Describing SAP Ariba 2311 Release Features

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to describe new or changed features for SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration in the SAP Ariba 2311 release

CSC-33375: Advanced Packaging Enhancements to Support Decimals

Technical Details

  • Applicable Products
    • SAP Business Network for Supply Chain
  • User Type
    • Buyer
    • Supplier
  • Enablement Model
    • Automatically on

Description

This feature supports decimal points for packed and shipped quantity for handling unit packaging.

Customer Benefits

Consistent handling of quantities through the shipping process including handling unit packaging. This is important to customers in many scenarios, such as when ordering liquid bulk. Especially when the conversion between different units of measure taking place.

Also, for materials with a base unit of measure that is a weight unit, the capacity for a given handling unit might indeed be a decimal. For example, one carton can contain 1.25kg of product.

Prerequisites

The advanced packaging feature must be enabled.

Feature Details

User Interface Changes

This feature supports the following:

  • Decimal points up to three decimal places in shipped quantity values in ship-notice advanced packaging, instead of rounding a decimal to the nearest whole number. This makes it possible for shipped quantity values to match the quantity values in the related purchase order that use decimals.
  • Decimals at the level of packed material.
  • Decimals for Auxiliary materials.

    Note

    • Decimals are not supported for upper level packaging material, in case of multi level packaging.
    • Three decimal places are supported if the supplier adds more than three decimal places at the point of ASN creation. Before they reach the packaging step, rounding to the next higher number for three decimals occurs.
  • Assignment fields in default packaging instructions for Excel upload.

The following fields are updated:

  • Packed/shipped quantity on Confirm Packaging screen
  • Quantity field for capacity in Define Instructions screen
  • Adds support for decimal points in the Capacity and Maximum Capacity fields of packaging instructions, in Excel and json API formats.

CSC-34744: Customized Order Confirmation Template for Upload/Download

Technical Details

  • Applicable Products
    • SAP Business Network for Supply Chain
  • User Type
    • Buyer
    • Supplier
  • Enablement Model
    • Automatically on

Description

This feature enables buyer administrators to create a customization project for the Order Confirmation Excel template that is used by the Upload/Download feature.

Suppliers and supplier groups who are assigned this customization project see the customized Excel spreadsheet, rather than the standard template, when they run and download an Order Confirmation job.

Customer Benefits

The generation of Order Confirmation through a mass upload is getting simpler for suppliers since only a subset of required fields by the customer can be presented for the document creation.

Also, SAP Business Network is providing flexibility to customers by allowing them to include additional custom values in the Order Confirmation Excel template so suppliers can provide the corresponding information.

Prerequisites

  • You are a buyer administrator or a buyer with the Customization Editor permission.
  • The supplier groups that you want to assign your customization project to already exist in your account.
  • To publish a customization project, you must be a buyer administrator or a buyer with the Customization Publisher permission.

Feature Details

Buyer Administrator User Interface Changes

This feature adds the Order Confirmation Excel template to the document-type choices of customization projects that a buyer administrator can create with the Customization Self Service tool. A buyer administrator can choose this document type to revise and enhance the standard Order Confirmation template for Upload/Download.

A buyer administrator might decide to make the following changes to the standard Excel spreadsheet in a customization project for the Order Confirmation template:

  • Hide optional standard attributes.

    Note

    As shown in Figure 1, optional standard attributes display with a blue checkmark. You can uncheck any optional standard attributes you do not want to remove them from your customized template.

    Required standard attributes display with a greyed-out checkmark. You cannot remove any required standard attributes.

  • Rename standard attributes.
  • Add custom attributes.
  • Change the order of the columns.
  • Give standard and custom attributes a different column name, including for translations.
  • Make optional standard attributes required.

Screenshot of customizing attributes in an Excel template. In the Selected Attributes column, custom attributes and optional standard attributes display with a blue checkmark. Required standard attributes display with a greyed-out checkmark.

