Type = FAQs,; Topic = Opus Solution Environment,;Persona = Solution Designer,; Orchestration = Manufacturing, Logistics, Commerce, Transportation, Clinical Supply,; Function = Supply Chain, IT, Operations, Regulatory Affairs, Quality, Commercial, Pharmacy, Project Management, Finance, Procurement,

Concepts and terminologies

The following terms explain how the OPUS Solution Environment (OSE) manages objects, permissions, workflows, and user interactions across the platform.

Application (app)

A product offering that includes one or more functions to meet customer and market needs. OPUS apps are exposed as APIs. They are headless, meaning they do not have a built-in user interface.

Catalog

A compilation of catalog items (e.g. Transforms, Link Actions, Solutions, Reports, Dashboards) with varying levels of configurability. Catalogs are differentiated by the scope of the catalog items.

  • Standard catalog - The global catalog where authorized solution providers can publish approved solution packages that are made available for TraceLink customers. Companies can download packages from the catalog for the apps they have licensed, which they can then install as a solution and configure if needed.
  • Marketplace Catalog - A public catalog of solutions that any member can browse, filter, and search by application name and version. To customize or integrate a solution, members must first save it as a Company Solution.
  • Company Catalog - A private catalog that contains saved Company Solutions tailored to meet specific business needs. These solutions may include modifications or enhancements to the original Marketplace version and are managed independently within each company’s environment.

Solution

A solution is a comprehensive set of tools and functionality designed to address specific business needs within an organization. Customers can save and configure solutions from TraceLink's Marketplace Catalog, tailoring them to align with their unique business processes and orchestrations. Data models, workflows, user experiences, and roles can be configured to meet unique requirements. Data models and workflows originate from the underlying application but can be extended by OPUS Solution Designers. Additionally, menus, pages, and roles can be configured to tailor what users can see and do. TraceLink offers the follwoing types of solutions:

  • Standard solutions - Pre-installed by TraceLink and available to all companies in the network. These solutions provide baseline functionality that addresses common business needs across multiple organizations. They cannot be configured by solution users, ensuring consistency and reliability in their deployment.
  • Company Solutions - Created by saving and customizing a Standard or Marketplace Solution. These solutions are tailored to meet the specific operational needs of a company. They support extensive configuration of pages, menus, workflows, roles, business objects, and policies, providing a flexible and adaptive foundation that evolves with the business.
  • Marketplace Solutions - Designed to address more specific or complex business needs. These solutions are not usable in the current state and must be saved before they can be configured. Once saved, Solution Designers can modify and release them into the Company Catalog. Marketplace Solutions are created by TraceLink, Solution Partners, and Professional Services to solve challenges within a company or across trade partners.

Orchestration

An orchestration is the coordinated execution of multiple business processes across different business objects, each with its own workflow, to represent a broader business relationship. Orchestrations are crucial for managing complex supply chain operations, enabling companies to quickly adapt to changes, ensuring compliance, and optimizing overall performance through real-time data exchange and collaboration.

Page type

A page type is an efficient, consistent, and metadata-driven method for Solution Designers to create pages for a solution. By using a drag-and-drop interface in OSE, designers can create various pages by adding and organizing the information (i.e. metadata) on the pages to optimize usability for when users start to interact with a solution.

Page types leverage standard object operations, which also accelerates the design and development of the solution, eliminating the overhead of complex application logic.

Every page is an instance of one of three page types: a Search page, New page, or View/Edit page.

  • New page - Allows users to create new instances of business objects.
  • View/Edit page - Allows users to view an existing instance of a business object. The page's View mode shows the contents of the business object, and the Edit mode allows the user to edit the business object's data.
  • Search page - Allows users to search for instances of business objects and filter the search results based on specified criteria. The results appear in the Object table, which can be sorted by one or more columns.

Page elements

A component is a metadata-driven element that the system automatically selects and applies based on the associated metadata, ensuring the correct functionality and UI treatment when Solution Designers curate pages in OSE through drag-and-drop functionality or when solution users of a solution interact with the component.

