Sap Ag

Karen A Gee

Tobias Haug

Roman Rura

Dieter Schwarz

The present invention provides a method and system for generating electronic purchase orders and purchase order responses. Purchase orders and purchase order responses may be automatically filled in using business data stored by the purchaser. The system may automatically generate one or more messages and attach the purchase order and/or purchase order response to transmit these forms to a supplier. The supplier may accept all of the terms of the purchase order or submit changes in the purchase order response. After completing the response, the sender may attach it another message and transmit it. The purchaser may review the purchase order response and may automatically download it into a purchasing system. This system allows a supplier to work off-line without losing any benefits of on-line access. For example, the supplier's input is filtered as it would be if the supplier was working on-line. Also, the supplier's information can be uploaded automatically into the purchaser's system.

Purchase order and purchase order response interactive forms

Automated generation of business correspondences includes accessing a template to retrieve a business form. The business form is encoded within a word processing application encoded, but also includes encoding for the dynamic generation of one or more fields consistent with formatting that is predefined in a template. Through the retrieval and filtering of business information, the business form includes dynamically generated business information data fields consistent with the filtered business information. The business information populates the appropriate fields in the business form, maintaining the proper formatting, including stylistic and table designations, because of the database formatting of the fields. As such, the business correspondences may be automatically generated with proper and consistent business information formatting. Meta data associated with the data fields in the template may be also used for other programming operations.

Automated business correspondence

The present invention provides a system and method for displaying an external user interface in a groupware application to allow a user to access another application from the groupware application. The external user interface may be accessed from an initial screen within the groupware application that may allow a user to choose from multiple external applications. The user interface may then be expanded to also display user interfaces associated with the application that was selected, as well as the user interfaces associated with the e-mail program. With the external user interface, the user may navigate through the external application from the groupware application by sending multiple queries.

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Heidelberg, Germany

Karen A Gee