VMS — New-Item Onboarding: Questions Before We Build

Why this exists: Selinda asked (ticket T-115) for a way to handle a PO line whose part isn’t yet in Eclipse E4. Our research shows the “clean” path is greenfield and has real unknowns (E4’s template model, EPMS write permissions, and — most importantly — what VMS’s actual process is today). Rather than guess and build the wrong thing, we want clear answers first. We’ve paused F1 implementation pending these.

Grouped for whoever we talk to: A–B for Selinda / the CSR team; C–E for whoever maintains E4 / VMS IT.

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A. What happens today (the current process)

1. When a PO arrives with a part that isn’t in E4 yet, walk us through exactly what you do, step by step. Who does each step?
2. Who is allowed to create a new item in E4 — the CSR (you), or a separate catalog/data team?
3. How long does creating a new item usually take — minutes, hours, a day? Is there an approval step?
4. Does a new item hold up the whole order, or can you confirm the known lines and handle the new item separately?
5. Roughly how often does a PO contain a genuinely new item — every few orders, weekly, rarely? (Helps us size the problem.)

B. What “good” looks like for you

6. Which would help most:
   • (a) Ordermatic just flags the new line and lets you finish the rest of the order, tracking the new item so it isn’t lost; or
   • (b) Ordermatic gives you a form to create the item in E4 from inside the review screen; or
   • (c) Ordermatic routes the new item to whoever maintains the catalog?
7. Do you need to see all pending new items across orders in one list (a worklist), or is handling it per-order enough?
8. After a new item is set up in E4, what should happen to the original order — does someone come back to it, or is it already done?

C. Creating an item in E4 (data + rules)

9. What information is required to create a new Material in E4? (Material code format, description, unit of measure, category, costing method, GL account, weight, etc.) If possible, share a screenshot or example of creating one.
10. Are these items customer-owned or VMS-owned? Does the customer’s own part number need to be stored?
11. Pricing: these are often custom-manufactured with no standard price. Is the PO price simply used, or does a price have to be set on the item in E4?

D. The template question (this is the key technical unknown)

12. In E4, does a newly created Material need an associated template / finished-good setup before it can be placed on an order? ANSWERED 2026-08-31 by live probe — no template needed if the Material is a finished good. SubmitOrder accepts a component carrying only <FinGoodCode>, which E4 does NOT validate against dbo.TemplateHeader, where the same component with <TemplateCode> is rejected Invalid Template sent. It IS still validated for existence: a FinGoodCode present in neither dbo.Material nor dbo.TemplateHeader is rejected Invalid Finsihed Goods Code sent.(1) [vendor typo] with no job created (probed 2026-08-31). So the requirement is an exact dbo.Material row with MaterialType='FG' — just not a template. Verified on 41260, a stocked FG with zero dbo.TemplateHeader rows → job TST-999996-26, ComponentType='FINGOOD'. 47% of VMS’s FG catalog is in exactly that state. Still open for non‑FG parts (MaterialType='PA'), which do appear to need a template — Q13 below still applies to those.
13. If yes — who creates that template, and can it be done through the EPMS Connect API, or only inside E4 directly?
14. Do item revisions create separate E4 records, or is revision just an attribute on one item?

E. Integration / permissions

15. Does the EPMS Connect API login you provided us have permission to create inventory/materials (the AddMaterialToDatabase operation)? Or is it read/order-only?
16. Are there items that should never be auto-created (e.g. one-off custom parts you don’t want cluttering the catalog)?
17. Sometimes a part looks new but is actually an existing item under a different code. How do you tell the difference today, and how would you want the system to handle that ambiguity?

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What we’ll do with the answers: they let us pick the right Phase-1 behavior (flag vs. form vs. route), confirm whether auto-creation in E4 is even viable (Q12–15), and scope the E4 Material read/index pipeline we’d need so a newly added part starts matching on future orders. Plan detail: vms-feature-requests.md §1.