A section is a component that serves as a container for components, providing structure to fields, collections, and groups for better information presentation in the solution. Sections can organize these elements in one- or two-column formats.

A field is a data element within a business object that captures specific types of information (e.g. text, numbers, dates, picklist values). Fields can be grouped into collections for better organization and are integrated into the UI for data entry and display. They can include validation rules and support dynamic behavior, such as showing or hiding based on other field values.

A collection is a group of related data elements displayed in the user interface as either a single field or a set of fields, often presented as a list or table depending on the context. Like individual fields, collections have their own properties that define behavior and structure (e.g. line items in a purchase order are typically grouped into a collection and shown in a table format). This structure supports the organized display and management of multiple related data points within a single view.

Business Object Type

A business object type or object type is a digital representation of a thing that users interact with in the OPUS UI. These objects typically represent documents, messages, or some other collection of information that needs to be transmitted between two business partners. e.g. a purchase order, receipt, or shipping notice are all business object types.

A specific instance of a business object type (i.e. an individual purchase order or receipt for one purchase) is called an object instance or simply an object. In the past, these would have been physical copies of a document. On the OPUS Network, these are digital objects containing the same information that can be more easily transmitted and tracked through their lifecycle.

Role

Roles control permissions to pages, functions, and data within an app and solution, whether accessed through the user interface or integration. In the OPUS Solution Environment (OSE), Solution Designer defines roles and assigns permissions to them. TraceLink Administrators with Role Management access then assign these roles to users. Each solution can have multiple roles to manage what different users can see and do within the solution. At a minimum, every enterprise solution must include one user with a System Administrator role, while multienterprise solutions must also include a System Administrator user for the Partner. TraceLink provides a set of default roles with each standard or marketplace solution, which can be extended via OSE.

Policy

A policy defines the expression that determines whether a user with a particular role is authorized to perform a specific action (e.g. acting on an object in a particular solution). This expression is evaluated instantly when the user initiates the action, with a response time in sub-milliseconds. TraceLink provides a set of predefined policies with each app, and Solution Designers and Developers have permission to update policies for the solutions they license. See Roles for more information.

Authorization

Authorization in OSE controls what actions users are allowed to perform after authentication, ensuring access aligns with defined security policies. It enforces access control rules to enhance platform security and compliance by restricting actions based on assigned permissions.

Enforcement point

An enforcement point is a specific location in the application where security policies are evaluated and enforced. It controls access to data and actions based on a user’s roles and permissions, using the authorization token to verify read or write access.

Permissions

Permissions define the actions users can perform within the system and are typically assigned through user roles. Administrators manage roles and permissions in the OSE interface, allowing for granular control of access by creating roles, editing them, and assigning permissions based on organizational needs.

Workflow

A workflow is defined as a set of states and transitions for a business object or business transaction object. Workflows facilitate business objects through their correlating business process by defining sequences of states (steps) and transitions, made up of transition conditions and post-transition actions. There are 2 types of workflows: standard and business object workflows.

  • Standard workflow - Includes a predefined sequence of states and transitions for an object type. These workflows are commonly used across various business processes.
  • Business object workflow - Extends a standard workflow to support unique requirements. It provides configuration options and flexibility to adapt the standard model to specific business needs.

Workflow elements

Workflow transitions define how an object moves from one state or substate to another within its workflow. Transitions are managed by using two key configurations: transition conditions and post-transition actions. Transition conditions determine when a transition is allowed, while post-transition actions define what happens after the transition occurs. Together, these configurations ensure that objects progress through their workflows in a controlled and predictable manner.

A state represents the current condition of an object within a workflow. States are used to track and manage the lifecycle of documents or transactions as they move through defined stages. In OSE, workflows use states to enforce processing rules and ensure that each object advances through the appropriate steps with the required validations.

A substate is a more specific state that exists within a base state in a workflow. Substates provide additional detail about an object’s status and allow for more granular control and tracking as the object progresses through its workflow.

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