Supplier Changes to Data Import and Export

When a buyer assigns a customized Order Confirmation template for Upload/Download to a supplier, and the supplier runs an Order Confirmation job for information from that buyer, the downloaded Excel file shows the buyer's customizations of the template. This customization might include a different order of the columns or additional columns that are not in the standard template.

Feature Demonstration

For additional information about this feature, watch 2311 Readiness Feature Preview: Customized Order Confirmation template for Upload/Download (CSC-34744) – Demo.

CSC-36735: Added Specifications for Upload/Download Planning Jobs

Technical Details

  • Applicable Products
    • SAP Business Network for Supply Chain
  • User Type
    • Buyer
    • Supplier
  • Enablement Model
    • Automatically on

Description

This feature adds new functionality when creating Upload/Download jobs for planning processes. You can now choose to exclude planning records without time-series planning data from the download. You can also explicitly specify the time window for the download.

Customer Benefits

The Excel enhancements improve the efficiency of planning collaboration upload/download jobs and give planner users more flexibility in their planning activities.

Prerequisites

  • Buyers:
    • You must have the Planning collaboration entitlement enabled, or you must have both the supply chain collaboration and the inventory collaboration entitlements enabled.
    • You are a buyer administrator, or you have the Planning Collaboration Visibility permission.
  • Suppliers: You have the Planning Collaboration Visibility permission.

Feature Details

Changes to Data Import and Export

This feature adds the following functionality to Upload/Download jobs for job types Forecast, Inventory, Replenishment, and Manufacturing Visibility:

  • Exclude planning items that do not have time-series planning data.

    When you create a Forecast, Inventory, Replenishment, or Manufacturing Visibility job, the Upload/Download Job page now displays a checkbox with the label Only download planning records with positive or negative time series data. When you check this checkbox, the downloaded Excel file only includes planning records that have at least one positive or negative value in the specified time window.

  • Explicitly specify a time window for downloading planning data.

    With this feature, when you create an Upload/Download job with job type Forecast, Inventory, Replenishment, or Manufacturing Visibility, you must define the following fields to specify a time window for downloading the data:

    • Time bucket: The available time buckets are Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly. The following table shows the maximum date range for each time bucket.

      Time BucketMaximum Date Range
      Daily1825 days
      Weekly260 weeks
      Monthly60 months
      Quarterly20 quarters
      Yearly10 years
    • Start: The starting date in the time window. You can define the starting date in the following ways:
      • Current: The starting date is the current date for the time bucket.
      • Previous: The starting date is a previous date in the time bucket. An additional field displays for you to enter a numeric value.
      • Custom: The starting date is a custom date. An additional field displays for you to enter a custom date.
    • End: The ending date in the time window. You can define the ending date in the following ways:
      • After: An additional field displays for you to enter a numeric value. The ending date is the date after the number of time buckets specified by this value. For example, if the Time bucket is Daily, and you enter 250 for the value, the ending date is after 250 days. If the time bucket is Weekly, and you enter 26 for the value, the ending date is after 26 weeks.
      • Custom: The ending date is a custom date. An additional field displays for you to enter a custom date.

    The read-only Report period field displays the time window.

    The following table shows some examples where the current date is May 1, 2023.

    Time bucketStartEndReport period
    DailyCurrentAfter 365 days

    From Current to (Current + 365 days)

    5/1/2023 to 4/29/2024

    DailyPrevious 10 daysAfter 10 days

    From (Current - 10 days) to (Current - 10 days) + 10 days

    4/21/2023 to 4/30/2023

    WeeklyPrevious 1 weeksCustom 10 May 2023

    From (Current - 1 weeks) to 5/8/2023

    4/24/2023 to 5/8/2023

    The Weekly time bucket begins on the Monday of the week.

    MonthlyCustom 1 Mar 2023Custom 1 May 2023

    3/1/2023 to 5/1/2023

    The Monthly time bucket begins on the first day of the month.

