Automate

Hello Everyone!

As some folks may have experienced, automating adding or changing partner functions in SAP S4/HANA with Automate Studio can be a bit of a challenge. Unless something has changed, I am not aware of any existing BAPI that can make the task easier. While we have some working solutions using GUI transactions... they leave the door open for potential errors if there is unanticipated data in the transaction (and though that may be rare, it is possible so we have to account for it).

Has anyone here ever attempted or had success in building a custom RFC-enabled function module or a custom BAPI wrapper that could be consumed by Studio using a BAPI transaction/recording? If so, I'd love to hear folks thoughts on whether it was a heavy lift to create and if it was found to be useful.

Thanks in advance for any tips and suggestions!

Hello Everyone!

As some folks may have experienced, automating adding or changing partner functions in SAP S4/HANA with Automate Studio can be a bit of a challenge. Unless something has changed, I am not aware of any existing BAPI that can make the task easier. While we have some working solutions using GUI transactions... they leave the door open for potential errors if there is unanticipated data in the transaction (and though that may be rare, it is possible so we have to account for it).

Has anyone here ever attempted or had success in building a custom RFC-enabled function module or a custom BAPI wrapper that could be consumed by Studio using a BAPI transaction/recording? If so, I'd love to hear folks thoughts on whether it was a heavy lift to create and if it was found to be useful.

Thanks in advance for any tips and suggestions!

Hi Samuel

The FM Andrew mentioned does work for Customer BPs.

For the GUI, there are some tricks to make it work, but I understand that you may not want to rely on "tricks".

What about Fiori automation? Have you looked into that? You would have to upgrade your Developer license to Developer Pro, but the runners wouldn't need to, and it's best to be on version 25.1+. It gives you more granular control on the action of add or update (aka edit) with the line item behavior, and there is no worry about positioning in the right place. Under the covers it grabs the right key fields and will perform the add or update regardless of where it is in the list - position irrelevant.

We also have a Studio for OData in early release, where you can call the published OData APIs that SAP provides, and it has API calls for pretty much all of the BP: 

https://api.sap.com/api/OP_API_BUSINESS_PARTNER_SRV/resource/Email_Address

supplier: https://api.sap.com/api/OP_API_BUSINESS_PARTNER_SRV/resource/Purchasing_Partner_Functions

customer: https://api.sap.com/api/OP_API_BUSINESS_PARTNER_SRV/resource/Sales_Partner_Functions

If either Fiori (released) or OData (early release) is of interest, please reach out to your account team.

Best Regards,

Sigrid

Hello Everyone!

As some folks may have experienced, automating adding or changing partner functions in SAP S4/HANA with Automate Studio can be a bit of a challenge. Unless something has changed, I am not aware of any existing BAPI that can make the task easier. While we have some working solutions using GUI transactions... they leave the door open for potential errors if there is unanticipated data in the transaction (and though that may be rare, it is possible so we have to account for it).

Has anyone here ever attempted or had success in building a custom RFC-enabled function module or a custom BAPI wrapper that could be consumed by Studio using a BAPI transaction/recording? If so, I'd love to hear folks thoughts on whether it was a heavy lift to create and if it was found to be useful.

Thanks in advance for any tips and suggestions!

Thanks for the tips! Sigrid, is Studio for Odata going to become part of the out of the box Automate Studio ecosystem at some point? Exciting to hear that feature is coming either way since many of SAP's BAPI's and RFC's are or soon will be deprecated for S4/HANA. 

Hi Samuel

The FM Andrew mentioned does work for Customer BPs.

For the GUI, there are some tricks to make it work, but I understand that you may not want to rely on "tricks".

What about Fiori automation? Have you looked into that? You would have to upgrade your Developer license to Developer Pro, but the runners wouldn't need to, and it's best to be on version 25.1+. It gives you more granular control on the action of add or update (aka edit) with the line item behavior, and there is no worry about positioning in the right place. Under the covers it grabs the right key fields and will perform the add or update regardless of where it is in the list - position irrelevant.

We also have a Studio for OData in early release, where you can call the published OData APIs that SAP provides, and it has API calls for pretty much all of the BP: 

https://api.sap.com/api/OP_API_BUSINESS_PARTNER_SRV/resource/Email_Address

supplier: https://api.sap.com/api/OP_API_BUSINESS_PARTNER_SRV/resource/Purchasing_Partner_Functions

customer: https://api.sap.com/api/OP_API_BUSINESS_PARTNER_SRV/resource/Sales_Partner_Functions

If either Fiori (released) or OData (early release) is of interest, please reach out to your account team.

Best Regards,

Sigrid

Hello Everyone!

As some folks may have experienced, automating adding or changing partner functions in SAP S4/HANA with Automate Studio can be a bit of a challenge. Unless something has changed, I am not aware of any existing BAPI that can make the task easier. While we have some working solutions using GUI transactions... they leave the door open for potential errors if there is unanticipated data in the transaction (and though that may be rare, it is possible so we have to account for it).

Has anyone here ever attempted or had success in building a custom RFC-enabled function module or a custom BAPI wrapper that could be consumed by Studio using a BAPI transaction/recording? If so, I'd love to hear folks thoughts on whether it was a heavy lift to create and if it was found to be useful.

Thanks in advance for any tips and suggestions!