Vehicle Search Area and Sharing Level

Use

A vehicle search area is a geographical area in which a vehicle is made available and searched for. It defines the outermost limit within which a vehicle search can take place.

In a scenario in which more than one dealer, SD organization and so on access the same vehicle stock (defined by the vehicle search area), you can control the visibility of a vehicle for the other dealers, sales organizations etc. by using the sharing level.

You can evaluate vehicle search areas and sharing levels by defining rules for the vehicle search for these parameters. These rules can help you to set up a uniform SD policy in the system. You can find further information under Category Management .

Prerequisites

  • You have created sharing levels in Customizing for VMS under Start of the navigation path Vehicle Search Next navigation step Vehicle Search Areas Next navigation step Define Sharing Levels End of the navigation path (transaction OVELO27).

  • You have created vehicle search areas in Customizing for VMS under Start of the navigation path Vehicle Search Next navigation step Vehicle Search Areas Next navigation step Define Vehicle Search Areas End of the navigation path (transaction OVELO20).

  • All the vehicles within one vehicle search area are technically compatible and allowed in every other geographical region.

Features

Vehicle search area

  • The vehicle search area can be dependent on product data (base configuration) and organizational structures (sales organization, plant). In the standard system, it is only dependent on the plants.

  • A vehicle search area can include more than one sales organization.

  • Each vehicle can only belong to exactly one vehicle search area.

    Example Example

    The vehicle search area Benelux is allowed for the sales organizations Belgium , Luxembourg and The Netherlands. So, a dealer in Belgium also has vehicles from the stock for the sales organization “The Netherlands” at his/her disposal.

    For certain reasons, it may be advantageous to separate vehicle search areas on product family level. The above example can be limited to the most popular models of a vendor, there can also be an additional vehicle search area Europe Sprinter for the expensive model Sprinter that is seldom sold. A dealer in Belgium would then only have the vehicles in the area Benelux at his/her disposal for standard models and the entire stock for the area Europe Sprinter for the Sprinter model.

    End of the example.
Assigning Vehicle Search Area and Sharing Level

You can assign either exactly one plant or more than one plant (multi-plant scenario) and one default sharing level to each vehicle search area in the standard system . These values are then copied automatically to the vehicle data when you create a vehicle. If you want a different assignment when you create the vehicle, choose one of the following options:

  • Create your vehicles using transaction VELO . If you create the vehicles using BAdI (VLC_EXECUTE_ACTION, method DATA_CHANGES_BEFORE_ACTION), assign a vehicle search area and sharing level to the vehicles.

  • Create your vehicles using a BAPI (BAPI_VEHICLE_CREATE) and at the same time use this BAPI to assign a vehicle search area and sharing level to the vehicles.

  • Create your vehicles using a BAPI (see above) and if you create them using a BAdI (see above), assign a vehicle search area and sharing level.

You can change the vehicle search area and sharing level for a vehicle in retrospect using action SMOD ( Change vehicle ).