Version Control

Reference Documents

0. Definitions

0.1 Sample Definition

A sample request is a case record type used to manage registration, approval, follow up and feedback about a sample product asked by a customer.

The 4 main reasons identified to create a Sample Request are:

• Quality

• Customer request

• Distribution

• Other Business purpose

0.2 Sample Components & Layout (Lightning)

Each sample is displayed with the same layout, using different components :

1. Functional Process

1.1 Process Overview

2. Data Model & security

2.1 Main objects

1. Case: Standard Salesforce Object to store and manage all general information regarding a Sample Request
2. Accounts: Standard Salesforce Object to manage the information about the Sold-to and Ship-to related with the Sample Request
3. Contacts:  Standard Salesforce Object to manage the contact person from the Customer
4. Case Team: Standard Salesforce Object to manage all the actors related to the Sample Request Process and to manage accessibility to the Case

2.2 Sample Request Security Model

3. Sample Request Custom Buttons & Features

3.1 Sample Request Assignments 

Assigning a Sample Request to a User or a Group of User is to pass the responsibility to act on the Sample Request on a particular phase of the process. On Salesforce, the Sample Request Assignment is based on the field Case Owner.

A Case Owner can be a User (Solvay employee with a Salesforce license) or a Queue (a group of Users that should be part of a team to handle Complaints with the same criteria).

Based on each GBU own process and rules, the Complaint Assignment can be performed by:

• Manually changing the Owner – at any time, a User with Access to a Complaint can click the button Change next to the current owner and select a new User/Queue to be the new Owner
• Manually choosing the actors – on the creation (from the fields Originator, Investigator* and Commercial Assignee*) or at any time (from the Case Team section) Users are able to select the future actors. The Owner will be changed then automatically based the change of the Status
• Automatically selecting the actors – the GBU has provided the rules, based on Complaint criteria, to allow the System to automatically change the Ownership of a Complaint to a specific User or a Queue when the Status changes

The Sample Request Actors are managed on the Case Team section on the Sample Request Layout page. The Users are added to the Case Team i) manually by a User or ii) automatically by the System when they are the new Owners of a Sample Request. When the Users are added automatically to the Case Team, they are added with the correct Role based on the current Sample Request Management Phase. 

3.2 Sample Request Approval Process

After the registration phase is completed by the User and all the information related to the Sample Request is provided (General Information, Description, Accounts and Contacts, and Attachments), the Sample Request must be manually submitted by the User to be approved by clicking on the ‘Submit for Approval’ button. Based on System Rules and GBU Rules, a Sample Request can be:

• automatically approved - the Status will be automatically changed to Approved and the Sample Request will be assigned to the User or Group of Users responsible for the Processing
• assigned to be approved - the Status is changed to Pending Approved and the User or Group of Users responsible for approving the Sample Request will be notified.

During the approval process, the Sample Request will be frozen until it is “Approved” or “Rejected”.

If additional information is needed before the approval of the Sample Request, it can be recalled with a comment “Additional Information Required". Once the information has been delivered, the request can be submitted for approval again. 

3.3 Email notifications

An email is sent automatically to notify a group of users, triggered by :

• Changing a Sample request status, to the case team

• Approving a Sample Request, for processor and CSR

• Approving a Sample Request, for third party user

Each notification trigger have a group of Solvay Contacts (Salesforce or not Salesforce Users) that are receiving a notification email and this email is displayed in the Activity History section.

Notification mails are triggered manually, by approval rules, workflow rules, process builder or Apex code. More information in this file 

3.4 SAP Interface

For the GBUs that manage the Sample Request on SAP by submitting a new Sample Order, an Interface has been implemented to allow users to Fallow Up the progress of the Sample directly on Salesforce. After a Sample Request is approved and assigned to the CSR in charge of this step, the User should create the Order in SAP and add the Salesforce Case ID in the SAP form. This will allow the SAP to provide the information related to the Ordering, Shipping and Delivery to the Sample record on Salesforce. 

3.5 Third-Parties

3.5.1 Direct integration (CMC)

Solvay works globally with a number of Third-Party providers that manage the Processing phase of the process - Ordering, Shipping and Delivering.

The Processing phase managed by a Third-Party can be interfaced bi-directionally:

• Sending information of a new approved Sample to be processed

• Receiving information regarding the different Status of the Sample Requested

The third-party will be responsible to provide information on the following fields:

• Order date (date when the third-party receives the Sample request)

• Shipping date

• Delivery date

• Delivered volume

• Batch number

• Tracking number

• Carrier partner name

3.5.2 Community Portal (not used today)

For the GBUs that use Third-Parties to manage the Processing Phase of the Sample Request Process, there is a Community Portal where the Third-Party can log in and manage the Sample assigned to the Third-Party directly on the Salesforce platform.

This will allow the communication between Solvay and the Third-Party much more efficient and productive. Please find here the link to the Third-Party Community Portal documentation 

4. Specific Rules & Automation

4.1 Sample Request Registration

In order to create a new Sample Request, on the Case tab, the user needs to click on the “New” button, select the Sample Request record type and click on “Continue”. Additionally, Sample Requests can be found in a related list on the Account page from which the user can see all existing Sample Requests that this Account is the Ship-to or the Ship-to, as well as creating a new one. When creating a Sample Request from this related list on the Account page, the record type is by default “Sample Request” and the Account is automatically populated in the Account Name field.

