Auction Publishing 

Use

Sellers can publish created auctions in the Web shop for business partners to bid on.

Prerequisites

You have created and saved an auction. For more information, see Auction Creation for Web Shop.

Features

The seller can publish a saved auction in Web Auctions Administration in the following areas:

·        Create Auctions

The seller saves an auction and the system displays the publishing options. The seller can choose to publish the auction immediately, schedule the publishing, or leave the auction unpublished.

●     Monitor Auctions

The seller selects unpublished auctions and the system displays them in a list. The seller can select a particular auction from the list and the system displays the publishing options.

●     Manage Publishing Queue

The seller can display auctions with the following statuses:

¡        Unpublished

The seller can publish the auction immediately, schedule publishing, or leave the auction open.

○     Scheduled

The seller can change the scheduling time.

○     Publishing Failed

The seller can try to publish the auction again.

A seller can set a publishing date for an auction, but the actual publishing date is determined by the Administrators publishing task settings.

For example, if the Administrator sets the task to publish auctions on the 10^th of each month, and the seller chooses the 15^th May for the auction publishing date, the auction will not be published until the 10^th June.

On the 10^th June, the publishing task will run and publish all auctions which are to be published on 10^th June, plus all auctions with publishing dates between the time the task was last run and this run.

Activities

When the seller publishes an auction, the system:

●     Creates a quotation in SAP CRM and reserves the goods

The system displays the quotation ID in the auction details page and you can view it when you monitor a published auction.

To display the quotation or order using the quotation ID in SAP CRM, choose SAP Easy Access Menu -> Sales -> Maintain Sales Transactions.

●     Automatically sends an email invitation to business partners, selected during auction creation, to inform them of the auction and inviting them to bid

●     Automatically flags products in public auctions with a gavel icon

The icon informs users who are not invitees that a product is for auction when they search the product catalog. The user clicks on the icon and is directed to the auction and can bid.

The seller can monitor published auctions in Web Auctions Administration. For more information, see Web Shop Auctions Monitoring.