Universal Procurement Interface (UPI) is used to share procurement information held in WebTMA's Materials Management module between WebTMA and your financial Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application. WebTMA and ERP databases are kept up-to-date in near-real-time — data is polled at one-minute intervals. Note that you are not limited to the use of UPI. You can maintain procurement records that are kept exclusively in WebTMA as well as sharing records with the ERP.
Data exchange is configured when you create a Universal Interface Setup. Information exchange can be configured to connect directly to the ERP database, an intermediary database, or via flat files. WebTMA recommends the use of an intermediary database.
The following import/export Universal Interface Setups are available:
- UPI - Purchase Order Import (from ERP to WebTMA)
- UPI - Purchase Order Export (from WebTMA to ERP)
- UPI - Purchase Requisition Import (from ERP to WebTMA)
- UPI - Purchase Requisition Export (from WebTMA to ERP)
- UPI - Receivings Export (from WebTMA to ERP)
- UPI - Receivings (Staging) Import (from ERP to WebTMA)
- UPI - Vendor Import (from ERP to WebTMA)
- UPI – Equipment Import (from ERP to WebTMA)
Example Work Flow
An example of the intended work flow for procurement using UPI is as follows:
- Create a Purchase Requisition in WebTMA.
- Export the Purchase Requisition to the ERP.
- Process the Purchase Requisition in the ERP, i.e., create a PO.
- Import the Purchase Order into WebTMA.
- Receive the items using WebTMA.
- Export the Receivings record to the ERP.
Although UPI supports each of the functions in the preceding workflow, you are not required to employ all functions to make use of UPI. Please contact TMA Systems, LLC if you have specific questions.
Date Format Error in SQL Database Connection Imports
When importing records like Purchase Orders using a SQL database connection, you may encounter an "Invalid Date" error for date fields, e.g., PO_Date or Date_Required.
Possible causes are:
Format Mismatches. The format specified in the UI Mapping Grid does not match the incoming database date format. For example, the grid expects MM/dd/yyyy, but the SQL table provides yyyy-MM-dd).
Data Type Mismatches. The source SQL database table uses the DATE data type, whereas WebTMA 7 fields are inherently configured to accept the DATETIME data type.
See the next topic, Solutions to Date Issues, for steps to remedy the error.
Solutions to Date Issues
If your UI service fails with an invalid date error, you can either change the Date Format or if the problem comtinues, remove the formatting. Here are instructions for option.
Correct the Date Format
Path: Admin > Universal Interface Setup
- Open the affected record.
- Search the Mapping Grid for the date field.
- Check the Format column to be sure it exactly matches the dates in your source SQL table (e.g., change MM/dd/yyyy to yyyy-MM-dd if applicable).
- Make any changes needed.
- Save changes and re-run the service.
Remove the Formatting
If the data type mismatch between SQL's DATE and WebTMA's DATETIME continues to trigger validation errors even after aligning the format strings, you can remove the formatting constraints entirely.
In the Mapping Grid in the UI window:
- Locate the problematic date fields, e.g., PO_Date, Date_Required.
- Delete all text in the Format field.
- Save the record.
- Re-run the UI service to allow the data to import successfully without format validation.