Automatic ERP to Cell Control

OrderLink is designed to translate the ERP orders/bookings to the cell controller and the completed workorders back to the ERP once a day. This can be done through the GUI allowing a preview of each step, or can be done by the command line custom plugin.

Once you have used the OrderLink GUI to convert ERP bookings to cell controller jobs, you can consider setting up the data flow to run automatically. To do so, the custom plugin is configured to run with specific command arguments to specify the task. This can be either by done as part of your wider ERP tasks, or via a Windows Scheduled Task. Scheduled Tasks are a feature of the Windows operating system which allow programs to run on a schedule such as at a specific time each day.

Scheduled Task

The Windows Task Scheduler runs commands using a user-defined time sequence.

Windows 10 Task Scheduler

  • Open the task scheduler. On Windows 10, open the start menu and search "Task Scheduler".
  • In the top menu, select "Action" then "Create Basic Task".
  • Enter a name, e.g. OrderLink
  • Select a daily trigger.
  • For the action, select "Start a program".
    • Use the path to the custom plugin executable.
    • The argument specifies which operation to perform, for example create-jobs. See the README that accompanies the plugin for the full details, but a typical argument might be create-jobs --flex-plan Z:\path\to\the.flexplan insight-dns-name
    • Start In can be left blank.

If a Basic Task is too restrictive, a full Scheduled Task can be used which allows more configuration:

  • In the top menu, select "Action" then "Create Task"
  • In the "General" tab, enter any name, e.g. OrderLink. Also setup the user to run the task. (The user which runs the task must have OrderLink installed.)
  • In the "Triggers" tab, create one or more triggers. For example, to run once a shift, you can create separate triggers for each shift. Set the trigger to run "On a schedule" and "Daily" with the starting time of the shift.
  • In the "Actions" tab, create a single action to run OrderLink. The Action should be "Start a program".
  • The "Conditions" and "Settings" tabs can be left with the defaults, or altered as desired.

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