Running the ARET Process for Order Status (Lithonia)

Status: Testing, request for feedback

NOTE New feature below: Run ARET and Import!

NOTE: The ARET process is recommended to update the order status information – even for orders imported from ACE.

ARET.EXE can be called with date parameters and will create an XML file that contains the results.  Below are specs for running ARET from a command line without using the actual user interface. The below command would extract data from 01/01/2007 to 01/31/2007 and place the extracted data in the c:\lbsbin\extract folder in a file called 01012007TO01312007.XML.

C:\LBSBIN>ARET /N /S 01/01/2007 /E 01/31/2007 /T C:\LBSBIN\EXTRACT\DATA.XML

One caveat, the command line switches must be in all caps.

It is also possible to run the ARET GUI, and specify the same starting and ending parameters.

Within OASIS, select the orders application. Then under the Lithonia menu, select Import ARET Transactions:

Select the file just exported from ARET:

After a minute or so of processing, all orders able to be automatically processed will be applied to the related orders in OASIS. Otherwise, the order will be saved an added to the order status download folder:

These orders will likely need to be manually created or applied to orders in OASIS.

Run ARET and Import

One of the options is to have OASIS run ARET and then import the data into OASIS. The advantage: you don’t have to specify the command line parameters to run ARET. To do this, ARET and OASIS (just the GUI) must be installed on the same computer.

The window is the number of days before the ending date where ARET will begin pulling transactions. The ending date will be the last transaction date pulled by ARET. (NOTE: it is not know what field is used to pull transactions. Most users allow OASIS to select “today” as the ending date with the window set in the number of days they are comfortable with.)

ISSUE: Runtime with ARET can be rather long – especially if the window (in days) is larger than 14 days.

ISSUE: The “blue” on the projects screen will disappear when ARET updates OASIS. With the Lithonia implementation, it is not possible to show the project status in the project, but the project status reports (and web) work just fine.

Auto Downloads!

To setup auto downloads, you will need to upgrade to V2.7. Additionally, one PC will need to be setup to run a windows service. If this is a PC that is always running (e.g. a server), then the downloads will happen late at night.

Please call the help desk for details.

Invoices from ARET

Yes! The ARET import is how OASIS creates Lithonia invoices within the OASIS database for reconciliation. After running ARET (or manually creating the order from the Order Status download folder) click on the OASIS invoice application. Note any invoices created by user “OASIS”!