on a requisition line.

Message received from vendor	Copied to requisition line
< ItemIn quantity=”” >	Quantity
< ItemIn>< ItemID >< SupplierPartID >< /SupplierPartID >	External item ID
< ItemDetail>< UnitPrice >< Money currency=”” >	Currency
< ItemDetail >< UnitPrice >< Money >< /Money >	Unit price
< ItemDetail >< Description ShortName=”” >	Product name
< ItemDetail >< Description >< /Description >	Included in item description; Product name if ShortName is not specified.
< ItemDetail >< UnitOfMeasure >< /UnitOfMeasure >	Unit
< ItemDetail >< Classification >< /Classification >	Included in item description
< ItemDetail >< Classification domain=”” >	Included in item description

Delete an external catalog

Delete an external catalog with the Delete action on the page.

If a product from the external vendor catalog has been requested, the external vendor catalog cannot be deleted. Instead, the status of the external vendor catalog is set to inactive. If you want to remove access to the external vendor's catalog site, but not delete it, change the external catalog status to Inactive.