This tool will demonstrate how visual configuration can be used to develop custom pricing strategies as it operates as a standalone web application integrated into Unity and powered by a visual framework. The web app is an application written in simplifies the process of creating and managing complex workflows within the Pricefx platform. The component is developed Javascript/React and provides functionality such as readingviewing, modifying and persisting data on the partition while the designing approval workflows within a partition using a visual framework that allows for ease of customization of the pricing workflow components.

Strategy Workflow Designer simplifies the configuration of approval workflows into simple streamlined experience so the users can focus on the business process (i.e. setting a pricing strategyusage of workflows and their design) instead of configurationtheir development.

Overview

The Visual Configuration capability will provide simple,

Benefits

• Drag-and-drop interface: Users can design workflows by dragging and dropping pre-defined workflow components onto a canvas. These components represent different actions, conditions, or decision points within the workflow.

• Visual representation of workflow logic: The Workflow Designer provides a visual representation of the workflow logic, allowing users to easily understand the sequence of actions and conditions. This visual representation helps in visualizing and analyzing complex workflows.

• Configurable actions and conditions: Users can configure the actions and conditions associated with each workflow component. Actions may include sending notifications, updating data, triggering other processes, or interacting with external systems. Conditions allow for the evaluation of data or events to determine the next steps in the workflow.

• Conditional branching and decision-making: Users can define conditional branching within workflows, enabling different paths based on specific conditions. This allows for dynamic and flexible workflows that adapt to different scenarios or inputs.

• Integration with other Pricefx modules: The Workflow Designer is integrated with other Pricefx modules, such as Pricing or CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote). This integration enables the design of workflows that automate and streamline processes across multiple modules.

• Workflow monitoring and management: Once the workflows are designed and activated, users can monitor their execution and manage them through the Workflow Designer interface. This includes tracking the progress, analyzing performance, and making necessary adjustments as needed.

Dependent Components

The Workflow Designer capability provides a streamlined and easy to understand drag and drop visual component that will to allow business users to configure important aspects of their Pricefx deployment workflows without the need for technical programming skills or understanding configuration details.

This deployment will be dependent upon one or more of the Pricefx Accelerator configuration components for a successful deployment.This capability will actually contain two different sub-epics which are related, and both of these are requirements visual configuration capability has the following dependent requirements:

Approval Workflow Accelerator

The capabilities of the Workflow Designer are dependent upon the deployment of the Approval Workflow Accelerator into your partition. This Accelerator provides some of the core building blocks that allow for the visual configuration component.

Pricefx Core Components

Additionally, this capability will connect with two additional updates that are available in the latest release of Paper Plane (June 2023) and both of these requirements are necessary for successful deployment:

• Pricing Strategy Workflow Designer
  The first concrete Visual Configuration App being developed by Pricefx, and its role is for development underlying core component linking Workflow Accelerator to the visual configuration capability that allows for creation of customized configuration of pricing workflow strategies or modification of out-of-the-box price strategies that are deployed via the Price Setting Workflow Accelerator.

• Pricefx Unity iFrame Integration
  Will provide Provides the connection link between Strategy Workflow Designer as an external product into UnityPricefx. This configuration will allow many different Pricefx capabilities in the future to integrate with a visual configuration component.

Benefits

The following benefits can be expected using Visual Configuration capability:

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Create and modify new custom pricing strategies

• Use pre-defined variables, product attributes and custom lookups in arithmetic and logical blocks

• Create reusable lookup blocks for standard Pricefx master data like Product Extension, Company Parameters and Competition data.

• Create a new custom pricing strategy based on a pre-defined template (Cost+ Percentage/Absolute) or a completely customized one

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Live preview of product’s calculated price

• Show all calculated elements and variables which contribute to the total price (ie. custom lookups, pre-defined variables,etc)

• Recalculate in real-time

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Multiple strategy selections are possible (ie. Add, modification and deletion)

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Ability to save your pricing strategy configurations to partition

• Save pricing rules into Company Parameter tables

• Deploy generated Groovy library

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Functionality

The use of Strategy Workflow Designer and pricing workflow configuration is performed in three steps:

Design

Here the user can design his pricing workflow strategy using a drag & drop interface leveraging visual framework while seeing the impact of the changes in the Live Previewvisual preview.

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Design Features:

• Create, rename and delete a strategyworkflow

  • Create a strategy from a template (Cost+ Absolute/Percentage/Selling PointQuote, Pricelist, Rebate, etc. )

  • Create a completely custom strategy

• Modify workflow strategies

  Live

  • Add product attributes

  • Add PSP’s default variables (Product Cost, Base Price, …)

  • Add logic (when-then-else, and/or blocks, comparison block)

  • Add values (text, number, true/false)

  • Add arithmetic operations (+, -, ×, ÷)

  • Add custom lookups

• Define and manage custom lookups

  • Based on a product extension (similar to PXLookup function in formula language)

  • Based on a price parameter (similar to VLookup)

  • Based on competition data

    • Add filters using comparison of the data row’s attributes to any value or supported variable

    • Select highest/lowest/average competitor price

• • approval steps

  • Add unique Approvers

  • Add conditional tests

  • Add functions (Is Null, As Number, etc.)

• Preview of the strategies and custom lookups

  • After selecting a product, the user can see:

    • the result price of the strategy

    • the values of the variables and custom lookups used in the calculation

  • The user can see a preview of the generated code

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Preview

In this step, the user defines priorities of the strategies, basically populating the GlobalStrategySelection PP table.

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Select Features:

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Add, modify or delete rules

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Highlighted changes for easier orientation and instant visual feedback

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will identify which workflows to deploy and review the primary tables that will be updated and their corresponding values.

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Preview Features:

• Selection of workflows to deploy

• Review of ApprovalWorkflowSetup table entries

• Review of Approvers table entries

• Review of ApprovalCondition table entries

Deploy

In the final step, the user can hit the Deploy button in order to deploy everything the workflow to the partition and update the corresponding logics and tables.

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Deploy Features:

• Single button to deploy everything

• Output with the deployment progress

Dependencies

This version of the Strategy Designer Visual Configuration is dependent upon the following:

• Bees Knees release

• Price Setting Accelerator 2.1.3