When the user creates a Sample Request, the information related to i) Sold-To and General information, ii) Shipping and iii) Product should be provided.

4.1.1 Case Information 

4.1.2 Shipping Information

When creating a Sample Request, the information related to where the Sample should be shipped is mandatory. There are three type of addresses that can be provided when registering a Sample on the System:

1. Ship-to Address: the Sample Request will be shipped to the address of the Ship-to selected
2. Contact Address: the Sample Request will be shipped to the address of the Contact selected
3. Manual Address: the Sample Request will be shipped to an address provided directly on the Sample Requests that is not related to any Ship-to or Contact register on the System

4.1.3 Product Information

When creating a Sample Request, the information of the Product related to the Sample is mandatory. The main information required is the Product Level 4 or Level 5 related to the Sample Request. For situations that the Product is not yet created on the Product Catalogue, Users will be able to select a GBU Dummy Product and will need to provide a Product Label to identify the Product. 

 A sample request is linked to only one product (possibility to clone a sample request if multiple products are requested).

As detailed on the the Approval Process section above, users must at all times submit manually a Sample Request for approval after all the relevant information is provided regarding the Sample Request.

When an approval is requested by the GBU the status is changed to Pending Approval and the User or Group of Users responsible for the approval are notified. When the Sample Request is approved, the status is changed to Approved.

4.3 Process/Follow Up the Sample Request

Once the Sample Request is approved, it should be assigned to the Users or group of Users responsible for processing, meaning Ordering, Shipping and Delivery a Sample Request. This assignment can be done i) automatically by the System based on each GBU rules or ii) manually by the Approver if there is no rules implemented. For the Cases that the rules have been implemented, there are three possibilities of assignment of the Sample Request to be processed:

1. CSR: the CSR User selected on the creation of the Sample Request will be responsible for processing the Sample. The CSR can manage the progress directly on Salesforce or registering an Order in SAP and follow up the progress in Salesforce.*
2. Plants: for same GBUs, the Sample Request are automatically assigned to a Plant Team based on the Plant selected on the registration of the Sample Request
3. Third-Party User: for the GBUs that have onboarding a Third-Party to the Sample Third-Party Community Portal, the Sample Request will be automatically assigned to the Third-Party User that will be able to manage the progress directly on the portal

*If the Sample Request is processed by a Third Party that has not be onboarded on the Sample Community Portal, the CSR of the sample will manually update CRM with Shipping and Delivery information taken from the 3^rd party website as it is done today.

In order to manage the progress of a Sample Request, different Users will be using different sections of Sample Request Process:

1. For GBUs not using SAP to manage Orders related to Sample Request, the User responsible for the Processing should manually provide the information on the Other order and Shipping information section. On this section, the User should provide the Order, Shipping and Delivery Dates and can provide more information related to logistics.
2. For GBUs using SAP to manage Orders, the information on the SAP Shipping information section will be automatically populated from SAP once the Order is created on the ERP System with the Sample Salesforce ID.
3. For GBUs using Third-Party that has been onboarded on the Sample Portal, the Third-Party users will be able to manage the Order, Shipping and Delivery Dates directly on the Portal and that information will be automatically populated on the Other order and Shipping information section.

4.3.1 Other order and Shipping information

Section to be manually filled in when there is no Sample Order manage in SAP or automatically field in when the Sample should be managed in the Third-Party Community Portal

4.3.2 SAP Shipping information

Section to be automatically filled in when there is a Sample Order manage in SAP. 

On the Processing/Follow Up Phase, the Status are automatically changed by the System based on the Dates provided either on the Other order and Shipping information section or the SAP Shipping information section:

• Status is automatically changed to Ordered on the date selected on the Manual Order Date (No SAP order) or Order Date fields
• Status is automatically changed to Shipped on the date selected on the Manual Shipping Date (No SAP order) or Shipped Date fields
• Status is automatically changed to Delivered on the date selected on the Manual Delivery Date (No SAP order) or Estimated delivery date after order fields
  

4.4 Closure

Once the sample request is processed it should be closed in order to avoid having open requests in the reports and list views. Samples that were managed by a Third-Party on the Sample Community Portal are assigned to the CSR automatically after the Status is changed to Delivered for Closuring. 

There are two processes to Close a Sample Request:

• The sample request can be closed automatically once a customer feedback has been entered and the field Approved by Customer is populated. In this case and once the sample request is closed no field can be updated anymore. The only action available is to clone the sample request. 

• The sample request can be closed manually if the user knows that the customer feedback will be entered after a while. In that case the sample request will be closed but customer feedback fields only will be editable after closure. 

  • As the manual closure is allowed and customer feedback is not mandatory, we need to make sure that the Sample request is followed up. To do so, a check box “to be followed” has been created and defaulted to “check”. It will be unchecked by CSR if needed. But if it is checked and closed then an automatic task will be created and assigned to the owner of the creator request to remind him that he has to complete the customer feedback

     

Any User assigned to the case team can close the Sample Request by clicking on the “Close” button. This redirects the User to the closure page where the status will be by  default Close/Completed, meaning that the Sample Request was completed. If the Sample Request was Rejected or has not completed the process, the Status can be changed to Closed/Stopped. 

4.4.1 Close Case

This section groups all the fields related to the Closure phase