    QuarterlyPrevious 1 quartersAfter 1 quarters

    From (Current - 1 quarters) to (Current - 1 quarters) + 1 quarters

    1/1/2023 to 1/1/2023

    The Quarterly time bucket begins on the first day of the quarter.

    YearlyPrevious 1 yearsAfter 2 years

    From (Current - 1 years) to (Current - 1 years) + 2 years

    1/1/2022 to 1/1/2023

    The Yearly time bucket begins on the first day of the year.

    In Figure 2, the time bucket is Daily, Start is three days prior to today, and End is 300 days after today.

    Screenshot of a job page where the time bucket is Daily, Start is three days prior to today, and End is 300 days after today.

  • Include time bucket granularity in Excel file.

    This feature adds the time bucket granularity to the end of the heading in cell A3 (row 3, column 1) in the Excel file. For example, the value in cell A3 for a Replenishment job with the Daily time bucket is Ariba Supply Chain Collaboration - Replenishment - Daily.

    Caution

    Review the scripts you use on Excel files created from Upload/Download jobs to determine if you need to make any edits to address this change.

Backwards Compatibility

Previously created Upload/Download jobs with type Forecast, Inventory, Replenishment, or Manufacturing Visibility are migrated using the new time-window format to maintain existing behavior.

  • Time bucket: The Time bucket is set to the same time bucket.
  • Start: Start is set to Current.
  • End: End is set to After the number of time buckets defined by the job.

Prior to this feature, the length for all time buckets was defined in years. With this feature, the length is defined using the time bucket's granularity. To convert the length to the new format, the time window is converted to the number of days (*365) for Daily, weeks (*52) for Weekly, months (*12) for Monthly, or quarters (*4) for Quarterly.

Feature Demonstration

For additional information about this feature, watch 2311 Readiness Feature Preview: Added Specifications for Upload​/Download Planning Jobs (CSC-36735) – Demo.

CSC-37434: Default Packaging Instruction Enhancements for Handling Units

Technical Details

  • Applicable Products
    • SAP Business Network for Supply Chain
  • User Type
    • Buyer
    • Supplier
  • Enablement Model
    • Customer configured

Description

This feature provides more options to suppliers for packaging instructions for handling units.

Customer Benefits

Consistent handling of quantities through the shipping process, including handling unit packaging, is critical for process compliance and traceability.

Prerequisites

The advanced packaging feature must be enabled.

Restrictions

Default packaging instructions are not yet supported for the automated exchange via S/4 API.

Feature Details

This feature provides more options for buyers to offer default and specific packaging instructions for handling units to suppliers.

It allows showing default packaging instruction in addition to specific assigned ones by enabling the option to show multiple specific and default packaging instructions to the supplier at the same time. All instructions are offered in the same dropdown list on the Define Instructions screen.

This feature also adds support for assignment fields for default packaging instructions in Excel upload. It enables Assignment tab support for default packaging instructions and support of all related determination fields like:

  • Plant
  • ANID
  • Vendor ID
  • Validity Period

User Interface Changes

This feature adds additional options for default packaging instructions. These options provide more flexibility to suppliers for packing specific items.

The following rule is introduced in the Handling Unit supplier profile that enables default packaging instructions as a default in addition to specific instructions:

  • The Allow suppliers to choose default packaging instructions for buyer parts that already have part specific instruction rule is added to the handling unit supplier profile in Create handling unit profile for Ship Notice. When buyers check this rule, their suppliers can determine how to pack items that the buyers have already provided part-specific instructions about.

These enhancements provide the capability to use the assignment information for generic packaging instructions. Earlier, this was limited to material-specific packaging instructions.

There are now more determination options available for generic packaging instructions, like those based on Vendor ID or Plant information.

Feature Demonstration

For additional information about this feature, watch 2311 Readiness Feature Preview: Default Packaging Instruction Enhancements for Handling Units​(CSC-37434)-Demo.

Related Resources

Information about all the new or changed features in the SAP Ariba 2311 release is available in What's New in SAP Procurement and SAP Business Network.

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