This documentation goes over how to properly send sales order acknowledgements (SOAs). The process that handles sending SOAs has been changed to be entirely self-contained within Epicor to future-proof the process and offer expandability for other use cases.

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Quick Overview

To send an SOA email, navigate over to the ‘Sales Order Entry’ screen. The new SOA process is based on an Epicor Function that runs in the background whenever either the ‘Email Ack’ checkbox or ‘Send SOA Update’ checkbox is selected and the ‘Save’ button is clicked. An email will not send unless these conditions are met.

In order to send an SOA to the correct customer, a ‘Customer Email’ must exist or a ‘Customer Contact Email’ with the correct ‘Attributes’ set must exist. If neither of these are present, Epicor will send the SOA to the default email address for your company. For TMC, these email addresses are DealerConnectMgr@versalift.com and LiftOrders@versalift.com. Your company may, and most likely will, have a different email address assigned. Further detail is available below.

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Sending an Email

Step 1: Navigate to the ‘Sales Order Entry’ screen and enter the sales order information as you normally would do.

Step 2: Once you are ready to send a SOA email, check the ‘Email Ack’ checkbox and click the ‘Save’ button.

• If the ‘Email Ack’ checkbox is not selected, a SOA email will not be sent.
• If you check the ‘Email Ack’ checkbox and do not click ‘Save’, a SOA email will not be sent.

Step 3: The ‘SOAEmail’ Epicor function will run and finalize with sending an ‘Acknowledgement Summary Email’. This email lists out all of the email addresses that received the SOA. Below is an example of one sent to LiftOrders@versalift.com.

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Sending SOA Updates

If the customer needs an updated SOA, there is a specific option for this.

Step 1: On the ‘Sales Order Entry’ screen, navigate over to the ‘Summary’ tab if not already on it.

Step 2: In the ‘Ship To’ section, find the ‘Send SOA Update’ checkbox and select it. Click the ‘Save’ button to send a SOA email. This functionality is the exact same as the ‘Email Ack’ checkbox mentioned above.

Step 3: The SOA email sent will show the adjustments and be sent to the customer’s email address and the customer contacts’ email addresses. Any time you need to resend an SOA email, you should use the ‘Send SOA Update’ checkbox.

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Making Sure Customers Receive SOAs

This process is completely dependent on 2 factors: the ‘Email Ack’ checkbox or ‘Send SOA Update’ checkbox is selected and there is a ‘Customer Email’ or ‘Customer Contact Email’ with the correct ‘Attribute’ set. Without these, a customer will not receive a SOA email. Let’s go over some verifications that you should go through to make sure a customer receives their SOA email properly.

Step 1: On the ‘Sales Order Entry’ screen, right click on the ‘Customer’ textbox, hover over ‘Open With…’, and select ‘Customer Entry’. This will open up the ‘Customer Maintenance’ screen.

Step 2: On the ‘Customer Maintenance' screen, select the ‘Customer’ tab and then the ‘Detail’ subtab, if you are not already on it. Here we can first verify if this customer has a ‘Customer Email’.

Step 3: On the bottom of this screen, you should see a section that includes the ‘Phone’, ‘Fax’, ‘Email’ and ‘Website’ textboxes. In this case, we’re only interested in the ‘Email’ textbox. This textbox sets the ‘Customer Email’ field and will be used during the ‘SOAEmail’ process. In this case, an email is not set, so we need to enter a valid email address.

Step 4: After entering a valid ‘Customer Email’, we can now move onto verifying that ‘Customer Contact Emails’ exist and have the correct ‘Attribute’ associated with them. This part is crucial and needs to be done especially if multiple individuals need to receive a SOA email.

While still on the ‘Customer Maintenance’ screen, navigate over to the left-hand pane and click the drop-down arrows under the company name to find the ‘Contact’ folder. Click this drop-down arrow to view all of the available customer contacts.

Step 5: In the left-hand pane, select a contact that will require a SOA email. Verify that the customer contact has a valid email address in the ‘Email’ field located in the ‘Contact Information’ section.

Step 6: Once you have entered an email address for a contact or verified that the existing contact email address is valid, navigate over to the ‘Attributes’ subtab. Here you will see a list of ‘Customer Contact Attributes’.

Step 7: A customer contact MUST have the correct attribute set in order to receive SOA emails. There attribute that we are primarily concerned with for this process: ‘Email Sales Order Ack’.

Step 8: Select the correct ‘Attribute’ and click the arrow to assign the ‘Attribute’. You must do this for each customer contact that needs to receive the SOA email. After you assign the ‘Attributes’ to all the contacts that need it, click the ‘Save’ button.

Step 9: With that finished, you can now send SOA emails and rest assured that they are being sent to the correct people. You can always verify that they are being sent to the correct people by checking the ‘SO Acknowledgement Summary’ email that is sent to the default SOA email address assigned to your company.

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What is My Company’s Default SOA Email?

We’ve been mentioning something known as the default company SOA email address, but what exactly is it, how do I know what my company’s default SOA email address is and how do I go about changing it? This section will touch on what it’s used for and how to get one assigned to your company.

A company’s default SOA email address is a distribution list that is created for your company by IT. This distribution list includes many email addresses, possibly including yours. This email address exists for the reasons listed here:

• This email address will receive the ‘SO Acknowledgement Summary’ emails that list out all of the email addresses that received a SOA email.
• If a ‘Customer Email’ is not present, the ‘SOAEmail’ function will use this email address as a fallback and send the SOA email to it. This prevents the process from crashing and causing errors. This also provides a way for us to debug the process properly if needed.
• If a ‘Customer Contact Email’ is not present, the ‘SOAEmail’ function will use this email address as a fallback and send the SOA email to it. This prevents the process from crashing and causing errors. This also provides a way for us to debug the process properly if needed.
• If a ‘Customer Contact Email’ is present and the correct ‘Attribute’ is not set, the ‘SOAEmail’ function will use this email address as a fallback and send the SOA email to it. This prevents the process from crashing and causing errors. This also provides a way for us to debug the process properly if needed.

The last 3 reasons are the primary causes of the ‘No recipient found’ message that you might see on the ‘SO Acknowledgement Summary’ emails. An example is shown below.

In this instance, a ‘Customer Email’ exists and a ‘Customer Contact Email’ exists, however, the correct ‘Attribute’ has not been set. Therefore, the ‘SOAEmail’ process does not use that particular ‘Customer Contact Email’.

It is very important to follow these steps to the letter. A customer will not receive the SOA email without doing these steps. Any further questions regarding this process are addressed in the FAQ below.

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FAQ

How do I go about getting a default SOA email address for my company?

I’m getting SOA emails from a company that isn’t mine. How do I stop getting these emails?

I don’t have access to the ‘Customer Maintenance’ screen and my company’s default SOA email address keeps getting the SOA emails when they don’t need them. Can you stop them from being sent to the default SOA email?

My customer doesn’t need any contacts. Can I just not have any contacts and only rely on the ‘Customer Email’?

I have a question that’s not listed on here.