Your company is the Yankee Rocket Company, the largest manufacturer and distributor of model rockets in the United States. Your biggest supplier is Rocket Boosters, Inc.. The customer service representative at Joe's Rocket Boosters is a hard working fellow by the name of Abe Lincoln.

You have given him access to his customer orders with you on your system (i.e. your purchase orders) via EAX. When he logs on via the new Vendor Service link on The Yankee Rocket Company corporate website, he is prompted for, and enters his sign-on and password. He is securely routed to a Welcome screen that displays a "menu" of the tasks he has been authorized to execute.

From that menu, as shown in the example below he has selected "PO Inquiry". The data that he sees is "real time", exactly as it exists at that moment in the data base of your iSeries 400.

• "Start" menu
• My Settings
• Home
• My Files
• My Reports
• Log Out

Each option on the Navigation bar is briefly explained below.

"Start" menu - Will contain a list of tasks that the individual user is authorized to perform. Each user has their own list. The tasks are primarily multi-leveled (real-time) inquiries or data entry pages. Additional tasks can be created and added to the lists.

My Settings - Provides the user access to their EAX log-on profile. Here the user can change their password, user description, password "hint" question and answer, and default e-mail address used by other EAX functions for this user.

Home - Returns the user to their individualized "Home Page" within EAX.  In the demo the default "Home Page" is the plain white & gray "Welcome to ePartner Services" page, but it could be any webpage (simple or complex) that the administrator or the user sets as the default.

My Files - A "tree structure" diagram of files and folders, to which the user is authorized, is displayed. Folders can be created or deleted and documents can be uploaded, downloaded, displayed or deleted - all based on individual authorities granted to each user at the folder level.

My Reports - Reports can be executed (in real-time) from any iSeries 400 databases. They can be displayed, e-mailed,  and/or stored for reference at a later time. Additional reports can be created and added to the list.

Log Out - Logs the user out of EAX. Users are automatically logged off of EAX after a pre-defined time (set by the EAX administrator) has lapsed without any activity.

EAX has an Administrative module where you make the connection between which ePartner is logging on (a customer, a vendor, a salesrep, an employee, a regional manager, etc.), and who that ePartner is in your iSeries 400 enterprise database. The connection is called "Business Entity Cross-referencing". Via an entry in an table, the user ID and password chosen by the ePartner is linked to a single (or multiple) customers, vendors, salesreps, etc. using the same database used by your business applications. No downloading to another server, no maintaining multiple databases!

That unique user ID and password combination also has a profile of tasks and sub tasks authorized to it. Each different user that logs in sees only the tasks and sub-tasks authorized to them; and only the data corresponding to the business entity to whom they are cross referenced.